Dylan Byers: What’s Going On at CNN?

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Welcome to the Bullworn Podcast. I’m Charlie Sykes. I figured we would take a day to look at the media and what’s been happening with the media, particularly as as Donald Trump continues to ratchet up his threats and his embrace of Q1 on. I think you could argue that and again, stop me if you’ve heard this before. The Donald Trump is now more dangerous than ever before, and yet it comes at a moment.

When there are people in the media who say, you know, maybe we shouldn’t focus on Donald Trump so much or maybe we ought to be more even handed in the way that we deal with with with Donald Trump. We don’t wanna be, like, any Trump or anything like that as if, in fact, he poses an existential threat to American democracy. And of course, I am at least in the back of my mind thinking about CNN. So who better to talk about this then our guest today, Dylan Beyers, founding partner and senior correspondent at puck. He covers the business of media technology and entertainment previously worked to NBC News CNN and POLITICAL, so Dylan.

Welcome to the podcast. Thank

you so much for having me, Charlie. It’s an honor to be here.

I I read your

stuff and I always think that, you know, you you really know where where the bodies are buried in all this place. So it has a very interesting feel to it that that only somebody who’s working the belly of the beast would be able to, you know, have the kinds of perspectives that that you bring so let’s talk about your former home at CNN. What is going on at CNN? I’m sorry. I’m sorry, not to ease into this, but what the hell?

Yeah. It it’s it’s hard. And I think what I think what makes it doubly hard is that there are a lot of people inside the building at CNN who who still aren’t totally sure what’s going on. So I think I think the most useful thing to do here in terms of understanding that organization is to pull back a little bit and then think about the sort of motivations of the new ownership, which is Warner Bros. Discovery.

The the sort of way they see CNN. It is one piece in a portfolio that includes a lot of entertainment assets and some sports assets. And it is this news piece that is look, news is a headache for any media company. It it is hard to be in the news business these days without being somewhat politicized, almost no matter what you do, unless you sort of water it down to the most iodine, BDC esque type product. And so when they think about CNN, what they’re thinking is, okay, we are eventually headed for a world in which significantly less people are watching linear television.

And that is going to radically change the nature of the business model because we’re not gonna be it’s not gonna be as lucrative a business on that side. Because right now, Being in cable news is an incredibly lucrative business. So they’re preparing for this future in which they’re thinking more about selling streaming subscriptions. And the news piece, the CNN piece is going to be a piece of that. It turns out as you can probably guess that Republicans also buy streaming subscriptions, and even mega people buy streaming subscriptions.

And it does not bewhoove the the ambitions of this large entertainment company to have a once Storied news brand known for twenty four seven global news coverage be thought of as something that leans too far to the left or is two sort of proudly and syncedimoniously, not just anti Trump, but perhaps anti Republican and and something that might leave even, you know, right of center, you know, anti Trump Republicans feeling someone alienated by some of the rhetoric that they find on CNN. The response to this has been to appoint a new leader and give him the mandate. This is Chris Lyk from CEO and chairman of CNN, and give him the mandate to departs philosophize, depolarize, detoxify the network. And there’s an argument to be made that in these hyperpolarized times that that is not such a bad thing, that it is not a bad thing to have CNN be a news network, that does not skew too far in one direction or the other. The problem is, is that the response has been so sort of knee jerk reflect you know, sort of crude and and reflexive that it has ended up with this very weird situation where you have on air talent sort of overcompensating in in an attempt to please the boss and figure out where they stand.

And it is it has created this sort of very weird and strange programming as well as this sort of culture of fear and anxiety among all but the sort of top tier level of talent who know where they stand in the eyes of the new boss.

I I take your point that there’s obviously a case to be made for depolarizing the news coverage. But I wonder whether that reflects the market conditions right now. And by that, I mean, it seems like a huge portion of the viewing listening audience wants the safe space that if you are a conservative Republican, you want Fox or something even pure, like news maps or OAN. If you are progressive, you want MSNBC, And that CNN’s problem has always been sort of that it’s, you know, not too hot, not too cold, and therefore kind of to mix my metaphors to fall between the stools. To — Yes.

— neither satisfy conservatives nor Liberals. And as a result, even though it continues to make lots of money, in ratings, it has been lagging considerably behind. Is I mean, that there’s that there’s that dynamic as well. Right? Is that the audience itself is polarized?

And because and it wants polarized coverage.

That’s right. But I think that David Zaslow and Chris Lake are pretty clear eyed about the total addressable market of people who are going to watch cable news on any given, let’s call it, Tuesday night or Wednesday afternoon. That is not a very big audience to begin with. When when the ratings really surge for CNN and this has been true, for the entirety of its history is when a crisis happens. And and that can be a that can be a a a a riot in the capital.

It can be a war in Ukraine. It can be September eleven, it can be the death of the queen. And those are the moments when people still, despite everything that’s happened, during the Trump era. People still flock to CNN. Mhmm.

For the past nine years under Jeff Zucker, he tried to do all of these things with the with the daily programming to boost the ratings. I think the the theory of the case for the new leadership is we don’t need to be fighting over, you know, a matter of, like, tens or hundreds of thousands of additional viewers. Because we’re gonna continue to reap the revenue that comes from just having a popular cable network that people think they need to have in their cable bundle. Let’s position this as what as what they refer to as a reputational asset as something that is respected and like so that we don’t diminish the power of the CNN brand by having it be too heavily associated with one side or the other of the political spectrum. But if you’re among the crowd, I think you and I included who pays attention to what happens on cable news, then these hard turns feel sort of very jarring to witness.

Okay.

So I wanna work up to the firing of Brian Stelter and John Harwood and what’s going on with with the morning show. But let’s go back to the beginning by which I mean back in

February. You were the guy that broke the story that Chris Licht had been tappas this the new boss of CNN replacing Jeff Zucker. So going back to the firing of

Jeff Zucker, I’m not gonna claim that I am an or or an insider in any way on all of this, but it clearly stunned the CNN newsroom. So give me your take in retrospect. Jeff Zucker was fired for having a relationship with a subordinate. It felt disproportionate at the time was something else going on there? What what actually happened

there? I think it is tempting to see some larger conspiracy there in terms of the desire, you know, you’ve got a company here in CNN that’s in the middle of a merger you know there’s new ownership coming in. You know the new ownership has priorities. And I think it is therefore tempting to see his Auster as being the result of some sort of behind the scenes plot to get him out of there. I don’t really buy into that logic.

I think actually what happened First of all, I think that ended up being extremely messy for CNN and for everybody involved. And I actually think it would have really helped the new leadership to have had Jeff Zucker stick around for six months or a year and actually show them the ropes of what it took to run a global twenty four seven news network. I think what happened was a little bit what meets the eye, what’s happening on the surface, which is that Jeff Zucker did not have a great relationship with the the guy who was running WarnerMedia at the time ahead of the merger, Jason Kyler. There was not a lot of love between those two men. And during the course of the investigation into Chris Cuomo, which is a whole another matter, I don’t even know if we wanna go that front back.

We

can give a message. Yeah. Yeah. I

think your I think your listeners will remember there was an in investigation in Chris Cuomo. It was uncertain. Long ago. I know. Right?

I know. It was an earth that that Jeff Zucker was in a relationship with his number two, Alison Gollister, who was his to call her this sort of his deputy. And I mean, she was everything in the professional sense. She was in the room at every meeting. She went on every trip.

She knew everything he knew. And that relationship is something that went back decades. Back to their days together when Jeff Zucker was running in DC. She went to work for governor Cuomo for, like, a hot minute and then came back to work with him. With Jeff’s records.

And

then

this relationship was known to anybody who was, I would say, within, like, three rung of their orbit. I mean, I was I was, like, the lowly media reporter at CNN and and hardly someone who could have been thought in, like, the tier the top fifty top one hundred talents at the network. I knew about that relationship. Now people would disagree with it. It’s like, well, it’s not.

Is it romantic? Is it not romantic? Who knows? It doesn’t really matter. I mean, in a weird way, what’s so weird about that whole thing is that it was like the fact that they had to, like, seal it with a kiss to make it somehow, therefore, be grounds determination because emotionally and psychologically, they were already involved.

Mhmm. Now, I think that the fact that They admitted this during the course of investigation, gave Jason Kylar who didn’t like Jeff Zucker anyway. License to get rid of him. And people who know Jason Kylar in out in California will tell you that he’s a very mission driven person who is steadfast in doing what he believes, is right even when it is really puts him at a disadvantage or might even put the company he’s working for at a disadvantage. And so he goes ahead and charges ahead and does this.

And then you you you you’re left with the entire CNN newsroom and all this CNN talent being, like, this is disproportional. Why did you do this? And that’s a little weird too because here you have journalists sort of defending the guy who clearly broke the rules. So that that’s a whole another sort of ethical dilemma there. But anyway, it was ugly, it was strange, and it did a lot of damage to CNN, and it lasted for a very long time.

But I think I think the worst remnant of that was that it basically created a world where the new ownership took over, the new leadership came in, and they didn’t have an experienced hand there to sort of guide them and tell them how this thing works. There’s a vacuum. There’s a vacuum. And so the greatest detriment, I think, in Jeff Zuckerberg’s Oster, has actually been to Chris Licht because here is a guy whose only experience is being the executive producer of two morning shows and a late night show. He does not know what it takes to run an organization of four thousand five hundred people, let alone one that has bureaus all over the world, has a very strong digital business in in addition to its linear television business.

And he’s sort of going that alone and he’s he’s, you know, in way above his head. And and so I think there was a lot set in motion by what happened back in February that we’re seeing play out now. Okay. So

let’s talk about John Malone. Who is this? Yes. Conservative billionaire investor and he sits on the Board of Directors. In an interview last November, you’ve written about this, you know, Malone told CNBC that he’d like to see CNN evolve and suggested Fox News as a model.

And this is the guy who made a chunk of his fortune to pay TV business, long standing ties with with Zaslow. So back in July, you reported that Luke seemed to be pursuing the strategy. So I guess for a lot of people at CNN and and on the side. They look at Malone and they say, well, you know, how much clout did he have? In this vacuum you’ve described, how much influence does he have now in what happened later, which we’re gonna get to in a moment.

Personally, I’m not a

religious person, but every time I think about that malone interview, I think, you know, there must be some these sort of, like, prophetic texts that people go back to and sort of everything that has come to pass, the kernel was that prophetic text and that CNBC interview — Mhmm. — was that. If you watched that interview in November, you could have understood completely what Warner Brothers discovery was going to do with CNBC. Really? Yeah.

And John Malone is an extremely powerful person in the David Zaslow discovery orbit. He was far and away the most powerful shareholder at Discovery, once the merger happened, he became one among thirteen people on the board with equal voting power. But that under states the sort of influence he has as a mentor to David Zaslav. Mhmm. And so what John Malone says publicly is very significant and is very important.

This is not to suggest that David Zaslow is not making his own decisions, is not an incredibly capable leader all of that is true. There’s nothing conspiratorial here. It just so happens that his mentor is there, sort of looming over everything, and that is very real. And John Malone, the way that he described CNN in that interview, which he characterized as being this sort of, like, the journalism was gone. It was all opinion.

It was all biased and anti Trump and anti Republican. Is the perfect example of how you would view CNN if you only saw CNN through watching Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity. Now,

interesting.

Remember when I said that David’s As Love and Warner Bros. Discovery want CNN to be a reputational asset, they wanted to be part of the like the strong reputation of their company. Unfortunately, you don’t always get to determine your reputation. Oftentimes, your critics do that for you. And when you’ve got a powerful network like Fox News, which is the most not the most watched news network, but the most watched cable channel on television period.

It is very hard to overcome the perception And certainly CNN didn’t do any itself any favors when Jeff Zucker encouraged certain anchors like Brian’s doctor, like John Hartwood,

like

Don Lemmon, like Brianna Keeler, to go out and really rail against everything that everything that Trump was doing and everything that his enablers in congress and at Fox News were doing. And so even though Malone was sort of unfair in his in how he characterized CNN. He wasn’t wrong that CNN had sort of gained that reputation over time

and

Chris Lick’s job, and David Zahzah’s job was to come in and effectively clean that up. Now, today at CNN, there are a lot of people who sort of fret and whisper about the all powerful invisible hand of John Malone, which is a sort of conspiratorial way of thinking. What I would say is there’s no conspiracy. It’s not invisible. It’s all out there.

He was in the interview in November. Yeah. It’s a big signal.

Yeah. It’s a big signal.

Yeah. So it’s not don’t don’t look at his conspiracy. They’re being quite public about it. This brings

us up to early August. You were reporting that Chris Lick was making trips to Capitol Hill where he was, you know, ice

breaking, get to know you players that he was meeting with Republicans like Mitch McConnell, Kevin McCarthy, John Thune, assuring them that that the new CNN would be much more fair to fair to rep Republicans. By August eighteenth, though Brian Stelter is gone. So I mean, it’s it’s it’s hard not to connect these dots. I mean, it’s it’s hard not to see this as a pattern. So Brian Stelter for people who have who were not locked on this CNN, you know, had a long running Sunday show you know, critiquing the media that was was was was quite critical of what Donald Trump was doing.

And so just tell me about what happened with Stelter and why was Stelter is the first on the chopping block. Yeah.

Well, from what I know, as I understand it, Stelter was probably doomed from the day that CRISLICT took over. And I think that, again, when you go back to the reputation, you have people that we should – there should be a shorthand. Maybe I’ll talk to my editor and we’ll come up with a shorthand for it. But there should be a shorthand for the people at CNN under Jeff Zucker who are really encouraged and emboldened to go after, again, Trump, his enablers, Fox News, and all of that. In Brian Stelter, you have someone who really, really, you know, took that on full bore and even wrote a book about

the

tight knit relationship between Trump and Fox news. Mhmm. That was an incredibly critical book. Now, that’s not he’s not wrong. His reporting was right.

Trump and Fox News were incredibly close. We’ve seen that in myriad ways. All of that has been borne out by countless emails and phone conversations, especially around January sixth. But he developed a sort of persona that was based not on doing just, you know, just the facts, ma’am, journalism, here’s the news, but on really being an advocate for, you know, sort of a staunch critic of Fox News and Trump and an advocate for the importance of freedom of the press and all these things. That is like a perfect example of the kind of thing that Chriswick does not want at his new CNN and by putting by getting rid of Brian’s delta and really like sort of as a sacrificial lamb on the altar, because it’s not like he came in and said, and here’s what we’re replacing his show with.

He was just like, this is gone. And then it’s he sort of hung out there for for the full week. Of headlines, which was interesting that they did that. Yes, which is a way of saying, we are serious about this commitment about changing the tone and the tenor. Of CNN.

And so Brian Stelter was a perfect example of that. John Harwood was another one. John Harwood was someone who often went out there and sort of warned about the dangers of what Trump was doing, more of that, less of this sort of reporting than some of his colleagues at the on the White House were doing.

So you wrote after, you know, Stelter’s firing that Stelter’s departure is both totally unsurprising and yet completely and utterly stunning. So you’ve kind of explained why it wasn’t surprising. Why was it completely inertly stunning? Brian,

he started a blog and he was just writing about what he was seeing on broadcast and cable news. And then he got hired by The New York Times and became this sort of larger than if you if you’re in the median he became a sort of larger than LifeStar. And then he got hired by CNN, and then he got turned into sort of one of Jeff Zucker’s stars. You know, like a mark not not a prime time marquee talent, but a marquee talent, nevertheless. And he

had three years left on his contract. Any

of three years left on his contract, which he will be paid out for in its entirety, which by the way, again, it’s not like this isn’t a cost saving measure to get rid of Brian’s Seltzer nor Harwood Harwood had two years left on his comment. It’s unsurprising because if you know what Chris Licht is trying to do, Brian Seltzer is obviously the first person to go. It’s stunning because it is just a clear mark of a change in the sort of There was a sort of era that Brian lived during, which was this sort of rise from kid blogger to New York Times media columnist to CNN. On air TV personality. And that that era sort of came crashing down.

And so I think if you’re somebody who follows the media as we do very closely at puck, it feels stunning in that regard. And and I also think it definitely was finally the moment at which all of the whispers about what Chris Licht and David’s Love and John Malone were doing at CNN. It was like, okay. Now we know. Now the John Malone thing from November is coming true and and it’s undeniable.

And

obviously, they didn’t change their minds after the blowback to that. So then you had John Harwood as you point out, you know, his last day was the Friday going into Labor Day weekend and there’s speculation about bringing heaters tenure. You wrote about this, about this tense exchange between Brianna Keeler and Republican congressman Mike turner over the search at Marl Lago. And as you put it under under Jeff Zooker, that would have been just another example of CNN sticking it Trump world. It would have been, you know, one of the one of the highlights.

Under Chris Licked, there’s questions about, hey, you were too aggressive, you went too far, and you heard rumors that Luke was displeased about that. And then Biden gives his speech in Philadelphia, and Keeler takes to Twitter to condemn Biden for using uniform Marines as part of his backdrop. So

what’s going on there? What’s what’s happening? You know? That is that is the culture at CNN right now. Look, Don Lemmon is a perfect example.

There was a moment after Chris Lick took over that Don Lemmon criticized Biden. And everyone sort of wondered, is he doing this to please the boss? Is he trying to show the boss that he knows how to walk the line? Now if you go back six months before Chris Lick took over, there are multiple clips of Don Lemon criticizing Biden as well. But in this context, when everyone is sort of fearful about what’s going on and trying to get in line with the new boss, everything is sort of second guest.

And everyone’s sort of watching over their shoulder and and and even second guessing the decisions they’re making. And that I would argue is not terribly conducive to great journalism. I think that

what

Chris Licht would say is we are not trying to go easy on Republicans. We are just trying to be equal opportunity in terms of how we question lawmakers and people on all sides of the political aisle. And we are trying to represent the broad swath and the nuances of American political opinion so that people feel like this is a welcome platform for all different kinds of views and open debate. And that’s that’s true. But at the ground level, Again, there is just a lot of second guessing going on, and there’s a lot of trying to figure out how to get in line with with what this looks like.

And it doesn’t that the end result is something on television that can often feel sort of stilted and awkward. Okay. So we’re

spending a lot of time on CNN, but I just wanted to keep talking about some of the things that are happening because there’s obviously different perspectives of don lemon, move from late night to the morning show, you had an interesting take on that, not noting that, you know, historically, moving out of primetime was considered a demotion, but with linear television, as you describe it, in in decline, primetime is not the end all be all. So is Don Lemmon being demoted? How do you do you read that move? Because a lot of people were speculating after Stolter and Harwood that Don Lemmon might be next and yet there is going to be, you know, with your breakfast and your morning coffee. So

is he demoted or not? Well, I think this is not a satisfying answer, but I think both things can be true and and here I do think it’s a little more nuanced. I think Chris Licht actually likes Don Lemon. I think Don Lemon is a very charismatic and and charming on air personality who has grown pretty stale in primetime. And primetime is a place that can be very seriously political and opinionated and is a place where Don Lemmon especially if he gets tired of just reading the teleprompter over and over, he’s going to feel incentivized to sort of like speak out with an opinion on on something that happened involving Republicans or immigration policy or who knows what?

If you wanna really play the Don Lemmon strengths, I think this is what Chris liked his thinking. Move him to the mornings where he is allowed to show a little bit more of his personality. And by the way, it’s a softer morning programming is softer. It you know, and he will be able to be a little more friendly and show that side of his personality. And he will be out of that sort of primetime lineup that is heavily scrutinized.

And is that a demotion? Sort of, the West Coast isn’t even gonna see that show. So are fewer people gonna see him? Yeah. And so in that regard, arguably, it’s a demotion.

Is it a promotion in terms of the fact that it allows Don Lemmon to do something he’s long wanted to do, which is again show that side of his personality and mix things up a little bit. I would say in that regard to his promotion. Certainly, I think he’s getting paid more. I think he’s getting a longer deal. Mhmm.

Net win for everybody. And it has other effects too. You’ve talked about Brianna Keeler, whether or not she was on her off, she’s going to be kicked off the morning show. I would be I think it’s highly unlikely she’s gonna move to primetime. And in the world of cable news, if you’re not in prime time and you’re not in the mornings, you’re just sort of lost in the northern regions of daytime.

Which is really just sort of, you know, on on mute in the offices of Case Street and newsrooms around Washington and New York. And the other thing it does is it clears the primetime slate because now nine PM is open from Chris Cuomo. Ten PM is open for Don Lemon and it gives Chris like the chance to completely reimagine what primetime will be. So it is actually given the cards in his hand I think an incredibly savvy move by Chris Lick to do this and you simultaneously get to keep Don Lemon at the network do something with him that makes him a little less of a obstacle in your mission of sort of makes CNN straight again as I like to say. And, yeah, I I I think it’s a win for everyone with the exception of Breonna Keeler.

Okay.

So let’s talk about Fox News, and I mentioned this to you right before we started the podcast this morning. New story out about Brett Baer over at Fox. This is something that’s been reported in in the new book by Peter Baker and and and Susan Glasser, which is out, I think is officially out next week. The story is that after Fox News called Arizona for Biden, Brett Mayer, email network president Jay Wallace, that the Trump campaign is really pissed this situation is getting uncomfortable, really uncomfortable. I keep having to defend this on air.

And the authors write in the book that journalists on the decision desk thought there was no serious question about Arizona. But bear but bear in his email accused them of holding on for pride as we know Chris Styroalt was later fired. Who’s hitting the the the desk. It’s hurting us a bare road according to the book. The sooner we pull it, even if it gives us major egg, and we put it back in his column, Trump’s column, the better we are in my opinion.

The authors called the statement Stein, given that Arizona was never in Trump column, even if his margin of defeat in the state narrowed just after the election, the leading news anchor for Fox News was pushing not just to say that Arizona was too close to call, but to pretend that the president had won it that they

wrote.

So, give me your take on this because Brett Bear is, you you generally, you know, put him in a different category than say the Kirk Carlson’s or the Sean Hannity’s

of the world, but this is not a good look for breadbearers? No, it’s not. And like you said, you brought it up just for the show. But, you know, Peter Baker and Susan Glasser is a powerful reporting duo. I trust the reporting.

Look, before Chris Wallace left Fox News, there was this whole thing where you’d be like, well, Fox News is really gone. I mean, just that it’s it’s not even a news network anymore. It’s it’s it’s an arm of the of Trump’s White House. Mhmm. And people would say, no.

No. No. We’ve got I mean, come on. We got Chris Wallace. Be like, okay.

And then Chris Wallace, I was gonna be able to be, like,

No.

No. No. We got Brett Bayer. Brett Bayer is a you know, he’s good. I I I like Brett.

Brett’s a really nice guy. As you know, he’s a fixture in the sort of Washington circuit. He’s he he but come on. What is that? What is that?

I think that one thing I’ve learned about reporting on the media for more than ten years is that news is a is a business and there are decisions that get made that do not always align with, I think, the layman’s notion of this sort of, you know, strong upstanding for the state that does everything by the book. That said, your North Star, especially on election night when it’s just a scoreboard, and their numbers to tell you who’s winning and who’s losing, you don’t do that. And I also don’t understand, and this this is something I I really don’t understand about the the folks at Fox News. Why are you putting all of this in writing? Okay.

That that

was my was my next question is you put it in writing and and then how did this get leaked? I mean, where did this come from? Right. I don’t think it’s breaking news that sometimes these newsrooms are kind of sieves, but that’s a pretty embarrassing leak and it had to come from within Fox News. Right?

I mean, some somebody dropped a dime on Brit Bayer. Yeah. I mean, I

don’t

know. I I don’t know. And I I don’t the the sort of motivations of, like, disaffected Fox folk and disadvantaged Trump folk. I mean, I don’t I I but it’s like, you are the last person at Fox News right now? Who could ostensibly get a job at another network.

Right? You’re the last person who has a shred of credibility. That is just a very bad look. And what did you think, you know, when he says the thing about we we might get a lot of egg on our face for it? Well, here’s the egg on your face.

And this is not egg on your face for a new cycle. This is this undercuts your entire journalistic reputation. Okay. So let’s

set cable news aside. This is a very interesting moment for other publications, niche publications, out there. Talk to me about what’s going on with political, Axios, Sema four, And your own outlet puck — Yeah. — this seems to be a growth era for new publications each trying to find a different identity. And there’s a lot of I mean, there’s it appears to be a lot of money here as well.

I mean, political just sold to a German company. Axios has been tremendously successful. Sema four, which I’m guessing most people haven’t heard of is about to launch. I mean, just first of all, what is Sema four and where are we at there? Sema

four is the the brainchild of two men of great notoriety in the media industry. One is Justin Smith, who was the head of Bloomberg media for a long time. And in in his experience running that global media organization has amassed a very impressive ROLIDEX globally of sort of movers and shakers who he knows at the sort of, you know, the highest one percent level. Ben Smith is the one time great political blogger turned editor in chief of BuzzFeed News. When BuzzFeed News was really a thing back around the twenty twelve election, turned New York Times media columnist and did an, I think, an impeccable job there for a little over a year, now turned the cofounder of Semaphor.

What Semaphor is when it Semaphor will launch next month is very different from what Semaphor said it was going to be, which is sort of, I think, the problem for them. But what Semaphor will be is a news publication built around individual authors and their newsletters. And so they have a handful of political reporters They’ve got a business reporter. They’ve got a tech reporter. And they have a reporter who covers Africa.

And if you’re wondering why is there also reporter who covers Africa, it’s useful to know what Semaphor said it was going to be back when these guys first announced it, which was it is going to be huge global news organization to rival the likes of the New York Times and Bloomberg. And it is going to best everyone and and and create a better product than anyone else has out there with with bureaus in regions all around the world. Obviously, that’s not where they’re launching. That is sort of the problem for Sema four is in this day and age whether it is SEMA four PUC Axios POLITICAL. If you are going to launch a new news site and have it be successful, you have to do something that absolutely nobody else is doing.

And I don’t think it was ever clear when Semaphor launched that they knew exactly what or when they announced this new company, that they knew exactly what the different maker was going to be for them. And so now they’re going to market with a product that God bless them. I hope it succeeds, but has yet to show how it can be any different than any other news organization that’s out there.

So this is the key, isn’t it? Unique content, differentiated content that you’re offering something in a crowded media environment that is unique, which is becoming increasingly difficult. So if you don’t mind talking me a little bit about about talk, you’re a founding partner. And I I I think I told you, I am a reader, I am a subscriber. I’m intrigued by what you are doing, all of the different voices.

But tell me how you have conceptualized this idea of unique differentiated content. Yeah.

Well, look, I’m and I would say that puck was sort of we have an incredible leadership team and but but puck was sort of the brainchild of our founding editor, John Kelly. And we, I would say, launched in a very different way, which is we launched pretty quietly. We didn’t make any big grand statements about what this was going to be. But there were a few theories. One is that journalists should be at the center.

Right? So, journalists who know their beats or know their coverage areas should be at the center of the publication. They should have equity in in the company. And people will come to them not for to read the same version of a story that sixteen other journalists are writing, but for their own unique well informed well sourced take on their own areas of expertise. We have Matt Bellini who who is an ace reporter in Hollywood who used to run the Hollywood reporter.

We have Julia Yaffe who does phenomenal work on Russia and as well as on Washington, D. C. That is I I think she has really owned during the Ukraine war. She really owned that area. We’ve got, you know, Teddy Schleiffer who who covers the money connection between Silicon Valley and Washington.

And I think now we’re somewhere, like, ten or twelve reporters and make it worth their while, write in a style that is fun to read and give them the actual story about what’s going on. The greatest part about journalism is that you’ve got journalists who File their copy and send it off to be published, and then go to the bar and talk about what actually happened, the thing that they couldn’t put in the article. Right? Mhmm. The whole premise behind punk.

One of our one of our taglines is, punk begins where the news ends. We wanna invite you into that conversation. And we wanna invite you into that conversation by being honest and forthcoming and breaking the fourth wall when we write, we want we have podcasts where we just talk about what it is we actually know. And we have at as if you pay a little bit more. We’ve got these inner circle calls and events where you can actually come and and and we’ll lay out everything we got in our notebook.

There is no reason that the people who read the news should not be privy to the conversations that journalists and sources are having among themselves.

That is the premise of luck. So I was intrigued by your interview last week with Jim Van de High, who’s the cofounder of both political and Axios. And, of course, a fellow a fellow cheese head from — Yes. — was Wisconsin. And your piece reminded me about, you know, how successful these these operations of Benjamin over the summer political was sold to Axel Springer for a billion dollars.

And Axios, which apparently had also been accorded by Axel, was sold to Cox Enterprises for five hundred and twenty five million dollars. And so obviously, Manahai has kind of figured out how to start these things. And you asked him sort of the question, you know, what is the winning formula for success in digital media, the the dos and and don’ts. And I thought this was very interesting. His his his answers, you know, he said there’s no magical formula.

This shit is hard requires smarts timing, lots and lots of luck. He said, here are a few dues. Do realize you will fail if you do not have a firm realistic plan for how to generate revenue immediately. Two, do realize that you need to nail editorial and revenue and technology and marketing and get all four to work, you know, together. And do realize super star talent is hard to find, cherish and spoil the best ones and do realize that culture is the secret sauce and very, very hard to perfect.

And and the don’ts don’t assume that money can solve your problems. Don’t assume a little buzz means much. Don’t conflate Twitter or applause with actual success. Don’t conflate establishment criticism with failure. And don’t try to do a slightly better version of something that already exists, solve a new problem, way bigger upside.

Do you agree with that? I mean, this does seem like what he’s brought to a political and Axios and what seems to characterize a lot of the successful new startups. Yeah.

I I I agree with I I think that’s a really powerful list. And and I think figuring out what the you know, what what are those differentiators, what are the how do you get to a place where you know exactly what revenue is gonna look like before you launch? I mean, these are all really hard things. But it’s a it’s a it’s a really useful guide. And I think also a useful guide here is is looking at what Jim has has done.

And if you look at political and Axios, I think it fits the bill for doing all of the right things and not doing any of the wrong things. And one of the reasons I wanted to do that interview with Jim is I feel like he’s an underappreciated person in the media landscape. Because if you really think about it, political entirely changed the velocity and the tone and the tenor of journalism. With the end result that a lot of political’s greatest stars ended up becoming a part of establishment media going to places like The New York Times and The Washington Post and CNN. And then with Axios and this smart brevity model, he has sort of highlighted the need to meet readers where they are on their busy schedules and give them the most, you know, just the nuts and bolts of what they need to know.

Now, what we’re doing at puck is very different. We don’t we’re not smart brevity. We try and be. You know, we’re long form most of the time. And we are trying to invite you in to tell you a story and give you all of the nuances and all of the detail.

And I think that’s really worked well for us. But there’s no question that the the two things that Jim and his colleagues did at both of those publications they weren’t just successful in their own right. I think they had profound effects on the media landscape generally. No. I I

think that’s true, and I think that this is where you have this this content differentiation. You tell stories that they give smart brevity, you know, things that you need to know at the top of the day. And and of course, political really has changed. The entire tenor of political coverage. What are you looking at in terms of any changes in political because of the new ownership?

There was some speculation that that the new owners might have a different political ideological agenda. Is this something you’re keeping an eye on?

Yeah. Definitely keeping an eye on it. I think that political look, I think even John Harris, who is Jim Van Nuys cofounder of political has written about, you know, when they launched political, they talked about the need to disrupt the media establishment and be scrappy and fast and everything. And John Harris has written more recently about the need to make powerful institutions and that political needs to be a powerful institution because to go up against the forces of government and a big business, you actually need your media organization to be powerful institution. I think that is what is going to happen to political.

I think that it won’t be the buzzy, scrappy, sometimes controversial outlet that we remember from, you know, two thousand seven and eight, nine and ten. It will be an institution. I think ideally one that believes it can rival the Washington Post, the New York Times. And at worst, I think it sort of just becomes sort of like a a a fixture that sort of tells you what you need need to know every day, but isn’t terribly remarkable. And I think at best, it will continue to publish groundbreaking scoops like the one that they had about the Supreme Court ruling — Mhmm.

— which is probably the biggest scoop in their history. And, you know, in in my view, Washington is is better for it. Dylan Byers, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. I appreciate it very much. I really appreciate

you

having me. Thank you so much. Dylan is founding

partners, senior correspondent at Tawke, where he covers the business of media a technology and entertainment and previously worked at NBC News, CNN, and political. And thank you all for listening to days over at podcast on trolley Sykes. We’ll be back tomorrow, and we will do this all over again.

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