Political Media is Dead. Long Live Political Media.
Regardless of your personal politics, it seems evident that much of America today feels badly let down by the political media in 2016.
For many, there’s a feeling that the press too often failed to ask hard questions or to separate substance from sideshow. For others still, there’s the belief that partisanship too often superseded the duty to accurately reflect reality. And part and parcel to these perspectives is the uncomfortable truth that the digital platforms that dominate so much of our modern communications and information gathering exacerbated these problems by amplifying for each user, by and large only that content which reinforced their existing beliefs.
So while we all try to process the new reality that is American politics in 2017, we’re left with the uncomfortable questions of: How can the press regain its “authority” in this age of social media and fake news?; and, what does a trustworthy and yet financially viable media model look like in the face of hyper-partisan politics and ever-shrinking attention spans?
I couldn’t think of a better group to tackle these questions than Jon Favreau and Jon Lovett. Together they make up two-thirds of the founding team (absent Tommy Vietor) of the ascendent progressive media company Crooked Media.
For many on the left, this group of former Obama speechwriters and advisors became the unofficial narrators, counselors, and soothsayers of the 2016 election season under the banner of their erstwhile hit podcast “Keepin’ It 1600”…right up until November 7th. This was the day that, like nearly half of American voters, Favreau and crew were compelled to lick their wounds (on live video stream, no less) and answer the question, “What do we do now?”
Their answer was in part to continue the conversation that began under “Keepin’ It 1600,” but also to layer in a much greater emphasis on activism and action. To make this vision a reality they launched Crooked Media, a new media platform which its founders describe as offering “A political conversation for people not quite ready to give up or go insane,” and kick off its mission statement with the explanation, “We couldn’t find a place to talk about politics the way actual human beings talk. So we decided to create one.”
Favreau and Lovett joined us at Upfront Summit this year, alongside moderator Jeff Berman, to explain why they left the safety of Bill Simmons’ The Ringer podcast network to fly their own flag at Crooked Media and to dive deeper into their vision for the new venture. There was also plenty of commiserating with the audience about the maddening then first two weeks of the Trump administration. As luck (horror, really) would have it, the event was the same day as news of Trump’s first Muslim travel ban began to leak, so there was plenty to talk about. I highly encourage you to watch the video below in full:
Above all else, the message that stood out to me from this discussion, is the one I alluded to above — Democrat or Republican, coastal elite or third-generation coal miner, white, black, or purple, the political media broadly failed America in 2016.
As Lovett so passionately bemoaned on stage at Summit:
It’s an unsustainable and ridiculous situation we are in, in which everyone as a country hates the news — they hate the politics, but they hate the news too. They hate the way it’s offered. It’s managed to be both boring and insipid, sensationalistic and not informative. That is not sustainable. There is an incredible hunger for anything that tries to do something different. The news of today is a tone of authority and seriousness that is from another era and even though they lost the authority and they lost the expertise and they lost the seriousness, they kept the tone. It’s insulting and it doesn’t work. What we are finding is that there are tons of people who agree with that.
For all the ways that media consumption has changed in the last decade, not to mention drastic shifts in the demographics and thus expectations of the news-consuming public, the coverage of politics has remained too deeply rooted in a bygone era.
It’s clear that Crooked Media doesn’t plan to pursue journalism, in the “capital J” sense. And that’s ok — welcome even. The voices are admittedly-partisan and deliberately activist. At the same time, they’re pursuing the dual objectives of being both entertaining and informative. But where the Crooked team really has the opportunity to shine is in driving real engagement and understanding of the political process among enormous segments of the population that have historically ignored these topics at all cost (Silicon Valley & tech writ large, I’m looking at you / us).
Crooked Media alone is not the answer to what ails American political media. But in many ways, I think it offers a model for where the conversation needs to head. We need authentic, relatable voices, willing to acknowledge and confront their own and their party’s mistakes and also to admit, where applicable, the merits that exist across the aisle. But just as importantly, we need voices that go a step beyond simply reporting the facts to also arm their audience with the tools to take action and affect the change they wish to see in the world.
So, wherever your political leanings lie, if you’re looking to better decipher what’s important in daily political happenings, and what’s not?; who’s telling the truth, and who’s not?; what’s normal and what has happened before? — I highly recommend you subscribe to Crooked Media’s outstanding podcasts. Because whether you view Trump’s America as an enemy or ally, we’re all better off as a nation being well informed and more deeply invested in our political process.
