Karol Markowicz Show: The Evolution of Blogging and Media with Ed Morrissey

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show Episode: Karol Markowicz Show: The Evolution of Blogging and Media with Ed Morrissey
Release Date: April 9, 2025
Host: Carol Markowitz
Guest: Ed Morrissey, Managing Editor of Hot Air and Author of Going Red

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Introduction

In this engaging episode of The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show, host Carol Markowitz delves into the transformative journey of blogging and media alongside Ed Morrissey, the managing editor of Hot Air and author of Going Red. Their conversation navigates through the early days of blogging, its evolution into a professional medium, and the challenges faced in the rapidly changing digital landscape.

Ed Morrissey's Journey in Media

Ed Morrissey begins by reflecting on his longstanding relationship with the blogging world. "I've been at Hot Air now, it'd be 17 years," he shares (03:35). Morrissey reminisces about the inception of his writing career, initially aspiring to be a short story writer and authoring three novels that never saw publication. This led him to blogging as a disciplined writing practice while managing a call center job.

The Birth and Growth of Blogging

Carol prompts Morrissey to discuss his start in blogging, to which he responds, "Late 2003" when he launched his blog, Captain's Quarters (05:19). Morrissey describes the blog's evolution from a personal writing outlet to a significant political commentary platform. By 2008, his commitment to blogging led him to join Hot Air, necessitating the shutdown of Captain's Quarters to redirect traffic.

Professionalization of Blogging

A notable shift in the podcast is Morrissey's observation on the professionalization of blogging. "Substack is kind of what the old blogosphere was like. But it got professional," he notes (07:18). He emphasizes that as bloggers honed their craft, the medium matured, attracting mainstream media attention and leading to platforms becoming more structured and competitive.

Challenges in Maintaining Relevance

Morrissey candidly discusses the difficulties in sustaining a blogging platform over time. "From time to time, we fall back a little bit... But we could jump on emerging stories with some basis of already acquired knowledge and comment on it intelligently immediately," he explains (09:41). The balance between timely news coverage and in-depth analysis presents ongoing challenges. Morrissey admits that while think pieces are valuable, they must not overshadow the necessity of staying current with breaking news to retain audience engagement.

The Decline of Interpersonal Connections in Blogging

Highlighting the nostalgia for the early blogging days, Morrissey laments the loss of direct interactions. "Back in those days,... the blog post of that era and what Hot Air does... If somebody tweets at you... but I don't click over often," he observes (26:30). The shift towards more impersonal interactions on platforms like Twitter has diminished the organic community engagement that characterized the early blogosphere.

Advising the Next Generation of Bloggers

When asked about advice for aspiring writers and bloggers, Morrissey stresses the importance of craftsmanship and understanding one's audience. "You have to be serious about it. You have to know what your market is... You have to engage the players so that they'll engage you back," he advises (28:33). He underscores the need for strategic marketing and genuine engagement in building a successful blogging career.

Handling Mistakes and Maintaining Integrity

Morrissey opens up about his experiences with making errors in his work, emphasizing accountability. "I worry about being wrong... I wrote back and I, you know, I was abjectly apologizing for it," he confesses (18:11). His transparency in addressing mistakes fosters trust and highlights the importance of integrity in media.

Personal Reflections and Life Lessons

Towards the end of the episode, Morrissey offers personal insights on self-awareness and interpersonal relationships. "You have to be true to yourself... by being truly good to others are you going to improve your life," he muses (33:56). These reflections provide a philosophical underpinning to his professional journey, advocating for authenticity and empathy in both personal and professional spheres.

Conclusion

The episode concludes with Morrissey's heartfelt acknowledgment of the blogging community and its profound impact on his life. "The blogging thing has been such a huge blessing for me. Can't imagine being without the experiences of the last 21 years," he expresses (26:08). Carol Markowitz wraps up by celebrating Morrissey's contributions to media and encouraging listeners to explore his work on HotAir.com.

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Notable Quotes

• Ed Morrissey (03:35): "I've been at Hot Air now, it'd be 17 years."
• Ed Morrissey (07:18): "Substack is kind of what the old blogosphere was like. But it got professional."
• Ed Morrissey (09:41): "We could jump on emerging stories with some basis of already acquired knowledge and comment on it intelligently immediately."
• Ed Morrissey (26:30): "Back in those days,... If somebody tweets at you... but I don't click over often."
• Ed Morrissey (28:33): "You have to be serious about it. You have to know what your market is... You have to engage the players so that they'll engage you back."
• Ed Morrissey (18:11): "I worry about being wrong... I was abjectly apologizing for it."
• Ed Morrissey (33:56): "You have to be true to yourself... by being truly good to others are you going to improve your life."
• Ed Morrissey (26:08): "The blogging thing has been such a huge blessing for me. Can't imagine being without the experiences of the last 21 years."

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Timestamp Reference Guide

• 03:35
• 07:18
• 09:41
• 26:30
• 28:33
• 18:11
• 33:56
• 26:08

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This comprehensive summary encapsulates the essence of the conversation between Carol Markowitz and Ed Morrissey, highlighting the evolution of blogging, the professional challenges faced, and the personal philosophies that drive Morrissey's approach to media and life.

Transcript

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[Carol Markowitz]

Hi, and welcome back to the Carol Markowitz show on iheartradio. My guest today is Ed Morrissey. He is the managing editor of Hot Air and the author of Going Red. Hi, Ed. So, so nice to have you on Carol.

[Ed Morrissey]

It's great to talk to you again.

[Carol Markowitz]

We've known each other a million years. Like, really a million in Internet. In the Internet world, way before there was a Twitter or an X, we got to know each other in the blog world. And there's been one or two changes since then. Would you say that couple.

[Ed Morrissey]

There have been a few changes over the years, yeah. You know, but it's, you know, it's been. It's been one heck of a ride, actually. You know, I wouldn't have traded it for anything else. This is. It's been a great experience.

[Carol Markowitz]

You've always been very positive, and I always enjoyed that about you. You've been in Hot Air how long now?

[Ed Morrissey]

Well, I've been at Hot Air now, it'd be 17 years.

[Carol Markowitz]

And in Salem, 17 years in Internet land is like 100 years.

[Ed Morrissey]

I'm ancient, Carol. I have reached the old man shaking fist at cloud stage of my life, and I am fully willing to come on here and say, get off my damn lawn and turn down your radios and.

[Carol Markowitz]

But you don't say that very often. I feel like, again, I think I see you as very, like, positive, optimistic, just, you know, a friend to all. Would that be accurate?

[Ed Morrissey]

I certainly hope so. That would be a lovely way to actually have come across in life so that it's encouraging. So, yes. I mean, that's my aim. I don't know how well I pull that off, but yeah.

[Carol Markowitz]

So how did you get your start in writing or in media?

[Ed Morrissey]

Well, I've always wanted to do writing, and it's just a question of what kind of writing that you want to do. Right. And so I thought I'd be a short story guy, and that didn't work out. Number of. A number of rejections from all of the leading magazines from. From that era told me that that wasn't going to be my path. And then I was trying to write novels and I wrote three of them. And, you know, Garth Brooks has a song says, thank God for unanswered prayers.

[Carol Markowitz]

Yeah.

[Ed Morrissey]

I am so happy that none of those three are actually out where anybod. Because they weren't good, you know, and then I took up blogging. Honestly, initially, the thought was, I need to be more disciplined about writing every day. You know, I was a call center manager at the time. I was actually not unhappy with that career, but I'd always wanted to write. And I thought, at some point, I want to publish a book. And I thought, well, the way to do that is to, you know, get in the habit of writing every day. And then blogging came along. I started doing that.

[Carol Markowitz]

And what year did you start?

[Ed Morrissey]

Late 2003.

[Carol Markowitz]

And what was your. Your blog was called? Captain.

[Ed Morrissey]

Captain's Quarters.

[Carol Markowitz]

Captain's Quarters. Right.

[Ed Morrissey]

Yep. And it was. It was. It was an ongoing thing from 2003 to 2008 when I came aboard Hot Air, you know, they required me to shut down the old blog and redirect the traffic to Hot Air, but it's still out there. I think right now there's some difficulty in accessing the archives, but I do pay to have the archives maintain.

[Carol Markowitz]

Interesting. Wow. So I don't have. My blog was called Alarming News. I don't have it anymore. I let my domain name lap. Somebody snapped up that domain name, and I don't have archives of any of it. And I feel mixed about that because I would like to go back sometimes and look at what I maybe wrote in the past. On the other hand, I find a lot of just the way I used to speak very embarrassing. Or when I see old Facebook, you know, status messages from 15 years ago, I'm like, oh, God, that was awful. I talk like that.

[Ed Morrissey]

I don't understand why you feel that way. Because I. I loved Alarming News, and I thought you did a great job there. But.

[Carol Markowitz]

No, but you know that when you. When you read the past, you. The way. Like just the way I would turn a phrase or. Or.

[Ed Morrissey]

Yes.

[Carol Markowitz]

I don't know. Very.

[Ed Morrissey]

Yeah, I go through the same thing looking at my old stuff, too. But. But, I mean, Alarming News was great. I loved Alarming News.

[Carol Markowitz]

Thank you.

[Ed Morrissey]

And it was great domain name, which is the reason why it got snapped up. I don't think anybody's gonna snap up captain'blog.com anytime.

[Carol Markowitz]

But, you know, you never know.

[Ed Morrissey]

I use it. I use it for some email purposes, too. Personal email purposes. So I just keep the. I keep the site running, and I think I need to alert them that it's not coming up. You know, I. It was like a few months ago, I realized that there were some issues with it.

[Carol Markowitz]

Yeah.

[Ed Morrissey]

It's a high priority for me that I still haven't filed a. Right.

[Carol Markowitz]

Of course. Yeah.

[Ed Morrissey]

But eventually I will, because I do like to go back and look at it from time to time.

[Carol Markowitz]

So what do you see as, like, the major change from those days?

[Ed Morrissey]

Well, I think, you know, it's more professional. Right. And I think Substack has a little bit of what the blogosphere used to do.

[Carol Markowitz]

Yes.

[Ed Morrissey]

Right. Substack is kind of what the old blogosphere was like. But it got professional. And the reason why is because we all got better at what we do. You got professional, I got professional. And it's because we. We learned. And, you know, those of us who survived that era.

[Carol Markowitz]

Exactly.

[Ed Morrissey]

So because, you know, we. We were able to improve ourselves over time and remain dedicated to it. A lot of people just had lives, right? They were great bloggers, but they just had lives.

[Carol Markowitz]

Yeah, they had day jobs, no lives. That was. I remember that era of when bloggers started going professional and they just. They, like the major, you know, what we called the mainstream news outlets started msm, started hiring bloggers, and that was the end of it, really. And it was. For me, it was. Was actually WNYC Public Radio in New York. They needed, like, a token conservative, and they hired me, and the Post hired me from there, and it was, you know, kind of the end of that for me. But, yeah, it was. The people that were really good got snapped up. I'm not saying I was really good. I'm just saying that's kind of how it went. No, I'll say you were really good.

[Ed Morrissey]

Because you were really good.

[Carol Markowitz]

Thank you. But Hot Air has been so instrumental for so long, and so in the mix of the conversation, is that hard to maintain? Just, Just the, The sheer length of time that you guys have been around is. Is impressive.

[Ed Morrissey]

Well, thank you. First off, I appreciate that. It's. It's, you know, it's. It takes an effort. Right. And from time to time, we fall back a little bit. From time to time, we catch up a little bit. And I think that, you know, we were bought up by. Again, we were brought up by Salem. It. 15 years ago. Just a little over 15 years ago. And which is great. I love Salem. I. Salem. Prior to that on local radio. And then now I work for Salem. And I'm very happy about that. And they've challenged us from time to time. And they said, you know, one of the things that made Hot air. So I'm trying to think of the word that they. They use. But basically what. What. What made us was the fact that we were able to react fast to it.

[Carol Markowitz]

Right, Right. I was gonna say timely, but that wasn't quite the timely. I knew what you were looking for.

[Ed Morrissey]

Yeah, yeah. That we could jump on emerging stories with some basis of already acquired knowledge and comment on it intelligently immediately.

[Carol Markowitz]

Right.

[Ed Morrissey]

Sometimes we forget that and we get a little bit too lost in our think pieces.

[Carol Markowitz]

Sure. Yeah. Right. No, but there is something about that immediacy that we've lost. I mean, we guess we have it on X now, but then it's not quite the same as the blog post of that era and what Hot Air does. It's like I'll see something that I want to write about, I'll write it, and then four days later it comes out, you know, in some, some outlets that's, that's a lag, you know, that's not the immediacy of getting it up on your site and having people react right away.

[Ed Morrissey]

Exactly. And sometimes we have to, sometimes internally we have to remind ourselves of that, is that the think pieces are great, but stuff that could run today, tomorrow or that or, you know, later in the week generally aren't what is driving eyeballs to the site. Right. And so, I mean, you have to have a mix because I think that those think pieces are incredibly important so that we can to a certain extent philosophize about what our approach is going to be when breaking news stories actually come up. We've kind of firmed up in our minds that you know how we're going to approach things. Yeah, but you still have to be on top of the news cycle and that's the trick. You know, it's hard to stay on top of the news cycle, especially lately.

[Carol Markowitz]

Well, yes, that's like a mile a minute.

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[Carol Markowitz]

What do you consider your beat?

[Ed Morrissey]

You know, for me, I consider myself a generalist, right? I try to write about lots of different things because lots of different things interest me. But I think, you know, at hod era, I mean, I think the beat is really the breaking news cycle, right? And that's again, we have to kind of attune ourselves to that. But I like to write about the economy. I like to write about, you know, policy. Policy is really what matters most to me. I, I, I'm not big on the personality driven type of stuff in politics. I'm more driven by policy and philosophy, you know, ideology, whatever you want to call it. And then, you know, I do other things to amuse myself. I used to write quite a few more film reviews than I have lately just because I just haven't had time to go out to the movie theaters.

[Carol Markowitz]

Not because films are bad now.

[Ed Morrissey]

Well, it's kind of fun to write reviews for bad films, I have to admit this.

[Carol Markowitz]

But not the watching of the bad film. No, it's the watching of the bad film. My movie watching has like plummeted to zero. Just because every movie I watch is so bad. And then I and it's always like the critically acclaimed movies that I watch and they're just terrible and I can't do it anymore.

[Ed Morrissey]

Don't even get me started on the Shape of Water. It was so bad when I got back to my house and wrote the review, which I did the night I watched that movie.

[Carol Markowitz]

Were you like giggling as you wrote it?

[Ed Morrissey]

I was more grinding my teeth as I wrote it. And I wrote in there, this is so bad. I predict it's going to win a lot of awards this upcoming award season. Of course, it won best Oscar, Best picture Oscar. And I actually Pulled that forward after it won. Just to say, I told you so. But it's kind of fun to. It's kind of fun to be that critical, to feel the release of being that critical. Sometimes when you really love a movie, you're kind of defending it to a certain extent.

[Carol Markowitz]

Yeah.

[Ed Morrissey]

So, I mean, that's a trap. I mean, you have to recognize that if you're going to write criticism, you have to recognize that that's a trap. You have to be fair. Right, Right. You can't just, you know, I love this movie. The end on stuff you don't like. And this. Oh, you know, just skip the fact that this film I really love doesn't have an Act 2 and half of it, Act 3, is missing as well.

[Carol Markowitz]

You're like, I overlooked it. Why can't you. Yeah. What do you worry about?

[Ed Morrissey]

You know, I worry about being wrong. You know, to me, it's. I mean, everybody's wrong. Everybody makes mistakes. I'm not so much worried about making a factual mistake. Although that's always embarrassing when you have to go. Correction. I'll tell you, what I did just recently was kind of fun. I had written something about what Tara Palmeri wrote. She had interviewed Michael LaRosa, who was a Biden aide, and he admitted in a public forum while she was interviewing that they were kind of gaslighting people about Biden.

[Carol Markowitz]

Right.

[Ed Morrissey]

And she had written this thing at Puck saying, wow, this is kind of a big deal. Right? And I wrote this thing. I said, well, she didn't really get the context right. That wasn't just about 2024 where they're gaslighting it and go all the way back to 2019 and this and that and the other thing. She ends up DMing me on Twitter and asked, just so that she. She asked if I could include her YouTube thing that went with it. I was like, oh, yeah, sure. And we end up. She ended up. I ended up interviewing her and Hugh Hewitt a few days later. And it was great. But I realized while I was adding the YouTube that I had misspelled her name throughout the entire post as Palmieri. Right. So I said, by the way, I apologize. I've misspelled your name all the way through this. And she said, did you. Jennifer Palmieri. This all. Technically, this is sort of off the record, but we discussed it on air, so I'm assuming she's fine with this.

[Carol Markowitz]

Yeah, yeah, sure.

[Ed Morrissey]

Because it was all in good humor. And I said, yes. And, you know, I tweeted back, yes. And then Hank's Head in shame, you know, in parentheses.

[Carol Markowitz]

Right. So you're such a good guy. Like, I just. You're too good for all of this, honestly.

[Ed Morrissey]

You know, it's those kind of human moments that sort of make it fun, you know, and then you have the people who are pills who you just decide that I'm just not gonna, I'm just not gonna engage people that, that are miserable. And, And I don't want to, I don't want to talk about those examples because it's. Yes, you know, that person should be. Those people should be on this podcast if we're going to have that conversation. So fair. I'll just say that it happens. It happens, and you just move on. Yeah.

[Carol Markowitz]

So have you been wrong a lot in your career?

[Ed Morrissey]

Well, I don't know about a lot. I hope not a lot.

[Carol Markowitz]

Right.

[Ed Morrissey]

I mean, I've been wrong. I mean, I've gotten some things wrong where I've had to go back. I guess the biggest example was the polling analysis in 2012, which enraged when Obama ended up winning that year. Our readership was furious with us and a lot of them left and didn't come back. Yeah, well. And I said we blew it. We were doing that whole unskew the polls thing.

[Carol Markowitz]

Sure.

[Ed Morrissey]

And it turned out that the polls really didn't need to be unskewed.

[Carol Markowitz]

But sometimes they do. You're sort of like, it's a tough spot to find yourself sometimes. The polls really are skewed.

[Ed Morrissey]

Well. And they, they have been right. They, they, they were before, they've been since. But I've learned not to assert data that I don't actually have. And, you know, we were re manipulating the data, assuming that had been manipulated in the first place, and we were just flat out wrong.

[Carol Markowitz]

Right.

[Ed Morrissey]

So I wrote at least two, you know, apologies to readers for that, and I end up writing a book about that sort of tangentially. Right. And you know, that was an enjoyable experience too. But yeah, that would be the. One of the bigger things that I've gotten wrong. And I mean, I spent months getting that wrong, so, you know, I should own it since I spent months getting it wrong. I put a lot of hard work into getting that wrong.

[Carol Markowitz]

Very fair, though. I mean, again, I think that so long ago and I, you know, there's been again, opportunities for the polls to be unskewed since then.

[Ed Morrissey]

But.

[Carol Markowitz]

But it's very noble of you to take that blame responsibility, however you want to say it.

[Ed Morrissey]

I don't know how noble it is when it's really patently Obvious to everybody and you're just owning up.

[Carol Markowitz]

It's too long ago. You can like let people forget it and nobody will ever, you know.

[Ed Morrissey]

Well, yeah, yeah, I guess. I, yeah, I mean, but I mean, you asked and so that's a pretty good example of it. I've gotten factually things factually incorrect that on a couple of occasions I've negated the entire point of a post that I wrote. At which point you just put, you know, update, I got this wrong. Everything below here is.

[Carol Markowitz]

The beauty of blogging versus publishing in a newspaper. Right there though.

[Ed Morrissey]

Right, right. You know, and honestly, I've gotten columns early on. I think I got one really wrong for the New York sun. And I actually just quit writing the column. I was so embarrassed by it.

[Carol Markowitz]

Really.

[Ed Morrissey]

And this is early in my blogging career. Yeah, they didn't ask me to. They were kind of unhappy with the fact that I'd gotten something pretty significantly wrong. It colored the conclusion of the whole point of my column. And I wrote back and I, you know, I was abjectly apology, you know, abjectly apologizing for it. And they were nice about it. This is not the New York Sun's issue, but I was so embarrassed by it that it just, I just decided I didn't want to write a column for a while and later on I picked up, I picked up columns down the road.

[Carol Markowitz]

You're too good. What advice would you give your 15 year old self? 16 year old self?

[Ed Morrissey]

Oh my goodness. You know, I have a joke answer for that, which is to say, which is to say either be a left handed relief pitcher or a place kicker for football because you can, you can, you can spend 20 years doing that and your uniform will never get dirty.

[Carol Markowitz]

But I feel like you like getting your uniform dirty kind of.

[Ed Morrissey]

I do kind of. Even back in those days, I kind of like getting the uniform dirty, you know? You know, and then the obvious answer is finish college, which I didn't do.

[Carol Markowitz]

Wow.

[Ed Morrissey]

I don't think I would have listened to that though, because that was the same advice that my dad was giving me constantly during that same period. I was listening to him. And I've written about that a couple times, I think at Hot Air. And I think that if I was to seriously address this question, what I would say is one, connect to your faith because God is going to be very important to you and the sooner you connect to that, the better off you're going to be. And the second thing would be, I would say don't. And this is something I'VE told people there's two things to remember in life. It's never as bad as it seems, and it's never as good as it seems. And, you know, when you're 16 years old, you're going to spend the next 10 years going through really difficult highs and lows, and you look back and you go, why was I, you know, why was I despairing over that situation sort of thing right in the moment?

[Carol Markowitz]

It's everything.

[Ed Morrissey]

It's everything. And that's part of just growing up, too. You just learn that. And I don't think. I don't think you can hear that as advice. And sure, have anybody actually pay attention to it, even if it's coming from your older self. But, I mean, those are the things I think that I would actually say to myself back then. Appreciate your hair while you've got it.

[Carol Markowitz]

Or youth in general, right?

[Ed Morrissey]

It's like, yeah, youth in general. Yeah.

[Carol Markowitz]

What would have been your, like, plan B had this not worked out? Had you started writing and it didn't happen, I think it would have just.

[Ed Morrissey]

Stayed with the call center job. I actually liked the company I was working for.

[Carol Markowitz]

You're so creative. Like, I feel like, I guess, I imagine you would have done something else creative.

[Ed Morrissey]

Well, I mean, I. I guess I was thinking in terms of career, but yeah, you know, if the blogging thing hadn't worked out, you know, I'm. I would never have gotten a chance to write the book I did. Maybe I would have improved myself to the point where I could actually write a book that would actually get published, but I don't know that that's the case. I think that if the blogging thing hadn't worked out, it might have been sort of a. Well, you know, the writing thing is not going to work out. I need to focus on the, you know, on the blessings that I have in my life right now and just go forward with that. So. But I mean, it's been a huge blessing. The blogging thing has been such a huge blessing for me.

[Carol Markowitz]

Yeah.

[Ed Morrissey]

Can't imagine being without the experiences of the last 21 years.

[Carol Markowitz]

Right. Do you ever think about, like, the people getting into writing now or like trying to do what we do well without the blogging world? I don't know what to suggest to them a lot of the time. I mean, I say be on X, you know, engage, be interesting, but the blogging world really did provide the path in a way that it just doesn't exist anymore.

[Ed Morrissey]

Well, I think it's a ground floor situation. It's an emergency emerging industry. I mean, we didn't think about this all that much in that period of time.

[Carol Markowitz]

We were thinking about how do we make this profitable, but we weren't thinking like, how do we become professional writers? At least I wasn't.

[Ed Morrissey]

Right. Exactly. And you know, honestly, I thought the path would be more to radio, which I still do, but I don't do it on a regular basis. Right.

[Carol Markowitz]

I guess I came late to all this. The starting podcasts and. Well, I don't know. Ace of Spades and I had a podcast in 2005. 2005. So 20 years ago. Hoist the Black Flag. But you know, it was an Internet radio show.

[Ed Morrissey]

Well, and I had one back in 2007 that. And we've been doing it ever since at Hot Air. Right. But I, I think that the problem is, is that it became an industry and so the barrier to entry is higher than it was when you and I were doing this 21 years.

[Carol Markowitz]

Definitely. Yeah.

[Ed Morrissey]

And, and that's the reason why I mentioned Substack. I think Substack is a really good platform. It's kind of like what Blogger was before Google bought it. Right. Yeah, it's a, it's a low investment, entry level way to establish your voice and then you can compete in the marketplace of ideas against places like Hot Air and Red State and all the other, all the other different platforms out there. You have to know how to market. And that was something I think that, you know, people would ask me, you know, come out and talk about how, how people get started in blogging. This, you know, this would be like an AFP type of thing. You know, go to AFP conventions or whatever you call them. And I'd say you have to be serious about it. You have to know what your market is. You have to know who the players are. You have to engage the players so that they'll engage you back. And you can't just send out, you know, mass emails to everybody in creation because nobody reads those things. You have to engage people. I always felt like I was delivering a sort of a. The mechanics, multi level marketing, talking about the actual writing.

[Carol Markowitz]

Right.

[Ed Morrissey]

Because you have to assume the writing. The idea is how do you make your writing work?

[Carol Markowitz]

Yeah.

[Ed Morrissey]

I think that that's still possible. Substack makes it more possible than it was. But yeah, it's hard to crack now. It's so, it's so professionalized now that, that it's. It's tougher to crack. I don't envy the people who are trying to come into this. So then you start looking at what's going to be the next thing.

[Vanta Representative]

Thing.

[Ed Morrissey]

And for a while it was X. For a while it was TikTok. It was Facebook for a while, until Facebook cracked down on the speech stuff, and now they've let up on that. But I don't think people are going to trust Facebook as a platform anymore to do that type of work. So I don't know. I don't know what follows it.

[Carol Markowitz]

It's so tough. You know, I remember back then, somebody would leave a comment on my blog, you know, on a post I wrote, and I would go look at their blog and look at what they're writing, and that's how, you know, that's how you found new writers. You don't really have that anymore. I mean, I guess now if somebody, like, tweets at you or whatever it's called now, but. And maybe says something interesting, then you go to their page and you look at it. But even that, I. I click over a lot less often.

[Ed Morrissey]

Yeah, I don't think so. I think I just look at their. At their. At their Twitter stream. Right. I don't know that I click over sometimes. I click.

[Carol Markowitz]

No, no, I mean their Twitter stream. I don't even click over to their Twitter stream anymore. Like, I think maybe like once in a while, if the. If the. If their tweet at me really grabs me, then okay, I'll go look at their profile page. But, you know, rare.

[Ed Morrissey]

Yeah, I think you're right. I think it's. It's not the same type of thing.

[Carol Markowitz]

Yeah.

[Ed Morrissey]

Because I think back in those days, again, less of an industry, more as a collegial collection of hobbyists.

[Carol Markowitz]

Yeah, that's what we were.

[Ed Morrissey]

Yeah.

[Carol Markowitz]

Getting together at like CPAC.

[Ed Morrissey]

And either CPAC or, you know, the sidelines of anything, really.

[Carol Markowitz]

The RNC convention in New York 2004 was a big one.

[Ed Morrissey]

That was awesome.

[Carol Markowitz]

Yeah. Well, I miss seeing you around. You know, I think we need to get that. These going again, where we run into each other at different events. And I've loved the opportunity to talk to you today because, you know, I think you're just fantastic. We're going to take a quick break and be right back on the Carol Markowitz Show.

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[Ed Morrissey]

How they can improve their lives. I feel very, I don't feel qualified to tell them, but I will, I will say this, which is that you have to be true to yourself. And by that I don't mean that you have to be selfish, but I think you have to know who you are in order to be truly good to others. And I think only by being truly good to others are you going to improve your life because the more you're focused on yourself, the worse your life is going to get over the long period of time. So know yourself, connect with people on the knowledge of who you are. And I think that improves everything.

[Carol Markowitz]

I love it. He is Ed Morrissey. Check him out on hotair.com you are just fantastic. So nice to see you.

[Ed Morrissey]

Thank you, Carol. Really appreciate it.

[Carol Markowitz]

Thanks so much for joining us on the Carol Markowitz Show. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

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[Carol Markowitz]

Does this podcast make you happy? Of course it does. That's why you're here. But it only comes out once a week for happiness, every night. You need Adam and Eve. Yes. I'm talking about sex toys. It's cool. It's cool. You have earbuds in right? Adam and Eve, America's most trusted source for adult products, has been making people very happy for over 50 years with thousands of toys for both men and women. Just go to AdamAndEve.com now and enter code IHEART for 50% off. Almost any one item, plus free discreet shipping. Shipping. That's AdamAndEve.com, code IHEART for 50% OFF.

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