Chris Cillizza: "Most Of Those People Don't Pay"

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Gist

Episode: Chris Cillizza: "Most Of Those People Don't Pay"
Date: July 4, 2026
Host: Mike Pesca
Guest: Chris Cillizza

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Episode Overview

This episode features a wide-ranging, candid conversation between Mike Pesca and journalist Chris Cillizza, focusing largely on the challenges and realities of independent media, the evolving landscape of journalism, content creation, and monetization models. Both reflect on their careers—Pesca stepping away from The Gist after 12+ years and 3,600+ episodes, and Cillizza building his own path post-mainstream media. The pair trade insights on the obstacles of running independent platforms, the difficulties of building an audience without legacy media backing, the pressures of the subscription vs advertising models, and the shifting cultural expectations for “independent” journalists.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Transitions in Media Careers and Consumption

• Pesca’s Announcement: Pesca reflects on stepping back from hosting The Gist and anticipates moving into a new executive role while wrestling with how his relationship to media will change (13:14).
• Cillizza’s Journey: Cillizza discusses his path from the Washington Post to CNN to independent writing, emphasizing how his voracious media diet has adapted only incrementally with shifts to email, Twitter, and more video (6:31).
  • Quote: “I have spent all those years curating my Twitter feed … I couldn’t replace that.” (9:00, Cillizza)

2. The Reality of Independent Content Creation

• Administrative Headaches: Pesca gets granular about the endless, often surprising, administrative burdens of running an independent shop—from labor law compliance to music licensing algorithms (19:17–23:33).

  • Memorable Moment: His saga with music takedown notices, despite licensing "free" theme music, underscores how “everything you didn’t get into this for” ends up swallowing time and energy (23:33, Cillizza).

• Marketing Overshadowing Content: The rise of social video and clip-driven distribution means content increasingly serves marketing, not the other way around.

  • Pesca: “The show became in service of these promotional materials.” (25:02)
  • Cillizza: “It is solely a vehicle to cut social media clips.” (25:02)

3. The Video Imperative and Podcasting's Evolution

• Reluctance Around Video: Both discuss how even audio-first podcasts face pressure to “go video” to grow or sustain audiences. Pesca and Cillizza note the paradox of creators and subscribers claiming to hate video, while the stats show it works.

  • Quote: “Substacks that lean into video grow faster … even if people say they hate video.” (29:57, Cillizza)

• Audience Behavior: Most “video podcast” consumption is actually passive—people play videos in the background while doing other activities (27:56, Cillizza).

4. The Gatekeeper Debate & Loss of Media Structure

• Media’s Algorithmic Age vs. Monoculture: Pesca reminisces about the era when networks or newspapers, as “gatekeepers,” could launch new stars and set broad agendas, for better or worse. Now, new independent talent faces a near-impossible challenge without an existing brand or platform (31:18–36:08).

  • Quote: “What these media organizations controlled was real estate… and if our leading is someone you know, we could go out [and] find… a stand up comedian… maybe Mork & Mindy shows up.” (31:18, Pesca)

• Barriers to Entry: Cillizza bluntly observes that building a viable independent outlet is immensely harder for those without name recognition, even if they have reporting chops (35:54–38:00).

5. Monetization: Subscription vs. Advertising

• Challenges of the Subscriber Model: Both highlight that the people most attracted to heterodox, challenging content rarely pay for it. The majority of paying subscribers in the current ecosystem want regular confirmation of their worldviews (53:43–55:00).

  • Cillizza: “Even if… there are a lot of people who genuinely are willing to read… things that question their priors… most of those people don’t pay.” (53:43)

• Ads as an Alternative: Despite the historical backlash against advertising (seen as tainting journalistic independence), both now regard sponsorships as vital, and in some ways less compromising than “emotional” subscriber fundraising (57:36–60:27).

  • Cillizza: “I've become more bullish on advertising because… I have no ties [beyond mentioning the sponsor]… I think that's better. I'm less beholden in some ways.” (57:36)

• Audience Reaction to Monetization: Both recount subscriber backlash to ads for gambling (Kalshee, Polymarket), seeing this as a sign people now conflate their identity or values with who they support—not just what they consume (61:12–62:09, Pesca).

6. Audience Capture, Identity, and News Consumption

• Audience as Ideological Reinforcement: The big recurring theme is that the most financially sustainable audiences are those that want their priors confirmed, not questioned.

  • Quote: “There's a real gap between who we want to be… and who we actually are [as news consumers].” (51:31, Cillizza)

• Loss of Journalistic Ethos: Pesca laments the erosion of the old professional ethos—seeking “the best attainable version of the truth”—in favor of partisanship and sensationalism, both audience-driven and reinforced by the new economic models (43:41–44:14).

• Quote: “The reason people are drawn to [Heather Cox Richardson] is because it's a lefty view. Turns out that what happened in 1874 exactly confirms my point priority and that Donald Trump is bad.” (53:43, Cillizza)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Burnout & Administrative Exhaustion
  “The absolute hardest thing... You're doing everything yourself... There is all these compliance letters... with everything else I had to do.”
  —Mike Pesca (19:17)

• On Audience Willingness to Pay
  “Even if there are... a lot of people who... are willing to read... things that question their priors... most of those people don’t pay.”
  —Chris Cillizza (53:43)

• On What’s Lost in the Subscription Model
  “The subscriber model for things like... most Patreons in general, they don't purport to bring you the whole world... You're not telling yourself that this aligns with who I am. These are people who I... want to support.”
  —Mike Pesca (56:46)

• On the Impossible Grind of Independence
  “It is not a... You plant a money tree in the backyard and you just go pick off of it whenever you want... I have like six revenue streams from different places because no one of them is vast.”
  —Chris Cillizza (38:00)

• On Video’s Reluctant Triumph
  “Substacks that lean into video grow faster and grow faster among paid subscribers. Now what's interesting is when I do more video... people will be like, I hate video, it's garbage. I want to read things... The stats are the stats.”
  —Chris Cillizza (29:57)

• On Journalism and Truth
  “There was an ethos of the profession which generally said what we're in the business of is trying to find the best attainable version of the truth.”
  —Mike Pesca (43:55)

Timestamp Highlights

• [09:00] Cillizza on the irreplaceable value of his curated Twitter feed
• [19:17] Pesca details behind-the-scenes tax and compliance headaches
• [25:02] Pesca and Cillizza dissect the shift from podcasts to social video as main product
• [31:18] Pesca on the vanished power of old-school media gatekeepers
• [38:00] Cillizza on the myth of indie journalism as a "money tree"
• [53:43] Cillizza's key observation: “Most of those people don’t pay”
• [57:36] Cillizza’s argument for renewed advertising in independent media
• [63:16] Cillizza on the weird expectations of independent journalists versus “monks”

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Conclusion & Tone

The episode is brisk, witty, self-aware, and at times a little mournful about the state of independent journalism. Both Pesca and Cillizza are frank about the pitfalls, barriers, and frustrations faced by the would-be mavericks of today’s media ecosystem. Despite good humor and mutual respect, neither offers easy answers, and both agree that while the democratization of content production has real upsides, it also makes sustainability and impact ever more elusive for anyone not already an established “brand.” The show ends with gratitude, mutual admiration, and a sense that the next media chapter—for both—is uncertain, but necessary.

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This summary covers the substantive discussion. Promotional sections and sponsor messages are omitted.

Transcript

[Chris Cillizza]

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[Mike Pesca]

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[Mike Pesca]

and benefits may vary. See Shell us more Dash protection for. Hello, it's Saturday. It's the Saturday show and on Thursday I talked to Chris Cilliza during a Substack Live and we talked about the challenges of being an independent creator and how the media has changed and what I was trying to do to focus more on the content of what I was doing on ho, if you will. The gist of what I was trying to say. I hope you enjoy the conversation. Substack, like the rest of it, will be being paused. So this is the last Substack Live, this last Saturday show. We're going to play for a while, but again, hope you enjoy it. The 2026 primaries are, you may have heard all around us and you could trade the biggest political races on Kalshee. On Kalsi, you could trade major primaries, election outcomes and the biggest political storylines as they happen. I'll tell you about one election I'm looking at and trading or thinking of trading on Cal. She and I'll get you inside my mindset. So let's look at Maine Senate, right? Platner Collins. Back in May, Kalshee had Graham Platner at 71% and Susan Collins at 29%. So if you put money on Susan Collins, invested in her on the platform, you'd get more than three times your return. Now it's at Platner 60, Collins 40. Now here's the thing. Couple things about this. You let's say you think that Collins won't win, but you think more oppo research is coming out on Platner and he's going to take a hit. But eventually, just the politics of Maine will win out, which is that it's a much more Democratic state. Now, Kalshee isn't like a bet. It's like a stock market investment. So if the Collins stock goes from, let us consider it a stock, if that commodity goes from a 40% chance of winning to a 70% chance of winning, even if she doesn't win, if you cash out at 70, you still have made a good deal of profit on your investment. And here's the other thing about calcium, what it allows you to do with political races. Sometimes I invest on or predict these races as a hedge against disappointment. So if I want one candidate or one party to win or specifically would be very upset were a candidate to win, I sometimes invest in that candidate in case they do win. Well, I didn't want that person serving in government, but, you know, I got 40 bucks in my pocket. It makes it go down a little better. On Cal, you're trading against your peers in a live market, meaning there's no house except of Representatives. And as the probability changes, you can buy in and out of your position for a limited time, download the Kalshi app and use the code gist to get $10. When you trade 10k a l s h I kalshi trade on anything, 18 plus restrictions and eligibility requirements apply. Event contract trading involves risk and may not be suitable for all investors. Prices, values and available markets may differ from those mentioned. For more information, see kalshi.com regulatory Mike,

[Chris Cillizza]

why don't you take the lead and then we'll. We're gonna.

[Mike Pesca]

This is.

[Chris Cillizza]

I will say this, this is going to be a media world heavy podcast about what, what we do and how we do it and all that sort of stuff. Mike, go ahead.

[Mike Pesca]

So my announcement is I have misophonia. And when you bang on the table like that, I say to myself, that's it. I'm quitting. I can't with this guy. What is he going to chew in front of me? What is he going to chew? Asparagus.

[Chris Cillizza]

Oh, the worst.

[Mike Pesca]

So. Oh, there was a great Sloane Crosley article in the New Yorker about misophonia. It was so good. Every third line was such a punchline. I bet the editing was like, look, you got to pull back on some of these jokes because there are too many.

[Chris Cillizza]

Can't make this many jokes.

[Mike Pesca]

Yeah. When I did npr, some of my editors were like, I'm here to help you by taking out two thirds of the jokes. But the editors I really liked are like, all right, first thing Keep the jokes. Now, when you listen to npr, you know that those added. And I no longer work there.

[Chris Cillizza]

That's exactly right.

[Mike Pesca]

Keep the jokes. We are no longer substacking because I will no longer be sub stacking because I will, as I have announced on the gist, next Thursday will be my last, my valedictory episode. And then we're going to air some more original episodes. Won't necessarily be me in the host seat. I'll be doing most of the interviews. But yeah, it has come time for me after 12 years and after I think it's up to 3,660 episodes, something like that, to do something else, to leave the world of independent podcasting, just podcasts, not leave the world, but no longer host the show. And everyone listening will say, well, I can imagine, you know, he's either something like burnout or finances. What's interesting is what non practitioners might not think. So I want to ask you this. You were at the Washington Post and then. And then you got lured over to cnn, right?

[Chris Cillizza]

Yep.

[Mike Pesca]

And there was of course a transition you're doing on air, but mostly was your media diet the same? Were you keeping apprised of everything that you had?

[Chris Cillizza]

Yeah, I think so. I mean, I would say that piece of it hasn't changed all that much. Like, yeah, I mean, look, I started at the Washington post in the mid 2000s. Like by the time I went to CNN in 2017, like the, the like consumption vehicle, like the media had changed how people deliver. Podcasts were a big thing. YouTube was a bigger thing. So, like, I think I kind of changed with that. Twitter had become a huge thing in that, you know, for me from 08 on. So I think those things changed a little bit. But like, my kind of media consumption was pretty voracious throughout and not like radically different. I mean, I think I kind of added and subtracted. People still ask me this. They're like, where do you get most of your news? And I'm like, I'm. I'm sure you're not going to want to hear this, but the two things I refresh the most are my email and Twitter. So. And that probably if you asked me circa, I don't know, 2010, that would probably be the same answer.

[Mike Pesca]

So your email. Is that because you have subscribed to a lot of newsletters or people are giving you tips or why a little of that?

[Chris Cillizza]

I mean, I think I'm conducting most of like my reporting via email still some text now, text is kind of woven its way in there, but yeah, for the most part, I'm doing. And. And, you know, especially now, where I'm also kind of like, across the business piece of the, you know, sponsorships and all that sort of stuff. It's like, I gotta stay on top of that. My wifey, thank God, handles the nitty gritty of the negotiations and stuff, but I gotta make sure that I'm seeing what's coming across a transom. So. But, like, that hasn't changed all that much. I mean, I remember when people were this. This has sort of gone the way of the dodo. But, like, when people were saying, that's it, I can't support Twitter anymore. X anymore because Elon Musk is terrible, blah, blah, blah.

[Mike Pesca]

And.

[Chris Cillizza]

And I'm walking away and I'm going to Blue Sky. Like, I never. I mean, I have a Blue sky account I don't really use, but, um. And thread, same kind of thing. And I. I was like, I hate to say this, but, like, for me, whatever Elon is, I have spent. Since the Denver Convention in 08, I have spent all those years curating my Twitter feed.

[Mike Pesca]

Right.

[Chris Cillizza]

So that I'm seeing the kind of things that I'm interested in. The reporters I want to see. Like, no judgment about whether Elon is a good, bad, or indifferent human. It's just. I couldn't replace that. And so I've always kind of just stayed with that thing even as these other things have arisen. I was not in the quitted on principle because I wouldn't be able to do my job.

[Mike Pesca]

Right, right. You know, Substack had one of those quitted on principle moments. But the principle wasn't just misapplied. I think it was just based on one very badly reported article in Atlanta.

[Chris Cillizza]

Nazi thing. Yeah.

[Mike Pesca]

And it got me.

[Chris Cillizza]

It was before my time with it. I know it was like a big cataclysm, but I don't really know anything about it.

[Mike Pesca]

Was they some person affiliated with the Nazis, had seven followers or something? And there was a call to de platform, which I have. There's like a few things that I used to say. I'm very suspicious of it, but there might be certain cases where it's legitimate. I will name all three things. One, de platforming. I would say, let's never deplatform or have a call for deplatforming that you don't treat with at least an unbelievable amount of cynicism. It just means I don't want to hear from that guy. Shouldn't either. When Ezra Klein interviewed Chris Rufo it was like, really important. And Ezra Klein's a really important guy from the left. And wasn't the greatest interview or the worst interview, but things came out of it. I saw that media reporter Jeff Jarvis, whose last 12 columns, six of them were don't platform this guy or don't platform that guy. It's the stupidest argument. Almost a lot of.

[Chris Cillizza]

Lot of media critics masquerading as nonpartisan who are lefties. Lot of media reporters.

[Mike Pesca]

Yeah. But there used to be a shibboleth of the left to be anti deplatforming or let more speech combat bad speech. So I'm very suspicious of deplatforming. I'm extremely suspicious of the concept of appropriation. I guess we could point to times it does happen and someone, you know in the 1950s dressed as a Native American. And that's not. That's not good. But these days, I would say it's like a 97% false positive rate that what you're calling appropriation is really either respectful or borrowing or pastiche or something that if we didn't do it would be much worse culture.

[Chris Cillizza]

And I would add, I remember. And you probably remember this better than I do, Mike, but I do remember it was like 2023, I think it was a white female author who was writing as a minor. It was fiction. Yeah, but writing as.

[Mike Pesca]

Go ahead. It was the. It was the Oprah book selection about the Mexican train.

[Chris Cillizza]

And it became this like, she's appropriating culture and blah. And I was like, it's fiction. Like it's a. I. Anyway. Yes. Okay, so. So de Platforming appropriation.

[Mike Pesca]

And I'm unbelievably suspicious of gentrification. To me, there, of course, you know, there was, well, white flight and there was real estate agents pricing out people. Almost always gentrification is a bad neighborhood becoming a better neighborhood. And the problem or the solution is, you know, people need a place to live, but we should not decry it. When a neighborhood that wasn't that good becomes good. What we should decry are things like unaffordable rents. But this idea of gentrification is almost entirely misapplied, I think. And also, no one could really come up with a solution. What are the races that are allowed to gentrify here in New York? All of these neighborhoods that were. Well, you know, they're historically Hispanic. Go back. They were Irish before then. Almost all of them. Right. That's how de. Gentrification works.

[Chris Cillizza]

Yeah, I just. I don't know. I mean, I don't know whether for me it's. Some people say, well, you just have a lack of principle. You should have. You should have left when Elon bought it or whatever. But for me, it was just a. It was more of a practicality thing. It was like, I think it is important. I think I. It is important enough that I'm doing what I'm doing, that I need this tool to do it. But go back to where you started. Why did you ask me about my dot. My media diet changing from the Washington Post? You're burying the lead.

[Mike Pesca]

Yeah, yeah. Well, I am just interested one thing that happened to me when people. I made this announcement on my show earlier in the week, and I've been fielding a ton of questions and how will your life change? And I'm not quite ready to announce what I'm going to do next, but it's in more of an executive capacity with an existing organization. But I'm trying to anticipate how my life is going to change. And I did change from a sports reporter to doing the show. Now, the last job I had at NPR was a sports reporter reporter. And then I am doing the gist and I said to myself, well, I'm probably. I don't see my media diet changing that much because I'm still interested in sports. And I have to tell you, to be interested is one thing, to be dedicated is another, and to be obligated is a third.

[Chris Cillizza]

Yep.

[Mike Pesca]

So my media changed tremendously. I found my. I said to myself at one point, my God, I haven't read. And I don't remember the site was. Maybe it was old Deadspin. Read this in eons. I just didn't have to. When I was a sports reporter, I would always say I'd be doing it anyway, but I wouldn't be. And so one of the things I. I don't know if I'm looking forward to it for the job, but just having to scan for all these stories, having to find the angle of the story, I'll have some of that with my new job, but I anticipate that that'll happen and I anticipate that'll be a little bit refreshing.

[Chris Cillizza]

Yeah. You know, it's interesting you say the obligated thing. I remember when I was in college and I was thinking about journalism and writing, and everyone was like, well, just be a sports reporter, you know? And I was like, you know, you love sports so much. You're so into it. Totally true. I do love sports. I'm really into it. But I, it's so funny. A guy I know who had an internship at CBS Sports in the, the summers during college, he was like, man, here's the thing. It's great, like, you're around these people and you're talking sports or whatever. He's like, but it's not like a hobby anymore. It's your job. And that's, I thought to myself, I love sports, but I don't want to feel, like, obligated to watch the World cup, obligated to follow, to have a thought on the Paul George Jaylen Brown trade. You know what I mean? Like, it's a thing that I do as an escape. I don't want it to become the thing that I have to do. And so it's, I do, I do think that, that it's funny when you talk about change in general. Like, people would ask me all the time, and I, I've, unlike you, I've, I mean, I've been interested in other things and I write about them tangentially, but I've been in this, like, campaign politics space basically the whole time. And people would say sometimes, like, hey, do you, do you ever, like, like, get bored or think about doing something else? I always said, like, sort of. But at the same time, I, I, I still think there's more juice to squeeze there, both financially and editorially. Like, I still think it's wild that we can't figure out what the hell went on with Tom. I mean, we know now, but what went on with Tom Kane for three months? What's happening with Mitch McConnell less seriously, when Mark Stanford said he was hiking the Appalachian Trail but was actually in Argentina visiting his mistress, and then people confronted him at the airport or trying to figure out what wrong. What happened with the 2016 election? How did Trump win? Whatever. Like, I've always thought there was more to it, but, but I do see the appeal in just challenging yourself with something different. You know, for me, that challenge was foisted upon me when CNN laid me off and building this kind of independent thing, even though it's, it's in the same coverage area, it's not the same thing. Has been a kind of revivifying thing. It's like, I don't, I'm not working at one place forever.

[Mike Pesca]

Right?

[Chris Cillizza]

But I Want to Talk 12 years and more than 3,000 episodes as an independent podcaster. Tell me what's the best thing about that and what's, was the, I'm not going to say the worst thing, but the hardest thing, because I think people People don't understand that this is not an easy road.

[Mike Pesca]

So for eight years or so, I was with Slate. So that was, you know, not big media, but not independent. But the. The hardest thing about it is now that it was two different hardest things, and they were the opposite. When I was with Slate, well, I will say in the beginning, the organization myself were really aligned in how we viewed the world and had this kind of contrarianism. But, you know, a shared, mostly shared opinions on the big questions. And then, like a lot of other cultural institutions, 2018, 2019, definitely by 2020, things really began to fracture around issues like, you know, speech impurity tests. So that was when I was working there. I was. Would always tell my wife, oh, God, I can't. I like doing my show. I love doing my show. I love the audience. But the overall culture is just something I have to, you know, kind of cordon myself off from.

[Chris Cillizza]

And you grew apart over time. It's like any other relationship. Yeah.

[Mike Pesca]

And I'm the kind of person who really wants to jump in and be as connected to people, humans, which during the pandemic, it was very hard. And that was also when a lot of this stuff came to a head. So as an independent, the best thing is to follow my whims and my curiosity and know that the audience would come along with me. I think. I don't know. We don't have great metrics on that. Right. We could see on Substack, we could see how things do on a podcast. It's harder. More. Yeah. It's a little more like climate than temperature. Right. If you have a couple years, you could look back and see the broad trends. The absolute hardest thing. And one of the things that got to me is you're doing everything yourself. So you know this. And before you do everything yourself, you say, this is going to be hard. This is why you hire. Well, is it just you and your wife? Do you have other employees?

[Chris Cillizza]

Yeah, right now.

[Mike Pesca]

Okay. When you hire other people, and they might live in Pennsylvania or Illinois, which is great, you could hire someone from anywh, but there is all these compliance letters that come from the state of Pennsylvania and the state of Illinois, and we know that's true. And then when your Illinois employee moves to Oklahoma, that's great. But now you're getting two sets of letters. And then when you're, oh, look, it's a state. I haven't had my Pennsylvania employee for years. It's still the Peach Fish Productions letter from the Department of Labor and Industry. And by the Way. Someone from the federal government used to call me every, like third Tuesday of a month to ask you, is your Pennsylvania employee still? Is your Pennsylvania? And I said, what happens if I don't answer these calls? And they said, well, we can't say that we can't do anything, but it can. Sorry, we can't say we could do anything, but a condition of you having this person in your employment is answering these questions. And I'm like, look, I am committed to accurate labor statistics still with everything else I had to do.

[Chris Cillizza]

Don't you have anything better to do?

[Mike Pesca]

Can I click online? So I'll give you another thing that happened. So we've been doing the show since 2014, and when we started, we got the theme song from our show from something called. It was literally called the Free Music Archive totally.

[Chris Cillizza]

Because music for people who don't know music is incredibly expensive to use.

[Mike Pesca]

So if you do this open source music and Maybe you pay 20 or $40 to the free Music Archive and they give you a license for life, as the name implies, it is free music. So we got the show them and there it was on the Free Music Archives. And it was kind of funny. Over the years, people would send us and say, isn't this video about Portuguese fishing? Doesn't it have the gist theme song? I'm like, I guess it also used it for this. About six to eight months ago, we started getting these automated messages from Spotify where their algorithm crawls back and listens to, I guess, knows how to listen to different songs. And they gave us takedown notices or pay us off notices. And some of them were legit. Like we, I think, would have fair use arguments with a lot of the songs. But it's an argument and they have lawyers and right now we don't. And so I'd either take it down or let them take it down. Now it got more annoying when for two years a year on the show, we had a weekly segment where the band they Might Be Giants would come on, would we talk about a song in their catalog, and then they'd debut a new song. And we also had a songwriting content with they Might Be Giants. The David Plotz, who ran Slate at the time, had a relationship with both Johns. And it was, you know, the guys in the band were happy to do it. We were happy to do it. Yeah. That's cool, right? So we started getting these automated takedown notices from Spotify and I got in touch with the guy who ran the band and I'm like, is this was This a problem with you? He said, of course, it was never anything. We didn't even know about it. I'll do whatever you want, give you all the information so you could just rebut it. But it was essentially impossible to rebut. Right. You would click on these. No, it's fine. No, we have the rights. And then you'd get funneled to some automated system where they never said, yeah, it was okay. So we had to take down all these shows that were part of an ongoing collaboration, and then they came for the music in the free music archive. And this theme song is under every single one of our shows. And so therefore, what they were saying is, you have to take down the open and close of your show that we got from the free music archive. But I couldn't prove it. I didn't know how to go back. I'm one person. I don't want to hire a lawyer to do this. There is a little sideways upshot, which is that we were working with a pretty. A very good company at the time that did some podcast marketing, and they had previous relationships with Spotify. So luckily, because of this relationship with this company, that company called Spotify, and they Spotify. And they made it go away. But it was, you know, just hours of my time and hours of angst, and we had no recourse. And unless.

[Chris Cillizza]

And it's all. I was just going to say it's all not what you got into this to do.

[Mike Pesca]

Yeah, unless you have a show that's tossing off money, where they can handle the Pennsylvania phone call and they can handle some of the stuff you have to handle, but there's all this other stuff of regulations, and I'm not even going to get into. These are. So far, I've been indicating many fair or unfair compliance issues. Then there is the marketing of the show. And at some point, the marketing of the content began to overwhelm the content. So I couldn't really spend as much time thinking about what I was doing with the show as I was thinking about how to tell people I'm doing a thing with the show. And then I don't know if you saw this. This was a very good insight. And it is the way of the world that I'm not saying it shouldn't be. It's just the reality of the. The. I forget his name. The co host of Scott Galloway's Professor G podcast. Forget his name. He's an English guy. He's very sharp. He put out a clip, a social media clip, saying, you know, our clips are not only much more seen than the show, they've essentially become the show. When people think about who Scott Galloway and me, the sidekick, they only think about the clips on social media. Yep. So it's become inverted. And. And rather than having promotional materials for the show, the show became in service of these promotional materials.

[Chris Cillizza]

That's right. It is solely a vehicle to cut social media clips.

[Mike Pesca]

Yeah. It's like Star Wars. Okay. Movie. But what a trailer. And the trailer awards, which there are, overwhelmed the Oscars. And that was also. I think he was also saying it was a major, if not the main way the show made money was the promotional material about the show. And, like, if I could do that, I would say that if I started to do these social media clips, which I tried to do, and if somehow I got good at it and I was making a ton of money at it, I might say, all right, you know, I'll lean into that. But that was never the case. So all these. All these realities, these algorithmic, These promotional video, we could talk about that. I like talking to you on video. It's very low touch. But all the big podcasts, all the old podcasts, I can't think of. We go through the list. The Daily has a video, but mostly they've all become TV shows. TV shows that happen to have an audio component.

[Chris Cillizza]

Correct.

[Mike Pesca]

I came up in npr. I communicate. I'm not going to be all grandiose and talk about the theater of the mind, but I do think and talk in a. Close your eyes and think about it way before I do. Oh, you're watching.

[Chris Cillizza]

It's an audio first offering, right?

[Mike Pesca]

It should be. It was. And what is lost by having the live show? Well, I think for certain kind of shows, for hangout shows, the shows that are the most popular works well.

[Chris Cillizza]

Right.

[Mike Pesca]

If you're gonna talk to a funny comedian or the classic format of two funny comedians shooting the shit works really well on video. If you're talking about, like, the Daily doesn't do that well on video because their segments are highly produced and all the bits of sound take place at different times. And that's. If that was a TV show, it would be a TV show. My friend PJ Vogt talks about it. He does Search Engine. Great show. But, you know, if he were. If that were to be a video show, which he has always resisted, it'd be a documentary. And he's not doing a TV documentary or a movie documentary. He's doing a podcast. And I'm increasingly asked to do a worse version of a Podcast for the sake of video. So I think this is one of the things that drove Marc Maron out. I talked to some of my other friends or here, some of my other friends, like Katie and Jesse have blocked and reported and a few of the others talking about not wanting to do video but feeling like you have to do video for a time. There was the concept. Well, you just put up the audio on a video feed. No, no, that doesn't work. Also, YouTube is now the most popular video. Sorry, the most popular podcast player, but it's not a podcast player. And what I suspect, and there's some stats about this is people don't watch your podcast on YouTube. They put it on in the background.

[Chris Cillizza]

They do.

[Mike Pesca]

And they catch what they catch.

[Chris Cillizza]

Yeah, they look over second screen experience. They. You know what I mean? Like, it's a hangout, right? It's, it's there, it's on in the same way that cable used to be like that. It's like, oh, like I'm sitting at the airport, cables on, I'm paying no attention. But then, oh, there's like, oh, they got World cup scores. Let me, let me take a quick look at that. I think it's the same way with a lot of these podcasts. It's like, like I was walking around the track and this is a, I believe is still just an audio only podcast and a very weird one is acquired. Right? They're doing Walt Dis, the Walt Disney Company right now. It's four and a half. It's four and a half hours long. But I was, I, I kind of found myself. All I'm doing is walking around a track waiting for my son's baseball game to start. Right. So I'm just trying to get some extra guys. I've got nothing to distract me. But I found myself kind of in. Even with audio, I found myself kind of in and out. And I think that does. Like when they were talking about the flywheel and how Walt Disney kind of happened upon that, I mean, it was fascinating. And I'm like, all in. But when they're like talking about how they made Snow White, like step by step, I'm like, yeah, I don't care about 90% of this. So I do think there's an element of that anyway. But, but I am fascinated by your comments about video because I will say with Substack, one of the dirty little secrets of Substack is that substacks that lean into video grow faster and grow faster among paid subscribers. Now what's interesting is when I do more video. Like I, I try to balance it but you know, if I do like three straight posts that are video as opposed to written, people will be like, like, I hate video. It's garbage. I, I want to read things and I'm like, okay, like I know that there are those people out there. At the same time I also know the stats are the stats. So it's like a weird, I don't know if people have a love hate relationship with, with video or they think like, oh, YouTube is video. But on substack I want writing. I would say like look, some of the, particularly on the left, some of the biggest, fastest growing substacks are. Don Lemon doesn't really write. Don himself doesn't really write at all. Does a show, a video show that could be on anywhere. Jim Acosta, same thing, does a show. I think he just, I thought he just hired somebody from Mediaite to write a newsletter for him because I don't think he writes a lot. But my point is, is like a lot of these people who say they hate it, I'm like, well, these things are doing well. Like I don't, I don't, I don't know what to make of that.

[Mike Pesca]

Katie Couric also.

[Chris Cillizza]

Yeah, I mean these are TV people who go and do TV. Scott, Scott McFarland, he writes some but he's doing a lot of basically what is T video. And so I don't know what to make of that because I do think that when I look at my kids consumption habits, not news consumption, but just consumption in general. It's all video, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube shorts, not even YouTube, YouTube shorts. So it's like, I think as a creator you feel a lot of pressure to lean into video because you see the underlying numbers, you see where everyone's going. But it's interesting that you're kind of. You didn't want to become that.

[Mike Pesca]

Yeah, I felt that the thing that I did best and why I got into this was a podcast where I considered exactly what was going in the show. There's more writing involved that than may sound. So even though it's not a substack with a written component, the show is mostly scripted or at least heavily bullet pointed the non interview portions of it. And then there's this other thing, you know, when you were giving all those examples, there are people who already got an audience and are maybe taking their audience or their brand or their renown with them. And I think that's a huge, huge problem with this ecosystem being able to Build a new star with podcasts, it's pointing people to your podcast. So I kind of longed for not all the things, not all the aspects of the days of gatekeepers. But the idea in the 1970s, the reason why people watched a TV show was there were three choices and it was in the middle of your living room. So this didn't always lead to the best tv, Right. But a show or a star or a cultural phenomenon could be created. And it wasn't just the monoculture, it wasn't just the lack of competition. It was the fact that what these media organizations controlled was real estate. In the case of a newspaper, the real estate of your brain that hit your doorstep at a certain time. And in the case of network TV, well, what we own is the half hour between 8 and 8:30 or 8:30 and 9. And if our leading is someone you know, we could go out, find. This is an algorithm. Here's an algorithm. You find a stand up comedian, the stand up comedian does a set on Carson, the set kills. They develop a sitcom around the Persona of the comedian and maybe Morgan Mindy shows up, right? So that's an algorithm. It's not as detailed and driven by ones and zeros as the algorithms now, but the thing that they had was trust us. We may betray your trust, we may give you some schlock for years and years, but also it doesn't depend on everyone's attention already being fixed. It doesn't depend on anything other than we have the real estate. We are some version of tastemakers and gatekeepers and taste has come back in a big way with AI and so we don't have to really vie for other things going on in your head. You could relax a little bit, trust us and maybe it'll pay off. There's something really to be said for that when you're people like us who are wandering the wilderness of please, I'm over here, look what I'm doing over here, for God's sakes, what I'm doing is so much better than the guy who you knew from CBS or CNN before they got fired.

[Chris Cillizza]

But name, name recognition is in an attention economy, it's so critically important. I was, I was talking to Matt Lewis about this and Matt is made a similar transition, right. He has signed on with the notice organization, not us organization to be a columnist. I like you too. But it is a move from, it is a move from independent back to mainstream now of kept a little bit of ties but, but that's his full time job and you know, I Think that it's like it's really hard to be a sort of reliable, trying to offer your honest takes. Non controversial. Like you're not solving to get in news. You're not purposely being provocative. And I mentioned and I like her, but Olivia. I just read something last night about Olivia Nutzy, who is apparently like talking to Shane Smith as they maybe restart Vice. And it's like, man, how many chances is she, how many lives are we giving her? Whereas, you know, it's like that there is an element of that because they think, well, she's famous, maybe infamous. Like in the Three Amigos. They're more than famous, they're infamous. But there's something there that I think is really hard because people say to me all the time, okay, well, I want to get an independent journalism, but I don't really have like a brand, I don't have a name. What do I do? And I'm like, I'll be honest with you. Like, I spent years and years and years doing this for major media outlets and talking on television and not as many people know me as know Jake Tapper, but enough people knew me to provide a base that I could grow from and sustain.

[Mike Pesca]

Yeah.

[Chris Cillizza]

And that's. But, but the point is, is like, if you don't have that, let's say you cover the State Department for the New York Times. I don't even know who that is now, but let's say you cover the State Department for the New York Times. You're probably a pretty damn good reporter.

[Mike Pesca]

Yeah.

[Chris Cillizza]

You say, you know what I want to cover. I, I'm gonna go out on my own. I'm sick of dealing with the, you know, the bureaucracy. And I think this is the future of going on my own. Man, that's a tough road to hoe.

[Mike Pesca]

Yes, yes. And you have skills and you have sources and you have value, but your value is not the value of Olivia newsy. And okay, so I also want to make. When people say I want to go to independent journalists, what do I do? Do you say date? Date rfk.

[Chris Cillizza]

That would be it did not provide that. As, as I, I do. I did a thing when the Washington Post did their giant layoff, 400 people and they've realized the error of their ways, hired a bunch of those people back. But, but Substack reached out and said, hey, would you do like a thing where you and a couple other people just talk about your own experience? We're going to invite anyone who got laid out by the Washington Post. Would you just do a Thing, talk about your experiences. I said, of course, yes. And one of the things that was hard, I didn't say this because I, it was already a hard enough time for them. You don't really need me, me piling on. But I wanted to say, look, out of the 400 of you, and not everyone was on the, on this thing, but you know, out of the 400 people laid off, maybe 10%, that might even be high, 10% will be able to grind out. And I do use the word grind. Grind out a living as an independent content creator. Maybe one or two of you will make real money and make more money than maybe you made at mainstream media. But the truth is, for the bulk of people, like, it's going to be really hard. It is just, it's like you said, if you, if you don't have either in politics, if you're not going to be the most orange man bad or the most orange man good, or you have a built in, people know who you are.

[Mike Pesca]

Right?

[Chris Cillizza]

Man, I don't know what to tell them. It's like it's not, it is not a. What I, what I did say is, look, it's not a, it's not. You plant a money tree in the backyard and you just go pick off of it whenever you want. Like, I think there's some illusion that independent media is just, everyone is getting rich. And it, it's like, you know, that's not the case. It is a harder. I have like six revenue streams from different places because no one of them is, is vast. And I think that's the reality of all, all of what we do now.

[Mike Pesca]

Now I was in that maybe 1 or 2% that was making a lot more in my independent media than I was when, certainly with npr. When I went to Slate, we had some very good years. And that was based on, you know, my own ability to satisfy the audience and get advertisers and all that. And it's not even so much that that went south, it's that what you had to do to maintain that was more effort and the effort was going in a place other than product. And so if I had to put my hand, my finger on it, that would be, that would be the phenomenon that I want to step away from. You know, I also don't want to give the impression that the shame about this is that, you know, what was once a jobs program for qualified young university graduates no longer exists. I mean, who cares, right? Maybe you could go into another line of work. And I also don't think There's a direct line to when newspapers, especially small local newspapers, were a great farm system for larger newspapers. Then you could become the State Department correspondent for the Times. And life was good. I'm not entirely nostalgic for that. There was not only a lot of waste, it was in many ways not serving the public too well. So it's not a nostalgia play.

[Chris Cillizza]

Agreed.

[Mike Pesca]

But a general situation where it was more true that qualified people saw a structure. Structure of, of informing the public. And enough of the public was actually informed and engaged by. You don't have to read the morning and afternoon newspaper, but you'd read a newspaper or the equivalent of a newspaper was much better for the life of the democracy than what's going on now. And we as guys who are our age can rail against twitch streamers, but you know, twitch streamers are coming out with a lot of content. There's a lot of content there. But does it even compare to the information of a system that was not talking about 1970, I'm talking about 2014. Right. When blogs were a little bit new. When I first started my podcast, when. When Twitter was novel.

[Chris Cillizza]

Yep.

[Mike Pesca]

Yeah. I just think the p. I think people were being much better informed.

[Chris Cillizza]

I. There was a piece by Jonathan Rauch, who I think is a brilliant thinker and I think he, I think he's. He was at National Journal when I was there. I didn't know him, I don't know him. But there was a piece and I referenced it all the time. I think it was. I think. I'm almost sure it was in the Atlantic and it was around 20. Gosh, 2013, 2014 might even be earlier than that. But the, the essence of the piece, the argument of the piece was was it was about politics. It was not about what we do like content. It was about politics. And his argument was we need more smoke filled rooms in politics, not less. And, and it is basically a gatekeeping argument. It was, look, there were these structures in place, these party strong party organizations led to yes. Did some people get excluded 100% in the main net. Net. It led to more able, incredible people being put forward and our democracy working better. And I think of the gatekeeping thing all the time. You're talking about now all the time as it relates to us. It's like it is very fashionable still to say fuck the gatekeepers, these old white guys who told us what the news was. And I get that. I agree. Like, you know, that's one of the things that Donald Trump make America great again. It's like, well, the 50s were great if you look like me. I'm not sure they were great if you didn't look like us. Right. But the end of gatekeeping, the end of you're gonna. To your point, you're gonna trust us with sort of a. And I don't mean us, I mean the media. You're gonna trust us with kind of like judgment and intake, and we're going to broadly give you. Give you things that are going to be interesting to you. Not everything. The end of that is touted as this great. Good. And I think probably sum total, it's probably slightly better than it is worse in my mind. But, man, there's a lot of worse in there. The lack of any standards, the lack of any gatekeeping. I always say to people, look, what, what, what do you have to do if you want to drive a big rig? Right. You got to get a license to do it. What do you want to do if you want to practice law, you got to pass the bar. What do you want? What do you have to do if you want to call yourself a journalist? Nothing.

[Mike Pesca]

Right, Right.

[Chris Cillizza]

And I think that degrades the overall product in ways that these people who are like the gatekeepers, you know, these old white guys, they screwed us. It's like, I get it. Yeah. But that where we are now, ain't a better place.

[Mike Pesca]

Yeah. And also, okay, there's nothing you have to do except to be a journalist. Except be a journalist. Except there was an ethos of the profession which generally said, what we're in the business of is trying to find the best attainable version of the truth.

[Chris Cillizza]

Correct.

[Mike Pesca]

And then even that ethos began, this isn't. This isn't a financial thing. It was just within the university, within the journalism itself, that began to be challenged, what is truth? Some postmodernism. At the exact same time where Donald Trump was saying, yeah, what is truth? Maybe I did win the election.

[Chris Cillizza]

Alternative facts. Right.

[Mike Pesca]

Yeah. That was the same time that journalism was saying, well, your truth was only an old white man's truth. My truth is going to be, you know, the new form of everything is downstream of power. I totally agree with you. I think that another aspect is. It's sometimes called audience capture, but I see it in different ways. Like the other day on the show, I was analyzing the reaction to the birthright citizenship ruling. And so I think the newspapers I quoted said in a headline, birthright citizenship upheld. And that should be the headline. But I was listening to other podcasts, for instance, strict scrutiny podcast, which is A crooked media podcast. Their headline, their sentiment was we came this close to it not being upheld and we are hanging on by a thread because reconstruction is going to be taken away from us.

[Chris Cillizza]

Why wasn't it. I know.

[Mike Pesca]

Yeah, yeah. And then the bulwark a little bit more moderately said something like, well, Bill Crystal was on and he said, well, you know, we would have thought it would be 9 0, but it was 72 or 6, 3 depending on how you count, maybe 5, 4. That's not good. And then Andrew Egger said, I'm still going to take the win. I still think that it was a great rebuke to Donald Trump.

[Chris Cillizza]

Trump.

[Mike Pesca]

And they all agreed that's how we'll frame it. Great rebuke. And those two framings. Great rebuke. Trump on the ropes. That is incentivized by the audience. Way to play so many news stories. If you watch or listen to the Midas Touch, a third of their stories are Donald Trump finally lost it because it feeds the emotions of the audience. And then the crooked media audience is Donald Trump either Donald Trump finally lost it or where hanging on by a thread, democracy teetering. And it used to be that, yes, of course the Daily News was more worker aligned in the New York Post. Maybe that's a bad example. They were actually a labor newspaper, but newspapers had their editorial boards balance, but their editorial board's opinions. But the LA Times knew that it could do a story about the auto industry and or car sales and risk the auto salesman canceling, which did happen because they had such a. They were had such a ballast of other advertisers. But by the same token, they also knew that if they did a story that wasn't based in reality, talking about how local businesses were trying to rip you off, so many of their readers were Republicans or were involved in local businesses. They couldn't just satisfy one portion of the audience's worldview. Cause their audience was the world. And that has totally changed. And we'll never get back yet. We'll never get back to a monoculture. But the idea that newspapers or big magazines could just piss off a constituency, that's definitely part of their readership. And they would do it routinely and I think a lot of journalists would take great pleasure in it. That is very much subsided now. We're all incentivized just to piss off the other side. So Matt Taibbi could do it about the Mueller investigation, but when Matt Taibbi, who in a lot of ways have a lot of respect for does it about Shibboleths on his own side. Walter Kern quits his newscast. His. The podcast he does on that. Yeah.

[Chris Cillizza]

I'm always amazed at the extent to which even for someone like me who like expressly says probably to an annoying RA rate, I'm not a partisan, that if I write something, Supreme Court is a good example. My take was look for all of these sky is falling. The Supreme Court is in Donald Trump's pocket. Okay, we're done with this term. We have a data set. Let's look at what he cared the most about and what the court decided. He cared a lot about birthright citizenship. He was in the courtroom, I would say inappropriately, but he was in the to hear the oral arguments at least for an hour before he walked right

[Mike Pesca]

by Clemen's brother and the Godfather.

[Chris Cillizza]

Terrific reference. He was also quoted numerous times in the fall in, in last fall and in, into this year about how the tariff ruling was the most important ruling the Supreme Court has ever had before for it. Now he exaggerates a little bit always, but on both of those things, the so called Supreme Court that was in his pocket rejected him. Now did Louisiana vs Calais the re redistrict. Does that help Republicans? Yes. Does the coordinated, unlimited coordinated campaign money ruling, that's a little bit nerdy, but important? Yes, but I was amazed. So my argument was, can we just stop. Stop with the. All checks and balances are gone. The Supreme Court has, has thrown out everything. Donald Trump can do whatever he wants. And I shouldn't be. But I was surprised the extent to which people were like, man, you really got this one wrong. The court is the, the court still does whatever he says. They're just, it was either they're just faking it to give themselves credibility or it should have been 90 and it was only 6 3. It's like, man, I thought we were in like the wins and losses business here.

[Mike Pesca]

Not the, and so not the margin of victory.

[Chris Cillizza]

That depresses me when people, when people cancel their subscription because they say you wrote something I disagree with. I find that incredibly depressing, especially because

[Mike Pesca]

of who you are. Who I am. What is our brand? Like we're going to do that. Why did you.

[Chris Cillizza]

That's the whole reason I do this.

[Mike Pesca]

Yeah. Yeah. So I have a theory about this which is based on my own consumption too, which is ideally we want members of the audience who want to be challenged and therefore don't expect to be agreed with all the time. I think, I think the vast majority of people are. Well, I don't Know if that's true, I think there are a lot of people out there who are at least telling themselves, oh yeah, I don't have to agree with this guy all the time. When you don't tell yourself that, that it's more the story. You never say, I need to agree with him all the time. It's more like I need someone aligned with these clear moral ethical principles I have. And if you're not, we can't get along. We don't see the world in the same way. But I do think that once it becomes more than 80%. Sorry, less than 80% agreement. So you'll take a one out of five disagreements. But if two days, right, because if two days a week you're tuning into a podcast and you get something that you flat out disagree with and they don't convince you on it two out of five days a week, is it really giving you value? I, I listen to a lot of podcasts where I'm one out of five days a week. But I think this is for the vast majority of people. They're not with you if they're being rebutted or that you can't convince them. Maybe because their minds are closed, at least at the 80% threshold.

[Chris Cillizza]

I think, I think there's a yes. I think there is a gap that I've seen when in the last three and a half years when I've had access to all the analytics behind the content. There's a real gap between who we think we, who we want to be, slash, who we think we are as content consumers and who we actually are. Who we want to be is open minded, willing to, you know, it's why people always say they're independents when they're asked if they're Republicans or Democrats. Because independent is way cooler. Oh, I don't line up behind one party or the other. I'm a free thinker. We want to be someone who's like, I want to hear opinions that I disagree with as long as they're expressed in like an honest, open way. I want to hear that who we are is dopamine hits about either I knew I was right or I knew I should be afraid. That's number one. Number two, and again, I think you have to always consider the financial piece when you're doing what we do. I think, I think it's part and parcel. You know who, When I look at the New York Times, non fiction bestsellers, for the most part, they are books with a political. When they're political books for the most Part they are political books with a very clearly defined audience. It's Rachel Maddow writing about the right. It's Bill O writing about whatever killing Lincoln. But it's because it's Bill O'Reilly, people are going to read it. It's, man, the Republicans are stupid or man, the Democrats are stupid. When I see the top 20 substacks, political substacks. Yeah, there's like Taibi in there and even, I'll even put Iglesias in there in that. Iglesias, I think is, is, is certainly left of center, but he's like a, he's an asymmetric thinker. He's willing to go after people. Right. But by and large, what's on there, the bulwark, the contrarian acosta, Don Lemon,

[Mike Pesca]

Heather Cox Richardson, reigning supreme historian.

[Chris Cillizza]

Historian, historian. Mas. A liberal masquerading as a. Well, she is a historian, but I think the reason people are drawn to her is because it's a lefty view.

[Mike Pesca]

Anyway, turns out that what happened in 1874 exactly confirms my point priority and

[Chris Cillizza]

that Donald Trump is bad. What that tells me and what I've seen over my experience is even if there are, even if you're right, and I, God, I hope you're right, that there are a lot of people who, who genuinely are willing to read, watch, listen to things that question their priors or even if it doesn't convince them, you know what I've found most of those people don't pay, and that's the people who buy books, who subscribe to substacks, who donate Patreon, who become members on YouTube. It really does over index for partisanship, agreement and partis. So it's like I always say to people, look, I'm thrilled if you are a free subscriber and you never comment or anything and you just every once in a while you'll send me a note like, hey, I really like that. The problem is if you are not willing to invest in it, and I mean invested it financially, I wind up getting there's, there's, there's a clear market for the hard right. There's a clear market for the hard left. I don't know that there's a market for people who are not predictable content machines.

[Mike Pesca]

You know, in a lot of ways that makes sense because I think of myself as a news consumer and what I actually pay for. And this is also reflected in the pitch that a lot of substack writers and podcast producers will make, which is if you like what I'm doing, the Only way to support support me or the best way to support me is to subscribe to support the content I'm putting out when I'm grazing. I'm kind of telling myself this is good for me, this isn't good for them. I'm not doing it because it's good for them. So when I'm thinking about some right coded right leaning shows that I listen to the National Review editors, I check in from time to time, but I'm not going to of my top 10, I'm just not going to support them with money. I figure let the conservatives support them. That's their world view. I'm. I'm doing my part by considering their worldview. I'm not going to be signing on to what Charlie Cook says. I'll just be congratulating myself because I say Charlie Cook makes a. I listen to it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And so you do support. Hey, so now that we've gone to the subscriber model and not the advertising model, people want to, you know, have their souls strummed as much as to be informed and you know, the subscriber model for things like a Patreon, that's about something niche like the war on or just most Patreons in general, they don't purport to bring you the whole world. Any one substack is not a utility. So you're not going. You will pay for something like the New York Times because it is a utility. It's the tell me about the world

[Chris Cillizza]

broadly get sports culture, you get you. But if there's earthquake in Venezuela you get that. When the Knicks win the title you get that all the same.

[Mike Pesca]

So you're not, you're not telling yourself that ah, this aligns with who I am. These are people who I literally the people, the Times I want to support you never consider that. I don't think you just need these very rarely they're a utility like the water company but who you want to support. And this is a downside of the subscriber model is someone you have an emotional connection with. So this is what advertising has a lot going against it. But so does subscription. Not just audience capture, but the fact that it's nishified, but the fact that it's emotionally driven, but the fact that it punishes those who would, you know, upset the audience's pre existing conditions because in a way it's violating the terms of service of the unstated terms of service of why the people pay for it in the first place. I don't want to pay for this.

[Chris Cillizza]

It's so interesting because, you know, I have started taking on sponsors. Substack has made it easier to do so now YouTube is still not easy, but I've started to take on sponsors and some people have been resistant to it. One of the sponsors I took on was Polymarket because I use use their markets all I don't gamble, I don't participate in, but I use it as like a data point. And all these people were like, how could you? And I said to them like I'm actually, I've become more bullish on advertising because they don't, I would never sign on if Polymarket said, hey Chris, we need you. We, we need, before you write anything that references us, you need to send it to us, we approve it, we can change whatever we want in the content and we're going to pitch you ideas and you don't have to take everyone, but every third one you're going to have to take. I don't have any of that. So I have no ties other than I'm going, I'm going to embed a market of who's going to win the Senate one way or the other. So if they can sponsor me and pay me for it, I actually think that's better. I'm less beholden in some ways. And I've said to people this does not work. Trust me. If it's, we know the advertising only model doesn't really work for these big companies. It's the problem of the Washington Post and all of these places, right? If you're not diversified and you're just trying to sell ads against your, your text or video content probably doesn't work. But I would say the subscriber model I found to be not big enough, not enough people willing to pay. So I am now like getting a, it's both and like I'm getting more bullish on the advertising model that has basically defaulted all of these big media companies because for someone like me, not a lot of overhead. It actually works. And that's the only way I think it can sustain. So I always want to say to people like, hey man, I don't have to take sponsorships, but I need, I need you to you and, and $50,000 worth of other subscribers to become subscribers and sustain. Like yeah, it doesn't, one doesn't work without the other. And it's just amazing to me that people are so it's like I still have a mortgage. I, I, I, I still have to like pay like, you know, for My kid to be on this travel soccer team. Like, just because I'm an independent journalist doesn't absolve me from the everyday bills that we all have. It's a weird thing in, like, journalism. Like, outside of that, it's like you pay your accountant to do your taxes or you pay, right, you know, a guy to shine your shoe. I don't do that. But shine your shoes at the union station in D.C. but like a little

[Mike Pesca]

massage for the little.

[Chris Cillizza]

Little weird. But my point is, it's like a service is provided you pay for it. I. I just went and picked up my dry cleaning. I paid them for it. I wasn't like, I assume this is gratis, but journalism doesn't exist in that space.

[Mike Pesca]

Well, dry cleaners never held themselves up as sort of monks and truth tellers and people who are doing it for the public good. But what you're putting your finger on is saying is true, we're a business or we're people who have to pay our bills. But I think there's something deeper and more profound, which is okay. Part of it is a confirmation of what I've been saying, that subscribing is emotionally based and the subscribers to the New York Times do it because it's a utility. But the real engine for the New York Times is wordle and recipes and things that they kind of love on an emotional level. It's not intellectual curiosity. It's stoking something different.

[Chris Cillizza]

Different.

[Mike Pesca]

But I take. I. I do Calci ads and I had so many people getting so upset.

[Chris Cillizza]

Oh, God.

[Mike Pesca]

That I do Calcia. So to address that quickly, I use Kalshee. I do in fact, gamble on calcium short in little bursts. I never let them affect the content of my show. I let my son Milo do a commentary about something about. Well, it was more about Polymark, but you could gamble on who won Survivor, thus ruining Survivor for him. And he saw a preview of the show the Boys, and there was even market on that. So some of this stuff is crazy and it should be called out. And the way they got legal was also nuts. And I call it out. So, yeah, on the one hand, I'm like, well, what do you want me to do? Not survive? But on the other hand, the reason that many of the subscribers people said, I'm canceling my subscription if you do cowshi. Well, now it makes sense because you subscribe to someone who you identify with. And the cow she ad is a barrier in that identification. Oh, I don't think we share the same values.

[Chris Cillizza]

Right.

[Mike Pesca]

But if it was, you're not who

[Chris Cillizza]

I thought you, you were.

[Mike Pesca]

You don't have to. There's no implication that I'm taking advertisers money because it's an expression of who I am that's supposed to connect with who you are. So when I do an ad, if it was all ad base and there was no subscription, ask, you might say an ad's an ad. And if he wants to tell people to invest in a gold fund, fine. That doesn't say anything to me. If it's a subscription, you're like, oh, Mike is a person. Chris is a person who I identify with and channels my worldview. How could he be doing a gold ad? And that's a violation. Ads don't seem like a violation. I don't think everyone, anyone ever felt that Friends and the cast of Friends are to take a non fiction show. I don't know, 60 minutes in the News, anyone said that Mike Wallace is degraded because they were doing ads for a car. A car, yeah. Of which consumer bought a lemon, Right?

[Chris Cillizza]

Or like Northup Grumman. Watch Meet the Press. Watch any Sunday show. It's like Northrop Gr. Grumman, Boeing, you know what I mean? Like it used to, back in the day was like rjr, you know what I mean? Like no one was like, oh, they're in bp, right?

[Mike Pesca]

BP after the oil spill. They were all over all the Sunday shows.

[Chris Cillizza]

Yeah, it's just, it's just odd to me. And the other thing that's hard is like, okay, some people don't like the, the political prediction markets. But then like, would you rather I do like emergency doomsday prepper ads, like Alex Jones vibes? Like, is that like everybody's got their thing where they're like, oh, I didn't know was a, was a cash for gold guy. Do you know what I mean? Like it for some people, they're like, I don't give a cash for gold. Like, whatever. It's just a. It's a weird thing because it's like these people, they, they want. I think there's an element of people. And you're right, we did this to ourselves as an industry. To some extent. They want you to be a monk. But yeah, the problem is it's like monks live in a monastery and have, and don't have a lot of expenses. You know what I mean? Like, we are not. That's like I never made a pledge. Exactly. I never made a pledge that I would like renounce all worldly goods. I mean, I Have I. It's just a. We're in an interesting time because I do think as independent media becomes. Goes from toddler to little kid to teenager to adult, which we will see in our time, probably go exponentially quickly. Figuring these things out is. I'm always just trying to be transparent. Like, look, I'm not trying to hide anything from you. This is what I do. But it is changing. I'm fascinated to see your next thing. I don't want to take too much your time. It'll. We will know soon, so stay tuned on Mike, and then. I know you won't be able to do this, but I just want to tell you, I reached out to Mike initially because I read something he wrote a while back, a media criticism piece that I thought was just, like, honest and ballsy and because it's the kind of thing that gets you kicked out of the club. And unfortunately, we don't have enough people willing to do that. So I will miss your voice in that regard, and I hope that you find a way back back to it in some way, shape or form, because again, I think people who are unafraid, especially in this moment, are crazy critically important. So I just want to thank you for doing this with me. I will obviously follow your next moves closely and. And do what I can to support them. But I. I just wanted to say thank you for. For. For. For spending, you know, a day, a month with me.

[Mike Pesca]

Thank you so much, Chris. Thank you for sharing your audience and your platform. Even if Jeff Jarvis would object. It's just a lot of fun. I've enjoyed. I've enjoyed talking to you for at least an hour once a month. Once.

[Chris Cillizza]

Life is. Life is about new challenges and new direct. Every place I've left, I've always wished I had left a couple years earlier. So I. You know what I mean? Like, it's like, oh, I, man, I. I could have left the Washington Post after five years, not 10 years. Oh, maybe I could have left CNN before they got rid of me. So I'm trying to always, you know, I mean, one nice thing about doing what you doing. What I do now is you can take it in other directions because you're your own boss. But. All right, I'm fascinated to see what you do. I'm excited to see what you do. Um, your voice will be missed to the extent in this independent space, your voice will be missed. But I'm. I'm thankful that you get an opportunity to try something new, a new challenge, a new direction. So everybody take care. If you watch it live. Thank you. Mike is one of the good ones, an honest, ballsy, unafraid thinker. We need more people like that. Thank you, my friend.

[Mike Pesca]

Thanks. Take care.

[Chris Cillizza]

All right. All right, everybody. Be well.

[Mike Pesca]

That's it for today's show. The Gist is produced by Cory Wara. Jeff Craig does How To Ben Astaire is our booking coordinator. Kathleen Sykes does the Gist list. And Michelle Pesca is extraordinary in her role as COO Uproot Peru. Thanks for listening. We're gonna need a bigger cake with room for 250 candles. I'm Josh Spiegel, host of the podcast Lunatic in the Newsroom. Join me and my guest, BJ Shea as we celebrate America's big birthday. What are the best and worst American inventions? How would the founding Fathers feel about today's America? What's the most American thing? And what will America look like at 500 hundred? Join our celebration this week on Lunatic in the Newsroom.