Reminder: Secure one of the last spots to TRB Audience Summit on Sept 17. We have a great group of top media leaders coming from a broad range of companies, including The New York Times, USA Today Co, People Inc, Hearst. Condé Nast, The Atlantic, The Associated Press, Business Insider, Bloomberg, The Wall Street Journal, Vox Media, Forbes, Advance Local, McClatchy, The BBC, The Real Deal, Skift, Apartment Therapy, Axios, The New York Post, The Daily Beast, D Magazine, Morning Brew and many more. Join us on Sept 17 in NYC.
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Today, a pair of conversations about the future of direction of media. First, Complex’s Moksha Fitzgibbons describes the how media’s value is often more often realized indirectly. Then, Wall Street Journal computational journalist John West on why the open web will live on as hobbyist communities. And on PvA, why Silicon Valley could have learned a thing or two from Dolly Parton when it comes to owning a narrative.
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“Let’s turn that attention into other areas that aren’t only advertising-based”
Media is still valuable, even if the traditional monetization and distribution mechanisms are breaking. The era of search and social traffic is over, and there’s little sign it will come back. Instead, most publishers I speak to are shoring up their traffic businesses while building the next business.
The details of the next business vary, but what connects them is these publishers are increasingly monetizing beyond the webpage. It was a tell when People Inc, the largest digital publisher, started reporting “non-session revenue.” (People Inc now makes the majority of its revenue off the webpage.) That means events, commerce, video, licensing and business lines that are not tied to getting people to a webpage to show them ads often sourced from third-party platforms.
Complex, which is now on by my count its fifth iteration, is a case in point. Complex was mostly an advertising business with growing events (ComplexCon) and commerce lines. It got a new lease on life after bouncing around ownership from Verizon (?!) to BuzzFeed when in 2024 it was bought and combined with NTWRK, the live shopping app. The business now is divided into content, commerce and experiences. The ambition is to have a roughly one-third split between the three.
“We’re monetizing the page as strongly as we can, but a lot of the monetization is coming on other platforms,” Complex president Moksha Fitzgibbons told me on The Rebooting Show. “It’s coming through video platforms and social platforms. It’s on you to figure out how to monetize there.”
This kind of organization is increasingly common. It changes the job of the media from being the main thing to a complement to other business lines. Complex still runs its media operation to make money through advertising and brand partnerships, but the media increases the value of the non-media businesses.
“The media role is to drive attention, love and talkability,” said Moksha. “Then it’s: Let’s turn that attention into other areas that aren’t only advertising-based.”
Complex expects to sell over 100,000 tickets to ComplexCon in Los Angeles next month, powered in large part by its media reach and audience connection.
“Fifteen years ago, the web was everything,” Moksha said. “It was the ice cream, the chocolate, the whipped cream and the cherry on top. Now it’s only a portion of what we do as a publisher.”
“We’re asking many of the wrong questions when it comes to AI”
The handwringing over the fate of the open web is real. Dead Internet Theory has moved from a fringe conspiracy to a possible outcome, intentional or not, as synthetic content overwhelms digital platforms. The removal of friction from the content creation process is an irresistible for most, and it meaningfully changes the economics of content creation. Human actors might make for a better Chinese microdrama, but using AI to drop costs by 90% is going to win.
John West, a computational journalist and the author of the upcoming The Internet Will Die, And So Will You, believes the old open web is a lost cause in the face of the AI tsunami of slop. Interestingly, AI could figure in a replacement for the open web in the form of customizable software that can tie together niche groups. For example, he created a tool that lets a small group share articles, convert them to PDFs and send them to a Kindle. It took a weekend and costs about $3 a month to operate.
“Of all the things that could replace the open web, the one I’m most optimistic about is a much more personal web,” John said in a conversation on PvA OT. “In some ways, it’s a hearkening back to a different version of the internet.
I see this in action with PvA FIeld Notes, a private social network we created to complement People vs Algorithms. It’s remarkable to see how much non-technical people can build fully functional software. It even has an ever-present AI companion, Linda, who supplies background information on topics and catalogs new feature development. It has an interactive game to create Venn diagrams. There’s a new podcast clipping feature. And it has a growing group of regulars. You should stop by our treehouse.
Most of these products will die from neglect or simply their limited value. But many will prove useful and act more like zines.
“I hope the hobbyist web comes back full force,” John said. “Bring back zines. Everything should be a zine. The early web was just zines—that’s all it was. It was people making things for their friends, and maybe a few other people.”
“Their view of the world is fundamentally anti-humanist”
Dolly Parton owned a very American narrative of being born poor but making something out of nothing through talent and hard work. It was a human story, a very American one at that. In contrast, tech tried to control the AI narrative and instead stoked backlash by revealing the deeply anti-humanist impulses at the heart of the project. Plus: A celebration of nerding out, from the Stick Guy to Emma Camp to David Senra.
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