True Anon Truth Feed - [PREVIEW] Episode 190: Blog of a Madman
Aired: 2021-10-13
Duration: 04:59


=== You're the Guy (03:22) ===

[00:00:00]  Hey, y'all.
[00:00:00]  Welcome to Mike.com's new pivot to podcast format.
[00:00:05]  We have here a try-fire-type format here featuring my good friend Liz Franzak, a social justice journalist out of the University of Pittsburgh.
[00:00:15]  We have Noah Colwyn out of Tel Aviv University here to talk to us about diversity in the IDF.
[00:00:22]  And of course, me, Victor Frankl.
[00:00:25]  And, uh, no, okay, can't do that.
[00:00:52]  My guys both look at me.
[00:00:53]  I mean, I don't know.
[00:00:53]  You're the guy who like does this stuff.
[00:00:55]  I'm just a media guy.
[00:00:56]  I'm just a simple blue check.
[00:00:58]  Listen, Noah, riddle me this.
[00:01:00]  Yes.
[00:01:01]  It's 3 p.m. on a Friday, right?
[00:01:04]  We're here at the fusion.com offices.
[00:01:09]  Fusion.net, but go ahead.
[00:01:10]  Fusion.
[00:01:11]  Wow.
[00:01:11]  Thank God you're here.com.
[00:01:13]  It was, I don't remember why they didn't, but yeah.
[00:01:16]  There was a moment when media companies were like relaunching a rebranding where they're like, we're going with, it was like an alternate, like, how to like signal that you were alternative.
[00:01:24]  We were recode.net.
[00:01:26]  Well, and now we're, and then it became Vox.com.
[00:01:29]  Wait, so, okay, yeah.
[00:01:31]  I've got so many media questions.
[00:01:32]  Well, here, let me, let me, let me, let's, let's play this out a little bit.
[00:01:35]  Okay.
[00:01:36]  You are getting called in.
[00:01:37]  You are a.
[00:01:38]  Yes, I'm being called in.
[00:01:40]  You, you work at the office, but you're a freelancer.
[00:01:43]  Uh, Liz and I are your bosses, Jorge Ramos.
[00:01:48]  Ramos.
[00:01:49]  Ramos.
[00:01:50]  And what's a woman?
[00:01:53]  Madeleine Albright.
[00:01:54]  Madeleine Albright.
[00:01:55]  What?
[00:01:55]  We are your bosses here at fusion.net.
[00:01:57]  I've always thought Liz looked like her.
[00:01:59]  We call you into the office, and it's 20, it's 2013.
[00:02:03]  Okay.
[00:02:03]  It's 2013.
[00:02:04]  Great year.
[00:02:05]  We say pre-9-11, everything's good.
[00:02:08]  Bush is still in office, but he hasn't started the Iraq war yet.
[00:02:11]  In 2013.
[00:02:12]  In 2013?
[00:02:13]  Yeah, this was a number.
[00:02:15]  And we're like, Noah, our numbers are flagging, right?
[00:02:20]  The clicks ain't there.
[00:02:23]  What do we do?
[00:02:25]  So, I mean, that's a really, you know, 2013 was a special time to ask that question because there were a lot of really, I mean, frankly, just a lot of new frontiers being blazed in journalism that I think we're still sort of reckoning with.
[00:02:38]  People hadn't.
[00:02:38]  You could put quizzes in posts.
[00:02:41]  You could also start to add polls.
[00:02:43]  You could do stuff where you could do a hide link, like a bit.ly on Twitter, but then actually have it load a link of like Geraldo Rivera shirtless.
[00:02:51]  And, you know, there was just all these sorts of different little hijinks that you could do.
[00:02:55]  Yeah.
[00:02:56]  I remember one time I was, This was, you know, I was trying to figure out like, ah, is this, you know, I was, it was like a, I think it was like a November and I woke up one day and my boss is like, you got to do something, get some traffic.
[00:03:08]  And I was like, all right, is this Halloween costume Steve Jobs or Elizabeth Holmes?
[00:03:14]  And that was a fucking banger.
[00:03:16]  How much did you get paid for that?
[00:03:18]  Do we need to talk about that?
[00:03:20]  Yeah.
[00:03:21]  No, my starting job.

=== Paid Traffic Job (01:36) ===

[00:03:22]  Well, this was, I mean, that's like the bullshit side of it.
[00:03:24]  But like, you know, that was, I started at Recode and I think I was probably making at the end.
[00:03:29]  Yeah, annualized that year was 60K.
[00:03:31]  And then, you know, but like the other part of the job was not doing, you know, was not doing quizzes and trying to do the real journalism.
[00:03:38]  Yeah.
[00:03:38]  But the quizzes were a part of it.
[00:03:39]  But, you know, and that was really, I was paid well and I lived in the Bay and like ostensibly I worked for a company that made money.
[00:03:46]  But, you know, the heavy dot com ostensibly, but that's like, it's like, like all media revenue is fucking theoretical unless it's a company that's been around for a hundred years.
[00:03:56]  And then if it's like, and then if it's, and then within that theoretical, there's the good kind of theoretical where everybody went to a nice college and everybody understands like theoretically, you know, the stuff you're supposed to make to change the world, the journalism.
[00:04:07]  And, you know, and then there's like the bad kind where it's like junk, but in reality, it's all the same.
[00:04:11]  It's just one giant, horrible like tar pit that we all live in.
[00:04:15]  Well, before we get into all of that.
[00:04:18]  Hello, everyone.
[00:04:19]  I'm Liz.
[00:04:20]  My name is Jorge Ramos.
[00:04:22]  And of course, and we have actually, in our special episode about journalism, Liz and I have headed out onto the streets of Bedstead, lassoes in hand, astride muscled donkeys, and wrangled a Jew.
[00:04:40]  Not hard in New York.
[00:04:42]  Yes.
[00:04:42]  But they got a special one.
[00:04:44]  And what's your name?
[00:04:45]  I'm Noah Colwin.
[00:04:46]  And of course, we are joined by producer Young Chomsky.
[00:04:50]  The podcast is called Truan Colon on the media.
[00:04:56]  I'm Brooke Ladstone.
[00:04:57]  And today we're talking about my gay ass.