The Media is Dead, Long Live the Media
No more cable news, the podcast bros now rule the court of public opinion.
If you’ve been paying attention to the candidates’ media focus in this final stretch, you’ve probably noticed a curious trend: Harris and Trump are eschewing the usual cable news circuit to sit down with online podcast hosts many people have never heard of. If the names Theo Von, Lex Friedman, or Alex Cooper are unknown to you, chances are you’re over 40 and don’t spend all your free time on social media. That’s for the best, to be clear, but it probably leaves you wondering why the campaigns are spending the precious final hours of this election season speaking to people you’ve never heard of. If you do spend all your free time on social media, I bet you’re wondering why they would spend their time doing anything else.
If you’re tuned into the young people zeitgeist, you’ll know this strategy isn’t just savvy, it’s the only realistic one in a media environment that has changed drastically over the past decade. Trust in mainstream media is plummeting, and the digital Fifth Estate has taken over. The campaigns are doing exactly what they should be: reaching young, disengaged voters through the platforms and media they actually use, ignoring traditional cable news and newspaper interviews whose audience is both older and smaller year over year. Traditional political wisdom says that part of the election cycle isn’t about making new appeals or trying to turn red votes blue, but about trying to motivate your base and making some last-ditch efforts to turn out disaffected low-propensity voters. Young people vote the least, and these are the ideologically aligned yet low-propensity voters that campaigns are desperately trying to activate through non-traditional media platforms.
Traditional media personalities are throwing a fit over it. I find it hard to muster any sympathy; the old media is dead, long live the new media.
The Age of the Podcast Bro
Over the past month, the major candidates and their VP picks have sat down with several high-profile online podcast hosts. Trump has done long-form interviews with Theo Von, Lex Fridman, and Andrew Shultz, who are all hugely popular with young men. Harris has sat down with the highly viewed NBA podcast All the Smoke, whose audience is primarily young black men (and me), and the podcast behemoth Call Her Daddy, which is the second-most popular podcast on the planet next to Joe Rogan’s and whose host, Alex Cooper, has become a cultural leader for many young women.
It might be obvious that if you’re trying to reach young people you should go on shows and podcasts that young people watch. What’s less obvious is the sheer magnitude of young people these shows reach compared to the total audience, of all demographics, of cable news and traditional media. Dana Bash’s 20-minute CNN interview with Harris and Walz garnered just over six million viewers across all digital and TV platforms. Comedian Theo Von’s hour-long talk with Trump has earned, as of today, over 13 million views on Von’s YouTube page alone.
Those views say nothing of the thousands of clips shared across social media that have likely earned millions more, which is an underappreciated part of these shows’ influence and something traditional media is desperate to emulate. I have to tune into CNN or purposefully navigate to their website to see their content, while my social media algorithms relentlessly barrage me with short clips of Theo Von’s and others’ shows, reposted by unrelated content creators that are either earnestly resharing content they like, or by content creators who are cleverly attempting to leverage the algorithm to earn more views and likes by engaging with popular content that’s sure to get a lot of digital foot traffic. Even just a 38-second clip of Harris’ recent interview with Howard Stern has almost 5 million views on TikTok. That’s about four times more than the entirety of MSNBC’s daily audience.
We Demand to be Taken Seriously
Many in the traditional media world are having trouble coming to terms with this new shift in candidates’ attention. Frankly, the major news networks are not making a convincing case as to why Presidential candidates–or even sitting Presidents themselves–should prioritize interviews with cable news or major newspapers like The New York Times, whose editorial board published a scathing statement in April of this year calling out President Biden for “avoid[ing] questions from independent journalists.” In the statement, The Times accused Biden of ignoring their many requests for a sit-down interview as well as purposefully avoiding questions from all independent news organizations during his tenure. A soon-to-follow Politico piece detailing the feud between the Biden administration and The Times stated “When describing their grievances with The Times, almost every Biden administration and campaign official used the word “entitled” to characterize the [NYT] writ large.” That entitlement is an important part of this story.
The Times said they “[have] repeatedly urged the White House to have the president sit down with The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Reuters, CNN and other major independent news organizations that millions of Americans rely on to understand their government.” While independent journalists are indeed a vital pillar of our liberal democracy, nowhere in the constitution does it name these specific news agencies as the most important ones or place some emphasis on viewership to grant them membership in the fourth pillar of democracy. There are many other independent journalists in America, and social media has given them a platform that, in many ways, is larger than the ones those outlets occupy.
Considering the public’s declining trust in mainstream media, those outlets’ shrinking audience, and their ever-increasing focus on conflict and negative storylines, it’s hard to argue that future Presidents or political candidates should feel beholden to sitting for interviews and making themselves available to outlets which reach fewer and fewer people and rely more and more on clickbait headlines to generate clicks and revenue. Good, solid investigative journalism is one thing and it’s an essential aspect of journalism that podcasters do not satisfy; I want to be clear that my problem isn’t with them. But when was the last time you truly learned something from a White House press conference? They’ve become soundbite generators instead of illuminating question-and-answer sessions.
The self-righteousness of the mainstream media is in large part why the public has such little trust in them and why young people have flocked to alternative media stars that exude authenticity instead of self-importance. The President does indeed owe the American people transparency and insight into the administration but by no means does he owe a publicly traded, for-profit company an interview that they then monetize and profit from. We would surely criticize Joe Rogan for presumptively demanding an interview with a sitting President. So why can The New York Times demand one? Is it because of their long history? Their click-through rate? Their market cap?
The influence of mainstream media is waning and without considerable changes to their tone, strategy, and business model, they will continue to be replaced by charismatic influencers with a $75 desktop microphone and a webcam.
Podcast Bros Get the Time
Enter the new media moguls: Alex Cooper, Joe Rogan, Theo Von–they’re the ones capturing the ears and minds of young people. Their interviews are real, engaging, and unfiltered. Listeners feel like they know them on a personal level, which builds a deep sense of trust that the mainstream media simply does not enjoy.
To young people, cable news anchors and political reporters come off as scripted, out-of-touch, and too much of an “insider” to give them an objective take. Juxtaposed with the unrehearsed, authentic, and genuine qualities of these podcast interviews, it’s clear why they’re starting to win out. If Trump taught us anything, it’s that voters are craving something different. Something irreverent that snubs the stuffy status quo. It doesn’t mean these podcast hosts are always genuine and authentic and some can certainly fake the funk. Logan and Jake Paul borrow more from professional wrestling personas than Larry King, but entertainment factor can always make up for other missing qualities.
This isn’t just about where young people are getting their political influence from; it’s more about who they trust. Authenticity is the currency of the digital age, and successful content creators are rich with it. Alex Cooper muses about modern life as a young woman with an unfiltered and raw quality you will not see on television. Theo Von talks openly and vulnerably about his past struggles with substance abuse and often offers earnest and deeply empathetic takes on the struggles young men face today. This makes it all the more disappointing for Dan Pfeiffer to call him “MAGA adjacent” last week in a dig at Trump’s appearance on Von’s podcast. Watch this clip and tell me he’s right. If you’re wondering why Democrats are hemorrhaging young men, out-of-touch statements like this might be part of the problem.
So what’s the takeaway here? If you’re in the business of influencing public opinion, you need to recognize where the conversation is happening and where your audience is. If your audience is young people, I assure you the answer isn’t cable news or TV ads. It’s not in the op-ed pages of legacy newspapers or interviews on 60 Minutes. It’s in the podcast studios, the YouTube channels, and the social media feeds of young people who have more contempt for the mainstream media than you have for YouTube stars.
In that sense, Harris and Trump’s focus on digital podcast interviews is the right strategy. We would ridicule a campaign for attempting to reach female voters by going to a UFC event or Hispanic voters by going to rural Maine. We should give them the same ridicule if their strategy to reach low-propensity young voters involves traditional media strategies and op-eds in The Atlantic. I can assure you, they aren’t listening.