Fighting for Truth in a Rage-Driven Algorithmic Age with Jessica Yellin

In the mid-2010s, television journalist and former chief White House correspondent Jessica Yellin left her job at CNN to go independent. A few years later, she founded News Not Noise, a multi-platform news outlet that publishes all across the internet (mainly on Substack, Instagram and YouTube). It made Yellin one of the first journalists to ditch mainstream media for social media, and it’s given her a unique perspective on the challenges and opportunities facing independent journalists, newsfluencers, and content creators in a crowded media environment. In a live interview hosted by the Center for Journalism Ethics at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, earlier this fall, Kara and Jessica talk about what it takes to be a successful online news creator, the effects President Trump’s attacks on fact-based journalism have had on the news business as a whole, and how news creators can adapt to changing social media algorithms and AI. They also talk about solutions that could help the entire news industry in an era of waning public trust. Please note: This conversation was recorded before X rolled out a new transparency location feature, revealing some prominent pro-MAGA accounts are not based in the U. S. despite claims on their profiles. Questions? Comments? Email us at [email protected] or find us on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Threads, and Bluesky @onwithkaraswisher. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:12Kara Swisher?

  Hi, everyone. From New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network, this is On with Kara Swisher, and I'm Kara Swisher. Happy Thanksgiving. We've got a special holiday episode for you today. My guest is independent journalist Jessica Yellen, the founder of News Not Noise. It's a multi-platform news outlet that publishes all across the internet, mostly on Substack, Instagram, and YouTube. Jessica is a former television reporter. She was CNN's chief White House correspondent during the Obama administration, and she was one of the first journalists to ditch mainstream media for social media. She started News Not Noise in 2018, and she's got deep insights into the challenges and opportunities facing independent journalists, newsfluencers, and

• 0:53Kara Swisher?

  content creators during this time of waning trust in legacy news institutions. I spoke with Yellen earlier this year in front of a live audience at an event hosted by the Center for Journalism Ethics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. We need institutions that actually defend the principles and practices of good journalism with real accountability, transparency, and ethics, and the Center for Journalism Ethics has been doing exactly that for 17 years. But they also need help to tackle some of the next set of challenges to support journalism that does that work. Donate at go.wisc.edu/ethics. That's go.wisc.edu/ethics.

• 1:36Kara Swisher?

  All right, let's get to my conversation with Jessica Yellen. Our expert question comes from Ben Smith, the co-founder and editor-in-chief of Semaphore. Try not to eat too much turducken, and stick around.

• 1:55Kara Swisher?

  Support for this show comes from The Guardian and their new show, Stateside, where journalists Kai Wright and Carter Sherman use the entire independent reporting resources of The Guardian to slow down the news and And wrestle with the questions we all have about what is actually happening in the world. Join Kai and Carter three times a week as they utilize all the reporting resources a Guardian has across news, international coverage, climate, culture, wellness, and more. And the Guardians, not owned by a billionaire, they fearlessly report the facts without interference. Go to theguardian.com/stateside to learn more and listen wherever you get your podcasts or watch on YouTube. That's theguardian.com/stateside.

• 2:39Kara Swisher?

  Support for this show comes from Odoo. Running a business shouldn't feel like surviving a software group project. One app for accounting, another for inventory, another for sales, and somehow, none of them ever talk to each other. That's where Odoo comes in. An all-in-one business management software that brings every part of your business together. From sales and accounting to inventory and marketing, all in one powerful platform. No messy integrations, no bouncing between tabs, and best of all, no spreadsheets. Stop managing software and start managing your business with one unified system. Try it today for free at Odoo.com/kara. That's O-D-O-O dot com slash Kara.

• 3:22Speaker 01

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• 3:54Kara Swisher?

  Thank, Jessica, thank you for coming on, and thank you to the Center for Journalism Ethics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison for hosting this conversation. I was here a couple of years ago for my book, which was really wonderful. It's a wonderful school. So Jessica, you recently said we're in, quote, "an information war right now." I mean, we've been in it for a while, actually, as far as I can tell. So talk about what it is, who's on which side, who's winning, and how do you expect the war to play out over the next few years?

• 4:26Speaker 02

  First, it's a pleasure to be in conversation with you. Thank you for everything you do to defend the truth. I think it's, you know, it's a very big landscape. In my world, I do my work on social media. The people who are winning the war on social media are people who understand that it's an environment built for virality, not voracity. Meaning, they know how to get your attention by doing the things that work. And that is truth-agnostic, right? So, it's people who know how to perform on social are winning. People who are backed by huge amounts of invisible money are winning. People who are, well, not people, but bots, right? Machines. That's in the digital landscape of social media.

• 5:09Speaker 02

  In the larger media landscape, I mean, we're at a moment where there's so much change. It seems increasingly billionaires who care about getting a message out are the ones who are increasingly controlling traditional mass media. And we're gonna have to see how that plays out and how those two things interact. I mean, for the first time this year, more people will get their news in America from social media than from any other source. That's a tectonic shift.

• 5:36Kara Swisher?

  Right.

• 5:37Speaker 02

  And some of the traditionals have not been, you know, adept at capturing that audience and figuring out how to do that transition.

• 5:43Kara Swisher?

  So, when you say the billionaires are buying them up, that's a different kind of war. It's a sort of war of wealth over everything else. What do you think their goals are? And in this case, you're talking about Jeff Bezos buying the Washington Post and basically driving it into a wall on a daily basis. He does. I'm sorry, it's terrible. He's ruined the product. But that's, you know, it's his business, it's his money. He wants to have a ridiculous gaudy wedding in Venice, that's his right. Fine. If he looks like an idiot, that's okay by me.

• 6:17Kara Swisher?

  And then the Ellison's are certainly trying to do the same at Paramount and presumably CNN, which is the it's not the rumor, that's what they're aiming for. So talk about what the goal here, if it's a war, what is the actual goal?

• 6:33Speaker 02

  Listen, you have to go back to the founding of America and our founders protected the free press as the only private business in the Constitution that's protected because it was seen as so vital to ensuring we have a durable democracy and informing our citizens. So if the goal of the press is to ensure we have an informed citizenry, then buying up the the press is to push one's view of our country onto people, in my view. It's it's to push a particular perspective on information. And that doesn't mean everything that we're going to see from pick your person, the Ellison's, or necessarily from the Murdochs

• 7:14Speaker 02

  is going to be any flavor in every iteration. But I do think that we see that they're deeply skewing coverage at Fox News. They're doing the same at the New York Post. And it's inform it's helping drive polarization, it's helping drive divisiveness, it's turning Americans on each other. It's not just those people, but we can't not acknowledge what they're doing.

• 7:43Kara Swisher?

  One of the things I had an observation about is a lot of what's being bought are dying institutions. So what's the difference?

• 7:50Speaker 02

  So can I step back and give you like a structural look at how I think this is happening? So I people increasingly are getting their news on social media and especially young people and going forward, future generations are there, right? A lot of what they're getting is coming from people who are picking news from legacy. So while legacy media might be less dominant and relevant to young people, they don't know that those stories are fundamentally being shaped by the choices that traditional media is making, because it's not just in story framing, but story choice. What are they even choosing to investigate? And then, social creators like me will go to the New York Times, or go to CNN, and take parts of what they've made and put it out on social.

• 8:35Speaker 02

  So, folks who are buying these dying institutions, understand, I think, at a certain level, that they're the, they rule the sea, right? They might not be in all quarters of the ocean, but they're creating the fundamental food that feeds everything in this ocean. And so, I think it's kind of, they're buying the source material to keep putting out their worldview.

• 8:59Kara Swisher?

  And what do you imagine the worldview being? I mean, and what's the goal, what is, when I say what's the goal of the war, what is the goal of the, what is their goal?

• 9:10Speaker 02

  Listen, I can't know for sure, but it sure seems like they have a big interest in ensuring that the current leadership stays in power. This current leadership is, put aside any ideological issues, waving away regulations, making it a wonderful environment to do a lot of business that couldn't get done before, paving the way for, this is your space, you know, just changes in tech without any, you know, government interference at all. So, I think it's making the rich richer.

• 9:39Kara Swisher?

  So, one of the centerpieces of this, of course, is President Trump, who has been at war with fact-based journalism for a long time. It's sort of part of his brand, from the beginning, fake news and everything else. He's relentlessly attacked news organizations and extracted financial gains from them, and not just rhetorically, also in the courts and via threats, via the FCC. Talk about what effect it has on journalists and how those attacks affect the way reporting is perceived by regular citizens, because it does sink in after a while.

• 10:09Speaker 02

  I think the people are divided. And I think that there's now, first of all, what I get more than anything else from my own audience is skepticism. So the number one question I get is, is this true? And they'll forward me something. And it can be something that I think is extremely obviously true, or obviously untrue. And people... Even news consumers have lost faith in their own ability to discern what's real. Part of that's AI, and they'll say, is this real or AI? But it's not only that. And I think that's partly a Trump effect. Piled on with the fact that the left is constantly telling people, there's disinformation, beware of propaganda. And so audiences fundamentally think they're being savvy if they disbelieve. So that's on one side.

• 10:54Speaker 02

  And then I find in sort of like the MAGA world of the online space, just constant relentless discrediting of whatever an official story is. So audiences are in this like never ending, they're just so blackpilled, you know that saying?

• 11:11Kara Swisher?

  Yeah.

• 11:12Speaker 02

  That they just disbelieve across the board. And certainly, when it's the left questioning what's coming out from this administration as well. You ask, what does that do to reporters? You know, it sort of depends where they sit and what they're covering. But you got to have your ducks in a row. You got to be able to defend what you've said. And I think that, I will say, I do see a lot of bravery, I think. People who are taking, you know, uncomfortable risks. But they also have to, you know, be careful about what they're doing. There's some fear. There's real fear these days.

• 11:46Kara Swisher?

  Among journalists.

• 11:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:48Kara Swisher?

  Here in this country.

• 11:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:50Kara Swisher?

  It's usually the case in other countries in conflict.

• 11:51Speaker 02

  No, I know journalism nonprofits that have worked across the globe to defend journalism, and now they're working here. They do outreach and trainings on how to stay safe and how to protect your cyber footprint and all that. And journalists talk among themselves about, you know, they fear violence, you know, could they be targeted by the public? And there's, you know, fear of worse. Now that, you know, Comey has been indicted, there's fear that journalists will come next.

• 12:19Kara Swisher?

  They will come next. When you, when you think about the effect of it, is it just the repetition of fake news? Ultimately, one of the prime ability of propaganda is repetitiveness. Constant repetition of something true or not ultimately sinks into people.

• 12:35Speaker 02

  You're asking, why do people disbelieve? I do think it's the repetition, and it's also... The White House's extremely effective use of social media. And, and actually, I think the right has been great about social media. So it's, it's saying things are fake and then it's showing you visually a different narrative.

• 12:54Kara Swisher?

  Mm hmm.

• 12:55Speaker 02

  And then presenting narratives that appear real but aren't. And, and pulling back the curtain, Trump is great at that, right? He'll put out a fake meme or video that you know is untrue, but it's showing you. If the White House is creating AI content that's BS, what, what is real? You know, it just seeps into your consciousness that nothing can be trusted.

• 13:18Kara Swisher?

  So as you noted, more Americans are getting their news from social and video platforms than TV news, news sites and apps. The social media video platforms are governed by algorithms, obviously, that can be tweaked to favor certain perspectives or shadow ban topics. But we have no visibility into how algorithms operate. Talk about your experience with algorithms, because you spent more time dealing with them. And what are the implications of having these tech CEOs effectively control the news we get?

• 13:48Speaker 02

  It's extremely difficult to do news on these platforms. I started in 2018. I was one of the only people talking about news and it was so easy to grow then. And, you know, things have changed at different. You can, you can literally sense in a day when an algorithm shift has happened because you come to internalize what works. You know what works, your style, this is what clicks. All of a sudden, that's just tanking, right? And you have to make changes and adapt. We don't have any visibility into, and it's not one algorithm, right? There are many algorithms and they interact in ways that catch people, catch certain accounts and can end up having the effect of suppressing the account. And that has happened to me at various times.

• 14:33Kara Swisher?

  Over what? Give me an example.

• 14:35Speaker 02

  I mean, I've been on the platform since 2018. And so, you know, prior to COVID, I would grow 100,000 in, you know, no time at all, in months. And then I've been stuck basically at the same level for a year. I've had one video that was viewed 5 million times and 90% of it was non-followers. In that scenario, you end up growing. That's what causes growth. Non-followers see your content, they start following. Not happening, shrinkage. Now, why? Nobody can explain it to me. I'm lucky enough to have people inside who will talk to me and try to give me guidance and try to help. They don't know why either. They think it's weird. So, it's like, you know, I have audience members telling me, "I searched your name and I literally cannot find you."

• 15:17Speaker 02

  So, some people, it should be that they'll write "K A R" and you're famous, so Kara Swisher comes up instantly. But shadow ban, which is the term we use, means I'll type your name and I might have to type out your full name for it to come up, or maybe it won't come up at all. And people are telling me that they can't find me, or that they'll forward my account, they want to forward a post and the button to forward it doesn't exist anymore. So, what is this? Well, the organization says they don't shadow ban, that they don't target accounts, and yet I'm living this experience. Sometimes I go through this for a period of months and then all of a sudden, something goes away. It's like a cold clears up. I have no idea what it is.

• 16:00Kara Swisher?

  Should there be algorithmic transparency laws in place?

• 16:03Speaker 02

  100%. I mean, this is, these are utilities. This is how we communicate. These are media platforms. The idea that they're not treated like media platforms is, it's a weird quirk of how the internet emerged, but we need to have the political courage to, you know, regulate them.

• 16:21Kara Swisher?

  So, why isn't that there? I mean, ultimately, we know what's in a Twinkie now, but not for a long time, didn't. Didn't, and it was protected.

• 16:28Speaker 02

  I mean, look at the campaign donations. Just, it's not how our politics works. I was hopeful that at a certain point, when we realized how dangerous some of the algorithms were for young kids and for, you know, self-esteem and blah, blah, blah, there'd be enough of a public outcry to pressure for change. But not with this administration, and not anytime soon.

• 16:53Kara Swisher?

  So, we're seeing, you know, the more AI-generated content. And one company recently boasted it has 5,000 AI-generated podcasts and only costs about a dollar to produce an episode. The AI-generated video slop is all over social media. In fact, I think there's, I think Face Meta is going to do a service that's just going to be AI slop, essentially. And it's easy to see how it can fuel misinformation. Talk about AI-generated news content when so many news consumers feel overwhelmed.

• 17:23Speaker 02

  So, AI-generated content is...

• 17:26Speaker 02

  Difficult because very soon we're going to be at a place where it's going to be impossible to tell. Maybe we're there now. When I am dealing with visuals from foreign war zones, where we don't have trusted sources on the ground, I sometimes just can't post it because I don't know. You know, I'm, I err on the side of caution, but if we have no visual verifiers that we trust there, it's impossible to tell what these videos, if these videos are real. So that's already impacted my coverage. And then I get forwarded things all the time that I'm not comfortable posting if I can't tell the source because who knows?

• 18:02Kara Swisher?

  Right.

• 18:03Speaker 02

  So it, it really, it crimps my style. Like, there's a lot of stuff that's, I'm like, oh, this would go so viral, I would love to post it. And it's so interesting, but I just can't confirm it.

• 18:12Kara Swisher?

  So you recently wrote a piece for The Atlantic describes the current information ecosystem wherein as an awkward adolescence of a media revolution, and you promised some innovations to help usher in a more mature system, especially for independent journalists and their audience. Let's discuss that. Independent, talk about why you think we're in an awkward adolescence. And what age, like 12, 13?

• 18:32Speaker 02

  Maybe 15. I think that, you know, we all, people who care about the future of news, spend a lot of time hannering and bemoaning the state of journalism, the collapse of revenue models for traditional media, the lack of public engagement with the news, the fact that algorithms are destroying truth and all this, without actually sitting down and saying, okay, let's try to be creative and innovate some solutions. Anytime I've tried to sit, until recently, this has changed in the last six months, but until the last six months, and I've been doing this for like eight years now, whenever I try to pitch solutions, I'm silenced by people telling me how bad the situation is. So I decided, you know what, I'm just gonna come up with some ideas. Now, I think that the media revolution

• 19:17Speaker 02

  is, we, we are in this transition to a new form where it's on social. And everything's gone where we shifted from trust being in the institutions to trust lying with the individuals.

• 19:30Kara Swisher?

  Creators.

• 19:31Speaker 02

  Right, so we've seen that shift in trust, but no systems have been stood up to help A, resource those creators and independent journalists, or help audiences discover ones that connect to their values. So the way I, a good parallel, it's imperfect, but it's, it fits, is the studio system back in the day. Long time ago in Hollywood, if you were a celebrity or star, you worked for a studio. If your studio didn't want to make your film, you're not in a film. Then the studio system breaks up and everybody's their own entity, but they needed agents and lawyers and reps and people to sort of pull things together and create a new ecosystem. That's where we are.

• 20:12Kara Swisher?

  So you talked for an independent off-platform certification system to help identify fact-based creators. Explain the mechanics of a certification system. And second, you said fact-checking doesn't work because it's become politicized. Why would this be different? I mean, Trump would immediately call it fake news if he didn't like it, so.

• 20:30Speaker 02

  Okay, so the first part is, the idea is sort of like a nonprofit entity, think a Wikipedia-type environment, where there are a set of standards that define what evidence-based information is. It's about a process, right? How do you check your sources? What kind of sources do you use? Transparency, disclosures. Do you change the information when the information changes? Basic journalistic principles. And creators could apply to present their process and get certified, get a training. A majority of creators say they don't know how to check a fact, that they don't know how journalists source information. They would like the training. So it provides a training.

• 21:13Speaker 02

  And then if you pass, you get some sort of Better Business Bureau seal of approval. It wouldn't, you know, it wouldn't necessarily live on the platforms, but if you care, you can go to this place and see which creators have the seal of approval and follow those people. Or if you have a post you're looking at and you don't know if this person's full of it or not, you could go check. Now, it'll be imperfect, but...

• 21:41Speaker 02

  We need some options, and this is basically what magazines did, right? Magazines decided, back in the day, these are my universe of freelancers that I trust, who live by our standards, and as long as they do, they can be in print with us, and when they violate our standards, they aren't.

• 21:56Kara Swisher?

  Right.

• 21:57Speaker 02

  Now, Trump would dismiss it, sure, and Trump would not read The Atlantic. Trump would not, obviously, read The Nation. That doesn't mean it can't exist. You might need multiple certifications. Maybe MAGA has their own certification. Maybe people who care about, you know, The New York Times, I don't know.

• 22:16Kara Swisher?

  They could have their own, like, extra mean trans people. Please, subscribe.

• 22:20Speaker 02

  I mean, whatever your worldview is, you could have your own, but my approach is, this is not for a particular ideological bent, it's for people who subscribe to the, who use a process that we agree on is evidence-based.

• 22:35Kara Swisher?

  Evidence-based. So your second idea is for creators to team up so they can share resources, cross-promote, maybe offer bundled subscriptions. But talk about this idea of aversion, because people, the idea of bundling and unbundling, it goes on and on, the back and forth. How do you survive when there's too many choices?

• 22:53Speaker 02

  Well, it is a fear that, you know, I make most of my revenue from Substack, and there is a fear that at some point, the whole audience will be like, enough, I'm subscribed to too many places, and, or that you hit a ceiling. And the idea is, A, I think, bringing people together, creators who are like-valued, in my case, it would be evidence-based creators, right, who have sort of a similar process, could team up and be an Avengers. In other words, if somebody follows me, and they want to know who to trust on nutrition, it would be the person in my network, right? Like, we're like-valued, we operate in similar ways, so you can trust this group. So it's a signal to the public. In teaming up, we would improve everyone's discovery through cross-promotion, maybe

• 23:38Speaker 02

  bundling. Also, you know, you get so much advantage from the conversations and the cross-pollination of ideas. We could share an editorial center. For example, every, I cover everything, because I'm news. Anytime RFK says something, I have to go research the thing if I didn't know about it already. There are creators out there who-

• 23:57Kara Swisher?

  It's not very hard.

• 23:58Speaker 02

  I know.

• 23:59Kara Swisher?

  Makes it up.

• 24:00Speaker 02

  I know. I just want to know the science part, you know, that part?

• 24:02Kara Swisher?

  Yeah.

• 24:03Speaker 02

  Which he doesn't talk about. So if there are people who are already expert in that area and they're in my network, I could ping them easily and say, right.

• 24:10Kara Swisher?

  So you create this sort of A-team essentially?

• 24:13Speaker 02

  And then for the creators, the benefit would be not just, A, we're so isolated, it's very hard. So having some community would be nice.

• 24:23Kara Swisher?

  Mm-hmm.

• 24:24Speaker 02

  But also, like amortize, it's not just legal, it's healthcare.

• 24:28Kara Swisher?

  Mm-hmm.

• 24:28Speaker 02

  You know, healthcare's about to go up, right? What are we all gonna do?

• 24:31Kara Swisher?

  Mm-hmm.

• 24:32Speaker 02

  And then, you know, growth hacking, not everybody, a lot of these creators are just a smart person who lives in the middle of the country and doesn't know a media attorney or a growth hacker, or how to find those folks. I shouldn't say, I know people in the middle of the country do know all these things.

• 24:47Kara Swisher?

  Right.

• 24:47Speaker 02

  But the point is, we could help with discovery and resourcing everyone.

• 24:54Kara Swisher?

  Sure. So this idea that you also had as a plea for legacy news organizations to collaborate instead of compete with creators. Talk about that because in theory, part of the appeal of creators is they're not beholden to these companies. And it's something I have pushed Vox very hard on. And one of the things that Scott and I did is we went around and they all wanted to own. And we were like, well, we don't want to be owned, so goodbye, kind of things, and shut down the discussions. But it was really interesting to sort of get Vox in the frame of mind of collaborating rather than owning. And now they've, they sign a deal a day, essentially on the same map that we originally proposed to them.

• 25:30Speaker 02

  Well, you are the exemplar of this. Like you were the trailblazer.

• 25:33Kara Swisher?

  But why don't they want to do that, what collaborate? I know why, but actually, I don't. I don't understand why they need to own things.

• 25:40Speaker 02

  There's two different things there, I think. One is, in terms of owning it, I think it's what they've always done.

• 25:44Kara Swisher?

  Yes, correct.

• 25:45Speaker 02

  So that would be a change.

• 25:46Kara Swisher?

  Mm-hmm.

• 25:47Speaker 02

  So how could they do that? It's sort of just baked into the bureaucracy. And then in terms of why won't they partner, my idea of partnership is... Many days, I'm explaining a story that the New York Times broke.

• 26:01Kara Swisher?

  Mm-hmm.

• 26:01Speaker 02

  So why not actually partner with the New York Times and have them team up with creators who do that on the regular and drive people back to their publication? So that they have an alliance with people who have already built a social following, know how to make content that connects on social, and push out their content that way. Why they don't do this? I think that there's probably a measure of snobbery, that there's a desire not to partner with silly creators, is my guess. I don't know. What do you think?

• 26:34Kara Swisher?

  I think the penny is dropping. I always try to argue, why do you need to own this? What is it of value to you when it's more value to me? And why don't we just collaborate and then we each get what we need? Right?

• 26:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 26:47Kara Swisher?

  They don't need to own it. I don't know why they think they need to own it.

• 26:49Speaker 02

  I think there's also a perception that they have to build their own channel, and that if they feed another entity, it's taking from their own channel, which is very different. In the social world, you know, one plus one is four. You know, teaming up with others builds your channel. But I don't think they fully speak social and digitally.

• 27:07Kara Swisher?

  Right, right. It's a competitive thing, because it was interesting, because for Scott Free August, I did a lot of people who had big podcasts, and then we traded feeds.

• 27:15Speaker 02

  Right.

• 27:16Kara Swisher?

  And everyone's like, oh, they're competitors. I'm like, no, they're not.

• 27:18Speaker 02

  And you grow from that? Did you grow it?

• 27:20Kara Swisher?

  Correct. Yeah, Scott was very upset by that. Too bad. I was just trying to prove to him I could live without him, just on a daily basis. I need to do that. But the idea of collaboration, it's interesting of who owns what, right? The idea of IP and ownership and everything else has to change, in other words.

• 27:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, they have to loosen the hold on their reins, right? Because they're putting their stories out there anyway. They may as well get some benefit from having their story all over social. It should drive back to their website, or to their journalist, or something.

• 27:49Kara Swisher?

  So on a more basic level, you've talked about the need to teach news consumers how to tell something is true or not. In some cases, it means learning how to use Google, or how to tell AI chatbots hallucinating or not. What do you wish everyone knew about how to do it? How to do that in terms of the consumers? Because it's a big lift for consumers to have. It's like having to like examine your meat to see if it's rotten, right?

• 28:12Speaker 02

  To some extent.

• 28:13Kara Swisher?

  Yeah.

• 28:13Speaker 02

  So I have a friend from college who constantly sends me TikToks with a screaming, all caps note, "Why aren't you reporting this?" 17 exclamation points. And it's always from something like FireDog789. And I look at the profile and I'm like, who is FireDog789? And I, there's no information, no links, no information. And I write him back, I'm like, why do you trust this poster? And he won't engage on that. He's like, no, no, why aren't you reporting this information? So the first thing is getting people to learn to check who's telling them the thing. And it's not that, you know, click on their link, see what their profile says, pick a few words in their profile and drop that into Google and see if you can find their LinkedIn. See if you can find where they've worked.

• 28:56Speaker 02

  See if you can find what they follow or who they are affiliated with. Something that gives you a sense of who this is as an individual or an institution. So that is like 101.

• 29:09Speaker 02

  And I, I'm stunned by the number of people who don't do that. Or commenters who just trust a comment without even looking at what this thing is. So that's the foundation of it. I think the certification system would help if people had a place they could go to see if this person's full of it or not. And then the Google problem is a really serious one because often when I'm asked, is this true? I'll, I'll give an answer and then I'll say, hey, just so you know how to do this. If I were to Google this, here are the search terms I would have used, assuming that that was the issue. And nine times out of 10, someone will write back and say, oh, no, I know how to search it, but Google gives me 20 million results and how do I know which to believe?

• 29:53Speaker 02

  And so, and I trust you. And so part of the challenge is right now, because creators have so much trust. We're bearing a lot of the brunt of this. Yeah. And so it's a weird dilemma. Like, I get asked now, if someone will tell me, my son needs an operation, and two different doctors are giving two different pieces of advice, what should I do? And I'm like, I'm not an expert in this. And they say, well, I trust you, and you're smart at getting information. Can you help? And to me, that speaks profoundly to how unsure the public is about the information they're getting, about voices of authority, and where to go for trust. And it's why I think these ecosystems are needed. We'll be back in a minute.

• 30:51Kara Swisher?

  Support for this show comes from The Guardian. Trying to locate news sources that reliably separate fact from fiction can seem like looking for a needle in a haystack these days. Social media feeds, cable news, and subscription-based news outlets might be able to give you one version of the news, but not in the way that you need. You want news fast, but slow enough to actually absorb the information. Stateside with Kai Wright and Carter Sherman is here to do just that. The podcast tries to slow down the news and wrestle with the questions regarding the world at large at your own pace. Three times a week, hosts Kai Wright and Carter Sherman bring their expertise together to showcase different and engaging perspectives regarding the world today. They will use their collective knowledge to discuss the news, international affairs, climate, culture, sports,

• 31:36Kara Swisher?

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• 31:56Kara Swisher?

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• 32:39Kara Swisher?

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• 33:09Kara Swisher?

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• 33:51Kara Swisher?

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• 34:15Kara Swisher?

  Let's talk about the business side of things. You said when you talk to potential investors, you often get sort of a sneering cynicism from elites who think regular people don't care about truth or facts. Talk about that attitude, what you've heard, and explain what bothers you about it besides your assholes.

• 34:32Speaker 02

  So this was until the last six months. Something has changed this year, but endlessly. And I still get it a little bit where I meet with, I'm constantly called by academics or policy people or people, startup gurus, and then potential people are looking to invest in media, and that's what they say all the time. They'll have the conversation of what's needed and what can be built, and then we get to a point in the conversation and they'll go, can I just bottom line it? People don't care about facts, do they? And I always find it sort of confounding, like, we've just spent 30 minutes talking about how to build a thing for facts, so why? And it's stuck with them. They can't get past it. And, you know, yes, that, yes, people do. It might not, it's not everyone.

• 35:16Speaker 02

  You're not going to ever save everyone. But we can't afford to let this go. It is actually foundational to the survival of our democracy, and there's an audience. So if at least a third of Americans care about checking a thing, that's a good audience? Like, that would be a business, right? Just because it's not everyone doesn't mean it's not no one. But I was, I've been getting this for so long, I'm kind of used to it now, and in the last few months, I'm seeing a turnaround where people are starting to say, we have to, we have to presume there is an audience and do something.

• 35:52Kara Swisher?

  So you have almost 800,000 followers on Instagram, but you've pointed out before, social media views don't translate into revenue. This is what I talk to a lot of people about. But newsletters on platforms like Substack, Beehive, and Go's can be lucrative. Talk about running a profitable, independent news business look for you. How many people on your team? What do you spend most time on? What platforms get the most engagement, profitability?

• 36:15Speaker 02

  So, most of my revenue comes from Substack, and where I do a newsletter and I release interviews. And thank God for them, because prior to that, it was really hard. I can get crazy views on Instagram, and it's still hard to figure out how to monetize that, because Instagram barely pays, even though they say they do. Every so often, I get a check for $22 after, like, 67 million views. And... So what I've done is I use Instagram as a top of funnel mechanism to push people to the Substack, right? And it's worked. That's been really effective. And in fact, Substack said, gosh, you were so good at that. We're trying to find more Instagram people to start doing that.

• 36:56Speaker 02

  So, and I've found they're willing to, you know, some of them say, we're paying you because you do all this work on Instagram, too. And it's like, we support what you're doing and recognize it's a cross-platform thing. It means, though, that I have to spend a lot of time on my newsletter when my whole ethos and what I come from is video, right? Like, I was a TV reporter. So I'm very torn in that way. Like, I have to focus on the thing that's driving the revenue, keeping the business going, but what I'm sort of known for, and my sweet spot, is doing the stuff that I would do on Instagram. So that's really tricky. And, you know.

• 37:32Kara Swisher?

  YouTube?

• 37:33Speaker 02

  So YouTube's where things are at now. And I have to really, really, I have a YouTube channel, and we started there, and it's growing, and that's where I have to double down.

• 37:42Kara Swisher?

  And where presumably revenue will start to.

• 37:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 37:45Kara Swisher?

  Yeah.

• 37:46Speaker 02

  And you also, they're news-friendly. They're not throttling news. They want news.

• 37:50Kara Swisher?

  Right.

• 37:51Speaker 02

  So it's a much more, it's more aligned there. Let's hope.

• 37:55Kara Swisher?

  And then, and then where else do you get engagement from? LinkedIn? From what?

• 38:01Speaker 02

  I mean, I'm on LinkedIn, I'm on Threads. It's not, I'm on Facebook, but it's.

• 38:04Kara Swisher?

  Twitter?

• 38:05Speaker 02

  I lurk on Twitter, I don't post. Yeah. You know, the one place that I never really committed to is TikTok, because when I was a White House correspondent, I had all these national security sources who told me not to go on there. And so I never wanted to drive audience there, but it obviously is the place where you get the biggest growth and return. And now who knows what it'll be.

• 38:29Kara Swisher?

  So every episode, we get an expert to send us a question to our guest. Let's hear yours.

• 38:34Speaker 03

  Jessica, it's Ben Smith from Semaphore, who knew you back when you were part of the lame stream media and I'm now in a taxi in New York City. I guess my question for you, you were on doing journalism on Instagram long before anybody was calling themselves a newsfluencer and taking money from complicated places and, you know, emulating Joe Rogan. And I guess I'm curious what you feel like you've learned that those newcomers to the space that you've kind of pioneered, or at least that other journalists who are leaving many years after you, legacy places, to do their own thing. What do you feel like you've learned in these years that they should know?

• 39:14Kara Swisher?

  Yeah, so everybody's entering the picture. I get a call a day from a different person at a major news organization who wants to go out on their own. I've helped a whole bunch of them, so much so I could do a business of helping people. And I have lots of different advice, some of which is, great idea, some of which is, stay where you are and just hold out until the end of your career. What is your, what would you say, because there's a lot of people now doing this. Some are incredibly successful. Mehdi Hassan strikes me as someone who's done really well, and many others. There's lots of people, right, left, center. What is your biggest piece of advice since you were a pioneer, OG?

• 39:51Speaker 02

  Thank you. I also have to say, Ben Smith was a pioneer, too. He also went out and innovated, and credit to him. First, for traditional journalists, you've got to show a little bit of yourself. It's very hard for a lot of people who come from newspapers, or, you know, traditional media. My audience knows my dog. My audience sometimes knows what's going on in my life. You've got to show a little skin. I don't mean that literally.

• 40:17Kara Swisher?

  But you can do that if you want.

• 40:20Speaker 02

  You also could do very well with that, in fact.

• 40:21Kara Swisher?

  Yes, you could, some people.

• 40:23Speaker 02

  Well, sure, depends on the situation. Transparency helps. In other words, I get more love and engagement when I get something wrong and correct it and explain what I did than anything else. People love showing the process, being real. And so be more, talk to your audience about your work. Ask them what they want from you. They will tell you. So if you find all of a sudden something's not working, ask them why. There will be an answer in the mix. And...

• 40:55Speaker 02

  Figure out your revenue early. Like, you need an owned platform. Don't... Scott Galloway told me this years ago. He was like, "Do not build your business on Meta. Find another place to build your business." And that is still true.

• 41:06Kara Swisher?

  Yeah. So, when they come to you, what do you think their key thing is doing? Finding the right platform, right? Or figuring it out? Owning their own thing?

• 41:18Speaker 02

  Owning their audience somewhere where they can monetize it.

• 41:21Kara Swisher?

  Keeping costs in line?

• 41:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, figuring out who your team is and what your structure is. I mean, that's, you know, think about back office, healthcare, insurance, all these things you have to do in order to be in business. It's a lot of moving pieces. And so, define what your lane is in content. Narrowly enough, I mean, find a space that's going to get engagement, but don't try to take on everything at once because you're going to have to be doing a lot of work, heavy lifting behind the scenes to get your business working.

• 41:54Kara Swisher?

  What do you think the mistake people make? I think they do too many things. They're like, "I'm going to start a podcast. I'm going to do this." I'm like, "Huh huh, good luck with that." Kind of stuff.

• 42:02Speaker 02

  Well, I'm constantly asked, "Why don't you, you know, stand this up?" And I'm like, "I don't have the time or bandwidth." So, it is, it's picking a space and doubling down on what's working. So, if I were starting today, I'd start on YouTube. It monetizes, it's friendly to facts, and it's a place where you can reach audience and grow. And then I would also create a newsletter or a community where you have direct engagement with the audience. People are dying for in-real-life engagement. I show up in cities and say, "Hey, news not noizers, I'm going to be in town, want to meet at a diner." People love that. Like, building that kind of thing helps, but you really need to focus on where you're going to make that revenue so you can stay in business.

• 42:40Kara Swisher?

  Absolutely. That's the critical. You have to make money because then you can tell people to buck off.

• 42:44Speaker 02

  As it turns out.

• 42:45Kara Swisher?

  As it turns out. I always say that to people. You need to make money. And I think what's hard for a lot of people is they live in environments where they never have had to think about that, which is interesting. It's always interesting to... Like, a lot of TV people, for example. And one came to me, it's like, "What am I going to do?" And I said, "Well, you make what?" I don't know, $5 million a year? Like, can you attribute? Well, in any case, it's not gonna, that's not gonna keep up those kind of prices. And I was like, can you attribute your contribution to $10 million? Because it's gotta be your, plus you have staff, plus those town cars don't pay for themselves and everything else. And, and they, I was like, there's no way you make $10 million for this company. So you need to go.

• 43:30Kara Swisher?

  You're gonna be gone. And it was a really interesting, because they don't think of things. And that's the higher paid people, but even people on the lower scale. When they overspend, their only option, and I can think of a couple of organizations, is to have a rich benefactor who just wants to use you for influence. Right. Which, there's many of those being stood up right now. Yes. And that's a different story. That means you're just, again, a fluffer for wealthy people.

• 43:57Kara Swisher?

  We'll be back in a minute.

• 44:09Kara Swisher?

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• 44:51Kara Swisher?

  And listeners to this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to help get your job the premium status it deserves at indeed.com/podcast. Just go to indeed.com/podcast right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. That's indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need the right hire fast? Then this is the job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs.

• 45:20Speaker 01

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• 45:51Speaker 04

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• 46:18Kara Swisher?

  So before I wrap, I've got a couple of quick questions about AI and the problem of slop. You know, it can be a real problem, like speaking of the LA Times, the experiment that showed AI will do things like explain why the KKK wasn't so bad after all. When you think of the good things it could do, because AI agents, they can do editing, they can do a little reporting. When I was at the Wall Street Journal, I'm like, why am I writing earnings? A machine could do this.

• 46:43Speaker 02

  Right. Basic stuff.

• 46:45Kara Swisher?

  It's just math. It's just you write it down in a format. Do you see AI doing actual journalism? Or being used by journalists for data or et cetera?

• 46:55Speaker 02

  I think it could do the stenography part of journalism, like the White House briefing happened today, here's what was said, right? Where it just distills. I also think for social media, I would love it if I could say, I want to do a reel that has this information. Will you design and make the video? As if I am a chef and I give it the basic pieces and it could put it together. I would love that. It feels like it should be able to happen. It's not good when you try it.

• 47:20Kara Swisher?

  Not yet.

• 47:21Speaker 02

  Uh-uh. I think it can edit soon, hopefully, without hallucinating. And one of the things I miss most is the conversation I used to have with my colleagues in the newsroom about I'm here in this story and I'm thinking this, but I don't know where to go. And you have that dialogue and in the dialogue, you're like, ah, that's the kernel of the story.

• 47:39Kara Swisher?

  Right.

• 47:40Speaker 02

  If I could do that with an AI, then that would be amazing.

• 47:43Kara Swisher?

  Do you think you can?

• 47:44Speaker 02

  I probably could. I'm not, it's not consistently good at that. No.

• 47:49Kara Swisher?

  It's sycophantic.

• 47:50Speaker 02

  Or it's silly, or basic, or unsophisticated, or too political, or too polemical, or it doesn't quite get my vibe yet. And I would like that.

• 48:03Kara Swisher?

  So let's end by circling back on the idea of an information war. It's playing out on a battlefield owned by, as we know, the tech CEOs. Their incentives are engagement, profit, getting what they want from this administration. Fact-based news faces an uphill battle. They're being attacked from a legal point of view. They maybe won a small victory with Jimmy Kimmel, but it's quite small, I would say, because the economics are still the economics of what's happening to late-night television.

• 48:30Speaker 02

  Even though he got all those views?

• 48:32Kara Swisher?

  For now.

• 48:33Speaker 02

  Do you think the fact that Iger, I know he did the wrong thing at first, but eventually did stand up to Trump, could become contagious?

• 48:40Kara Swisher?

  Did he stand up?

• 48:42Speaker 02

  Well, Trump has said, we're gonna look into this and do something about it.

• 48:46Kara Swisher?

  I'm waiting for him to stand up. He's sort of, he's sort of got off on his knees.

• 48:51Speaker 02

  Sure. He put him back on the air.

• 48:54Kara Swisher?

  I don't think that was a particularly hard decision.

• 48:56Speaker 02

  You don't?

• 48:56Kara Swisher?

  No. No, I think it was ridiculous to have done so.

• 48:59Speaker 02

  Totally.

• 49:00Kara Swisher?

  This is someone I like.

• 49:01Speaker 02

  But it's still in defiance of Trump.

• 49:04Kara Swisher?

  Is it in defiance, or just, this is fucking ridiculous? This is, why are we letting this happen? I mean, you know, or it doesn't, it's not that hard to stand up. It really isn't. It really isn't.

• 49:15Speaker 02

  And yet, not for someone who has...

• 49:16Kara Swisher?

  No one's doing it, so where are all the people? I understand, but I don't see why it would be hard for a person at the end of their career with billions of dollars to stand up. Can always get on a plane, Bob. In any case, I have been doing a series of shows showing people like you, showing Oliver Darcy, or... Dave Takes Pictures, or Katie Drummond from Wired. That's a legacy New York station. She's reinvigorated with all kinds of innovations. I really get tired of this idea of media is dead.

• 49:44Speaker 02

  It's not dead.

• 49:45Kara Swisher?

  I want you to end on that. Talk about what you think the greatest benefit from all these independent creators are now, and also what you're most worried about.

• 49:54Speaker 02

  I think there's never been more opportunity to hear from different voices, different perspectives, people who want to do journalism, reach an audience, have the means to do it now. And you get different kinds of information out that way. And I really do think we're at the adolescence of a media revolution. At this exact moment, the snapshot gives a lot of anxiety to people in our business because it's changing. And so we have to adapt to new things. And that's scary. But the opportunity is there. And I think what scares me most is also the opportunity, which is that the responsible voices get drowned out by algorithms that are in search of, you know, drama and profit, and that money is all that matters.

• 50:38Speaker 02

  But what we need to do is find the people who have the values we have and care, and find ways to team up, and find those billionaires who want to start a new platform or back that kind of new ecosystem. Because the voices are there, the audience is there. And so we now just need the infrastructure.

• 50:57Kara Swisher?

  What's the thing you're most worried about?

• 50:58Speaker 02

  I'm most worried that the algorithms and these, you know, titans of tech will drown out the voices that are responsible.

• 51:05Kara Swisher?

  I would agree. And then the legal issues, of course, are another thing. I would just end on, just think about the system that is, in fact, dying. It wasn't necessarily perfect either, by the way. Someone's like, oh, it's so sad, all these networks are dying, this is dying. I'm like, you know, and let me caveat by saying, I have four children, three of them are young white men, okay? Like, I love a white, young white man, I think they're great. But, not, that sounded weird. But let me just say, it used to be run by a small group of non-diverse people on the Upper East Side of New York. And so, I'm not so sure what's coming is, some of it's scary, some of it's disturbing. What could come could be really interesting.

• 51:49Kara Swisher?

  And if there's more voices, there's always diversity. And diversity breeds all kinds of interesting things. And so, what it's replacing... Wasn't by any means perfect and in fact wasn't as good as we remember it. And so the issue is not to lie down and act like you're dead when you don't have to be. And that's really the most important thing. I always say to people, if you don't like being made to lie down, get the fuck up. Like, that's, you know what I mean? Like, that's the kind of thing.

• 52:18Speaker 02

  Do you talk to your kids this way?

• 52:19Kara Swisher?

  No, they're, they're, my kids are so nice. It's really weird. I don't know how that happened. But, but they're actually very discerning readers, I have to say. My kids, my older kids are very discerning. They, I think, I do, that's the last thing I don't know, and I have a lot of faith in young people. I do think the crazy people are 30 to 45. But, but the young people really, a lot of them really are much more discerning than you think. And they do understand, they grew up, if you recall, when we were growing up, I think we're similar ages, TV was stupid. It was the boob tube, the idiot box. And now it's so smart, it's so good. And I think that young people do have a discernment because they've grown up in this environment that is a lot stronger than you think.

• 53:00Kara Swisher?

  And maybe that, maybe they're the ones that really will make things better going forward. And the rest of us just need to, you know, die. So ultimately, but I do have great hopes for a lot of stuff in the end. So anyway, Jessica, thank you so much and thank you for the university.

• 53:27Kara Swisher?

  Thank you to the University of Wisconsin-Madison Center for Journalism Ethics for hosting this event. Today's show was produced by Christian Castor-Russell, Kateri Yokum, Michelle Aloy, Megan Burney, and Kalen Lynch. Nishat Kurwa is Vox Media's executive producer of podcasts. Special thanks to Bradley Sylvester. Our engineers are Fernando Aruda and Rick Kwan, and our theme music is by Track academics. If you're already following this show, you're a media pioneer. If not, you're losing the information war. Go wherever you listen to podcasts, search for On with Kara Swisher, and hit follow. Thanks for listening to On with Kara Swisher from Podium Media, New York Magazine, the Vox Media Podcast Network, and us. Happy Thanksgiving. We'll be back on Monday with more.