Is a Sea Change Coming in News Consumption?
I predict the dominance of cable news is waning and cable news will be significantly diminished by the 2024 election.
I joined James White once again on Critical Disclosure Radio.
In the first forty-five minutes, Jim and I talked about my recent investigations into the prison system.
I have previously documented the dispatches from Kevin Tower, who is a wrongfully convicted prisoner in the Michigan prison system. I have also shown how Martin Gottesfeld- who is being held in a special unit in the federal prison- has disappeared after complaining of sexual assault by a guard.
In the last fifteen minutes, Jim and I got into a discussion on the future of news in America.
I made three main points: the cable news model is outdated and dying, technology will lead to many new models, and the news will get more fragmented.
I wanted to both summarize and expand on those hypotheses.
Cable News Is Dying
It may seem hard to believe that cable news is dying, since it sets the news agenda daily.
That’s largely because a failing industry was given a lifeline for four years in Donald Trump.
It turned out that as long as you were talking about Trump, there were eyeballs ready to watch.
Cable news did not perform very well. RussiaGate, Afghan bounties, and many things said by Michael Avenatti were a few examples of the untrue stories which cable news peddled for four years while Trump was president.
Sharyl Attkisson counted 156 stories which were untrue about Trump during his presidency by the MSM.
There is an even bigger problem.
The format on cable news is outdated and dull.
Generally, the format goes something like this. There is a five to ten minute block where the anchor and one or more guests discuss the topic of the day.
Today, it would be heavy on Ukraine, COVID, the Supreme Court Nominee, and more.
The guests generally represent the Republican and Democratic side of the argument, and they repeat each side’s talking points.
This helps create polarization, but it’s also dull.
Everyone flocks to cable news for their news because there is no alternative.
Technology Will Lead the Way to Alternatives
There was a word which I said to Jim- “democratization”- which is key to understanding what is happening.
Democratization is the sort of term a fintech venture capitalist (VC) might use.
It means reducing the economies of scale in an industry so that it is nearly non existent.
Technology is creating that in news, and Substack.com is just one player in this ecosystem, another term a fintech VC person might use.
No one exemplifies this more than Joe Rogan.
Rogan’s podcast takes almost nothing to record and will be heard by tens of millions no matter what platform it’s played on.
That’s why there’s been a concerted effort by CNN and others to destroy his credibility, because he represents an existential threat to them.
Much of the most vibrant and cutting edge journalism is now being done independently, usually leveraging technology.
Take Bari Weiss. On her Substack, she recently released two posts which moved the news cycle.
She published Jennifer Sey’s resignation letter to Levi’s. She also published by Rupa Subramanya, who interviewed about one hundred of the truckers about what they wanted.
Weiss was also able to commission another journalist to go to the Ivy League Women’s Swimming Conference Championship.
Megyn Kelly was left for dead after being fired by NBC, but she first started a YouTube channel, then a podcast, and parlayed that success into a show on Sirius XM. The format on Sirius is much different, with longer in-depth discussions.
Both Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi have migrated to Substack; they have also each started working with Callin on an interactive podcast.
They both also appear on all sorts of other media as guests to talk about their work or the topic of the day.
Project Veritas routinely gets a million and more people checking out their undercover videos which they put on YouTube and other platforms and market through Twitter and other social media platforms.
The Fragmentation of the News
What I’m suggesting is a realignment of the news away from cable and the major newspapers and to those who best leverage the newest technologies.
It’s hard to know how that will shake out but the possibilities are endless.
One example of the new media paradigm is Wayne Dolcefino. He became a hired gun who put videos on Facebook and YouTube. The interview Megan Fox and I did with Dolcefino is below; it starts at approximately twenty-two minutes.
His investigations are primarily in Texas, however, he has ventured into other states and his model may go national soon. A Connecticut story is below.
Two recent Dolcefino investigations have resulted in criminal charges.
Ben Shapiro parlayed numerous cable news appearances into The Daily Wire.
His podcast stable includes Matt Walsh, who recently made all sorts of waves taking on trans activists.
Shapiro recently started a film production company.
Sharyl Attkisson left CBS; she now has her own show- Full Measure- where she has total creative control and primarily creates investigative stories. Outside of that, she started a Rumble channel, a website, and Twitter and other social media for other ways to communicate.
Stephen Gutowski parlayed his success at Washington Free Beacon to start his own site on 2nd amendment issues, The Reload; almost immediately, he broke news that the ATF Director nominee, David Chipman, had been accused of racism by other ATF agents.
Multiple sources have told Politico, The Washington Post, and CNN the White House plans to withdraw his nomination after failing to garner 50 votes in the Senate. Chipman was unable to secure support from even the Democratic caucus after a contentious confirmation hearing and a series of Reload stories on allegations of racism on his part coming from former ATF agents. The Reload stories led to calls from Republicans for new hearings and a whistleblower report being filed with the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
In August, a black former ATF agent told The Reload that Chipman had falsely accused him of cheating on a promotion assessment because he believed the agent had done too well on a section of the examination.
“I couldn’t believe it when it happened,” the agent said. “But when I read about his other comments, in my mind, I was like ‘that motherf*****.’ That’s what happened. He said, ‘Hey, a lot of African Americans qualified to be promoted on this certification list; they must have been cheating.’ And then he had to go and find one. I happened to be that one.”
That shows how quickly and easily a specialty cite can drive the news in this new paradigm.