Today: What the 60 Minutes meltdown says about the state of the media business, Nicholas Carlson on why Instagram is an essential counterpart to YouTube, John McDermott on the Clipping Industrial Complex and its discontents, and Anonymous Banker chews over People Inc’s AI hedge bid for MGM.
First, some upcoming TRB events to know about:
We have a lot going on at the Cannes Lions in two weeks. All week, I’ll be sending out text messages through the TRB Backchannel, powered by Subtext. These will focus on the carnival of capitalism that’s the true Cannes. Sign up for texts
I’ll be discussing AI’s brand problem on the CivicScience yacht with CivicScience CEO John Dick, Cloudflare chief strategy officer Stephanie Cohen and others. We are doing a live recording of The Rebooting Show at the Bloomberg House with Bloomberg CRO Christine Cook and HSBC’s global head of marketing for corporate and institutional banking Nicole German about how AI is changing marketing strategies but not as much as you’d think; and to close out the week, I’ll do another live recording with People Inc CEO Neil Vogel and Axios senior media correspondent Sara Fischer to figure out what media survives an agentic era. We are also holding a Riviera Edition Mixer. Get your invites.
On June 30 at 1pm, we are holding an Expert Session focused on how Vox Media has used AI and automation to weather the impact of search declines on its affiliate business. I’ll be joined by Vox Media head of commerce and affiliate Camilla Cho and Nucleus Links CEO Cornelius Frey for this interactive discussion. Reserve your spot
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Scott Pelley is a flawed protagonist. He’s overpaid, out of touch, and suffering from a pronounced martyr complex. The mano-a-mano act with his new boss was corporate seppuku. His New York Times interview was filled with grandiosity. He even complained about the free bagels.
Pelley also represents an important foundational element of journalism: The willingness to find a hill to die on in defense of journalistic principle. In j-school, we were counseled to have F-you money saved, in case or in preparation for when presented with a situation that would incur moral injury. This is part of the guild sensibility to both protect its creed and its own. Pelley stood up for his principles and colleagues. It’s admirable at a time when journalism overall needs to show more backbone under pressure from the Trump administration, tech oligarchs and AI.
The problem for Bari Weiss and her new 60 Minutes boss Nick Bilton is that newsrooms are a lot like locker rooms. The coach cannot lose the trust of the players. All signs point to that being the case at CBS like it was at The Washington Post under Will Lewis. Pelley was speaking for colleagues when he demanded “independence” from the editor-in-chief. That’s losing the room.
My view: The morality play is great narrative and a boon for media newsletters, but the real story is poor management. Running large organizations is a skill; running large organizations filled with journalists is life on hard mode. It’s difficult to see why David Ellison would want all this drama or find it helpful in closing the Warner Bros deal. Imagine what’s to come with CNN. No wonder CBS is knocking down reporting that Weiss will have her broadcast duties trimmed.
Alex’s view: "It feels like a lot of people are fired because they're not loyalists and a lot of people are hired because they are loyalists rather than their talent — and I haven't seen anything that screams like a vision."
Troy’s view: "If the style and the format of 60 Minutes is asking baby questions in a plodding way, then thank God someone's gonna come in and mix it up because that format doesn't fit a new generation of media consumers."
More on the 60 Minutes drama, why people hate AI and the inevitable move to AI regulation on the latest episode of People vs Algorithms.
A year after its launch, Dynamo’s Nicholas Carlson joined me to discuss what he’s learned in starting a YouTube-first video programmer. Dynamo is home to “Business Explains the World,” a documentary-style show on interesting business and economics topics. We’d spoken soon after Dynamo’s launch, so I had Nich back to reflect on Year 1.
Nich was candid about the difficulties inherent to running a fledgling business. The thread I see in the new crop of media startups like Dynamo is, even if they raise small amounts like Dynamo, they focus primarily on getting content-market fit. There's leverage in having makers, not monetizers or strategists, running the business.
“My passion and curiosity has to be the driving force for Business Explains the World, or it's not gonna work,” Nich told me.
Instagram is critical. When Dynamo launched, Nich thought LinkedIn would be a natural complement to YouTube. Only he’s not found that. Instead, Instagram is a critical channel, particularly in reaching a female-skewed audience. Plus: Instagram’s ad ecosystem is strong.
Getting your hands dirty. Nich ran a large newsroom at Business Insider. That’s a lot of management and meetings. With Dynamo, Nich’s original conception of being more of an executive producer guiding the process became being very involved in making the product.
Creators are the comp. Dynamo is looking to build a media company that’s creator-native. He looks at what YouTubers like Jonny Harris and Cleo Abram are doing rather than established media companies.
Accept uncertainty. Running a company is a nonstop stream of decisions, small and big. On the small, Nich focuses on speed over certainty, and even on large decisions, he’s accepted he’ll rarely be more than 60% sure. Waiting for certainty usually means waiting forever.
Lean by default. Rather than 700 people like BI at its peak, Dynamo is 1/100th the size. That means everyone needs to be a doer and the focus is on improving the work rather than coordination.
TechCrunch has long been known for newsletters like Mobility and StrictlyVC, but behind the scenes, slow workflows imposed by rigid tools held them back. After moving to beehiiv, everything changed, Mobility grew 14% in two months, StrictlyVC grew 4%, and editors could publish faster, experiment freely, and cut through dev bottlenecks. Cleaner segmentation improved deliverability and analytics, while new revenue levers, from sponsorships to paid options, opened up. With beehiiv, TechCrunch quickly turned its newsletters into a smarter engine for reach, retention, and revenue.
By Invitation: The truth about clipping
John McDermott makes the case that legacy media is kidding itself when it comes to algorithmic manipulation.
Clipping is a strategy under the microscope, as some see it as a savvy adaptation to modern habits and others as a cynical manipulation of algorithmic distribution by those with “hidden agendas.”
John’s take: "People think they can just clip their way to success, and that's just false. If people aren't interested in a person's content, they're not going to be interested in the clips."
On PvA OT, Anonymous Banker joined me to dig into the news that People Inc is angling to gain a controlling stake in MGM in an $18 billion deal, just tk after it officially de-conglomerized to focus on its digital media assets. Barry Diller, People Inc’s chairman, described MGM as “real world assets that AI cannot easily replicate or disintermediate.”
My take: This is a sensible AI hedge, even if People Inc has successfully managed to diversify its business from its exposure to Google Zero. It was telling that earlier in the week, People Inc has begun to trumpet “non-session revenues” as a key metric. Nobody wants to be in the pageview business.
AB’s take: “They've gone from owning Match and all these different ways of getting consumers to enter a marketplace and spend money to now going back to physical things. It speaks volumes to where we are."
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