Realignment (lessons from a four-month wander)
Hello friends! You likely signed up for this after reading one of my essays on Medium, my personal website, or seeing something on Twitter/X or LinkedIn. See past issues here. There are always typos. Now, to the newsletter…
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It first happened when I was in college, studying journalism. Sometime in 2004. A professor, a longtime and incredibly accomplished journalist, held up a print magazine in his hand in front of this class of 19-year-olds.
“The internet is devastating newspapers. But this…” he said, slapping the cover with a satisfying thwap, “is not going anywhere. People love this.”
Thwap. Thwap. Thwap.
Facebook had just come out. We recently finished a presidential election where blogs mattered, even if just for a tiny bit (shoutout Daily Kos). And here I was sitting in classes learning how magazines counted circulation numbers and how to design a print magazine spread using outdated software. I remember thinking, Oh my God, my teachers have no idea what is going on. The people “in charge” are about to get run over.
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That feeling came back as I watched the 2024 election returns. Don’t worry, I won’t be another voice giving you some sweeping post-mortem about what this means for America. Buy me a whiskey for that.
But it was another sign, tapping me on the shoulder signaling that I was going to become that magazine professor if I didn’t take a step back and reconsider my worldview on media, “content”, and the way we talk to each other. Some other things going on in Sean World™️ leading to this feeling of change and reinvention:
After a five-year all-out sprint, I stepped down in my role as a VP of Content at Crossbeam in June.
Thanks to AI and changing internet platform dynamics, many of the professions and passions I’ve pursued for 20 years are undergoing a massive shift.
See above: The U.S. election gave us a pretty definitive result!
I’ve been on a bit of a wander to sort this all out for the last four months. I’m still in the messy middle here. So here are the various threads I’ve been pulling on and things I’ve been batting around.
I’d love your take on any of them. Just hit reply. Even if we don’t actually know each other.
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“Traditional” News (and media?) brands are in their terminal phase. The 2024 presidential election wasn’t close. It was a beatdown. But if you were a consumer of what were historically “trustworthy” news brands, you were absolutely shocked.
But worse, you were misinformed. Paying attention to prediction markets would have been more useful. Watching the various “manosphere” podcasts would have been more useful. Hanging out in the “alternative” media ecosystem of podcasts, influencers, creators, newsletters, YouTubers — individuals — would have been more useful.
We’re nearly 20 years into social media. Especially as Gen Z and younger generations come of age, they’ll be innately attuned to the concept of an influencer and a media brand built around an individual. (See how Gen Z men especially have drastically different politics than previous generations).
I’m not here to say if this is “good.” I’m not even here to diagnose why (though I tried that once). I’m operating as if the influence these places have will continue to collapse, and that the public does not care about or trust “journalism ethics.” Because I haven’t seen a sign that shows me otherwise.
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Independent niche media brands are back. Anil Dash writes that the internet is starting to resemble 2004 again. This is a continuation of what I observed in January about the state of content, journalism, and comms.
Over the past few months I’ve had 30+ “office hours” talking to people working in these industries to swap notes about what we’re seeing. It’s clear that if you care about content, journalism, and comms you need to take your expertise and apply it to this increasingly atomized media landscape. Examples:
If you were a writer/editor for a brand covering a certain topic or issue, you should instead consider building a 1 to 5-person newsletter or YouTube channel or podcast. (It’s why I’ve had such a fun time making Sabbatical — a more in depth update there later this year!) I'm thinking of Hearing Things. Or 1440. Or boysclub.vip. Or Workweek. Or 10,000 others.
If you work in PR, you should stop building your network of “mainstream” outlets and have a rolodex of 100+ podcasts. Or 50 YouTube creators. In this election, were unstructured podcasts more influential than coverage from traditional outlets? Maybe!
If you work in marketing, you should give up having an “owned” channel and instead be present in the existing ecosystem of independent media brands. This pains me to say. But, again, scoreboard.
It’s this space that has me most energized. And it’s in this space I find myself focusing my future efforts. But there’s a problem:
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Discovery is broken. We have more voices, more independent brands. But it is nearly impossible to discover new voices. There will be some business or platform that cracks this, a Technorati of 2024 (you like that, old heads?) and it will be glorious.
Whether it’s content marketing or corporate media, the growth rate of audiences is slowing because they aren’t finding new stuff.
As a result, we’re going to see “content marketing” and corporate brands with media arms start to cut their efforts, clearing the way for smaller, independent voices mentioned above. Many of the people who are trying to become influencers will wash out because it takes too damn long to get going.
This is creating an opportunity for smaller, bootstrapped media brands with crystal clear brand values who can “afford” a slower growth rate. It’s also creating an opportunity for individuals who are patient. Ever wonder why so many popular podcasts are hosted by people who already had an audience?
However, if you work inside a larger company that has you “making content” to sell some other product — I would be worried. It’s going to take you too long to show results and you will be forced to produce material that is optimized for short-term growth (that won’t happen) versus “good” creative work. See this chart from the The State of (Dis)Content report, a survey of 545 content marketers:
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The war is over. Video won. I see this in my client work. Google, one main way to discover new writing and new writers, doesn’t work any more and is rife with fraud. Text-based social media like X is now mostly based on the algorithm.
As a writer, your option is to play the lottery, posting to the platforms and hoping something goes viral. You’ll never know why it goes viral. And those people will never follow you elsewhere. Your work is disposable grist. Any thrill you get from the attention will evaporate as fast as the attention itself.
Writing is no longer the product. The easy stuff is now written by AI. And the good, thought provoking, organizing-your-thoughts stuff, is now just the step that comes before making a video. Any good TikTok begins with writing down your thoughts and meticulously editing them down until they make a good video. I spent nearly a full work day writing, researching, and editing the script for this video, my most popular one on the Sabbatical channel. It was watched more than all of my writing was read combined. Times five. But it was only possible because of the dozen interviews and essays I’ve posted already.
This is difficult for me to accept as someone who misses blogs and RSS feeds, but like the 2024 election, I can’t ignore the scoreboard. And the more I sit with it, the more excited I am to play around more in this area.
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“Corporate” content is over-correcting to the platforms. Online audiences consume most of their online content through the prism of some algorithm, with little loyalty to any brand. The reaction from brands is to abandon any “point of view” or “voice” and do whatever works on a given channel. This is logical and good for short term commerce.
However, the kind of long-term relationship building with an audience doesn’t happen with this approach. It also smacks of inauthenticity. What works on TikTok, X, Instagram are personal voices. When those are embodied by a brand or a representative of a brand, it feels fake. And it, again, leaves “brands” open to being disrupted by individuals.
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Why I’m Wrong
The fact that keeps me up at night: do I believe these things because I want to? Or do I earnestly believe them? I’m pretty sure it’s the latter. But I’m on high alert to be wrong.
But I'm starting to wind down my little break of interrogating the state of things. I’m getting to the end of asking people what they think will happen. There’s no better way to see what’s next than to build.
If you want to follow along, I’ll send another update before the year is out. Hopefully, more “show and tell” and less pontificating.
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