What actually mattered in 2025, with Janice Min and Emily Sundberg

0:11Welcome to another episode of the Mixed Signals podcast from us here at Semaphore where we are talking to the most interesting people shaping our new media age. I'm Max Taney. I'm the media editor here at Semaphore. And with me, as always, is our editor-in-chief, Ben Smith. Ben, you're under the weather, but you couldn't miss our year-end episode, could you? Very excited about this. Yeah, this is our wrap-up. This is the last episode of the year. We've had a lot of really interesting and awesome guests on the show this year. Everybody from the CEO of Instagram to the CEO of YouTube. We've had Mark Cuban on the show.

0:44We had a governor who might run for president. We've had Alison Roman. We've had some of the fashion news people that I'm really interested in that Ben did a really good job of locking in for as well. But we wanted to first off thank everybody for listening to the show. Ben, what did you think about the year that we had here on Mixed Signals? No, I feel like we really figured it out when we started doing this. A friend of mine said it's going to take you 40 episodes before you have any idea what you're doing. And I do think that we've over time figured out what we're doing here and so enjoyed these conversations and the feedback we're getting.

1:13Absolutely. And so for our special end of the year episode, we wanted to do something a little bit different. We wanted to bring in two friends of the show to talk to us about what they thought about the year in media in 2025 and, of course, where things are going next year. Our two guests this week are Emily Sundberg. She is the founder of the Feed Me newsletter, which is this excellent daily roundup of everything interesting in media gossip, in business gossip, what restaurants to eat at in New York, a little bit of beauty, culture, fashion. It's pretty much kind of like the everything newsletter for a certain type of person in New York, which is why everybody is always texting me it.

1:51And then, of course, Janice Min, who is the CEO of The Ankler, which is a Hollywood-focused publication, covers everything out here on the West Coast when it comes to the big moves in entertainment. We wanted to ask them, of course, about what they thought about 2025 and their predictions for next year. Why don't we bring in Emily and Janice right after this?

2:19Hi, I'm Joshua Spania, VP of Marketing at Google. And you might assume I have all the answers when it comes to marketing. The truth, I'm just as curious to learn, discover the answers to everything as everyone else. We are living through a total reset of our marketing industry. The old maps don't work, which means we get to chart a new path forward. It's dynamic, it's fast-paced, and honestly, there's never been a more exciting time to be in marketing. That is why we've started a new podcast, Frontier CMO. It's from Think With Google, and I promise it's not just a bunch of corporate waffle. I'm sitting down with people who really know what's going on.

3:03CMOs, creators, technologists, the lot. And we're having a proper, unfiltered chat about what's working, and quite frankly, what isn't. These are your notes from the frontier. So do me a favor, search for Frontier CMO wherever you get your podcasts, or watch us and subscribe on YouTube.

3:29Janice, Emily, thank you guys so much for being here. Really excited to do this. Also, Janice has the honor here of being our first returning guest. Oh, really? I'm so honored. Oh, thank you, guys. As I recall, you introduced us to the concept of the gourmet cheeseburger. Oh, that's right, which still exists and is about to take over 2026. We can get into that later. Janice, we wanted to kind of start with you. We feel like this was a really important and consequential year in media. Everybody says that every year. But I think in particular, we saw a lot of the big changes kind of shape the way that we're thinking about things from fragmentation to the kind of rise in importance of the kind of creator ecosystem, this kind of huge, massive consolidation in Hollywood, which you're living through.

4:11But we're curious, you know, deciding between all of those different things, what do you think was the most important media story of the year? I would say, let's see, if I had to pick a single one, and this is going to be really obvious, maybe it's a tie between one, of course, is Charlie Kirk and his assassination, but then the full exposure of all the fractures in right-wing media. I think that's been a really, for those of us who might not have even been that familiar with Charlie Kirk, I put myself in that camp until he died. I think to understand the full right wing o-sphere or whatever we call this and the different voices in it and the influence they have has been incredibly interesting.

4:52And I think the big underlying story that's driving all of this, including the rise of the right-wingosphere, is the complete domination of YouTube over every other platform and its ability to distribute all these voices, all these kinds of voices. And I guess the word people in media use is platform almost anyone. So for better or worse, but you have seen that become the powerhouse that is driving all the changes at Netflix, Warner Brothers, why Paramount is fighting so hard for Warner Brothers. But the rise of every creator, the move of podcasts from audio into video, which is, I presume, why we're recording this on video today.

5:31It has to do with YouTube. So I would say those are the two narratives that, to me, define media in 2025. Emily, we want to turn to you. You write the newsletter that I feel like everybody I know in New York reads. What do you think was the most important media story of 2025? I mean, the Charlie Kirk story was fascinating. I just want to interject there for a second. I was on a yoga retreat when that story broke, and it was mostly quiet and calm. And then when that happened, you started seeing everybody who was on this retreat in California start learning who he was, form opinions about it. And then, like, the second half of the retreat just became super political and not calming at all.

6:14And it was fascinating. I feel like I came back to New York, and media just felt different. And then even as recently at DealBook a few weeks ago, like Erica was there and then that Nicki Minaj video this week. It is so crazy how quickly that all changed. I would have to say just because of what I do, like the Barry and Free Press story is really incredible. It's sort of like the North Star of these personality-driven media companies that everybody is so badly trying to figure out and reverse engineer. I think TBPN is also a really fascinating media case study. But with the free press and with TBPN and these sort of media case studies that we're all obsessed with or that I'm obsessed with and I'm really interested in and watch really closely, it's funny when I go home to like Long Island or talk to some of my friends who don't work in our world, they don't, they're not tracking these movements as closely as we are.

7:08They don't know what TBPN is. A lot of them have no idea what the free press is or who Barry Weiss is. And it just shows like, how small the New York City bubble is for these conversations. And I think, like, for media at large also. I was talking to a friend this morning about the 60 Minutes episode that you can find online through, like, the Canadian streaming services. And she was like, what are you talking about? And she's a smart, employed person. And I think that's really important, at least for me, to keep in mind, like, how small the world of, like, media moves is and how these people in my life have become, it's become like watching sports and picking like your favorite athletes and what teams they're being traded on.

7:52But not that many people watch the sport. It's like handball or something. Yeah. Well, you know, Emily, can I add to that? It's a small story in a small world. But I think you also have to think about the Barry Weiss CBS news story as it's a small news story like this. It's a important, I guess, journalism with a capital J story, but it's a small news story. I think we are all pretending CBS News is a thing, that it's a thing that millions of people are watching every day. It's not a thing. It ceased being a thing a long time ago. And Barry Weiss is an even smaller thing, right? But I think if you have, if Barry Weiss has like 150 ,000 subscribers or whatever the number is today, people are watching on linear television, CBS Evening News, about in that same number.

8:39So it's like you're adding like one plus one equals like 1.25. It's not like you're changing media. It's like, oh my God, this is like revolutionary. It's just like small businesses trying to make something work. And I think all the Ellis and stuff like, ew, gross, nasty, this is all gross, bad. But I do give them credit for like, okay, like nothing is reversing the course of this, you know, broadcast news apocalypse. So let's try someone who has made something succeed on a smaller level. And maybe that voice does something for us. I don't think based on, let's say those Erica Kirk ratings for the town hall, maybe not, but I don't know.

9:21You know, it's better than trying nothing. I mean, whatever the motivations are, I don't necessarily agree with, but it's better than trying nothing. You know, it really feels like the Barry takeover of CBS, the acquisition of the free press by the Ellisons, it was obviously a signal of two things. One of them, I think, is, you're right, Janice, that traditional television news, the heyday of it is long gone. It's very much in the rear view. And it was an acknowledgement that we can put in charge someone who has literally had no television programming experience. It actually doesn't matter whether somebody has television programming experience really anymore because this audience is gone and we have to try something to kind of stay relevant.

9:59And of course, also, it showed, you know, something that to your point, Emily, these things are small and they're insular and not very many people are paying attention. But the people who are paying attention, right, are the most influential people, you know, in the country, which include Donald Trump, who is very much, of course, following this whole saga and is very interested in the moves that Barry Weiss is making. That's always the fun thing and fun and interesting and kind of confusing thing about covering and writing about the media is that like the average person is not that clued into what's going on.

10:30But Donald Trump, the president of the United States, who you would assume has his hands full with plenty of other more important things. We've got maybe like a war going on almost in Venezuela. We've got plenty of other crises around the world. And yet he is fixated on the programming of 60 Minutes as much as anybody in this room. Ben, I wanted to turn to you. What do you think about this? And, of course, what do you think was the most important media story of the past year? I was waiting for somebody to mention Donald Trump. My God, that took a while. I mean, the sort of clumsiness of what all this Ellison stuff being, apparently, to get themselves covered.

11:02They do seem to be trying to please Donald Trump so that he will give them more assets. I mean, that's a huge story. I feel like it's kind of, you know, a huge turning point in American history and very kind of dark. Although also, in the way of people who try to do deals with Donald Trump, kind of going awry in all sorts of hilarious ways as well. And certainly not guaranteed. Like, it doesn't seem like they got Trump to sign on the line there before embarking. I guess to me, though, the story that I've just been thinking about a lot at the end of the year is just the, like, real decomposition of the media ecosystem.

11:34Like all of the stuff that kind of academic types would warn us about a few years ago with, you know, talking about kind of capital T truth and the decline of what really is reality. Like I just find myself experiencing. Like I've just been on X for a couple hours looking at the quote unquote Epstein files, which seem really mostly to be made up tips that mentally ill people sent the FBI and are now being amplified by kind of the B-list influencers who dominate the platform. but are then going to be picked up by public officials, people in government. And I think AI search is also part of this.

12:11You go to ChatGPT, you get a result, you ask it, what are some books I should read about something? And like three of the four books will be real books, and one will be made up. And similarly, like if I look at whatever congressman is tweeting about Epstein right now, maybe like three of the four documents he's tweeting are real and one is fake. And I'm not really sure which one is fake, and we may never get to the bottom of it. Like, we're sort of willing to live with, like, a lower resolution claim on reality at the moment. Yeah. I think people are just getting used to. I was on TikTok this morning, and I saw this beautiful video of narwhals, like, breaking through ice.

12:45Love narwhals. I was like, wow, this is really gorgeous. Like, I was just in a museum where I saw narwhal tusks, and I looked at the comments, and it was fake. And I was like, wait, narwhals are real, though, right? And you feel like an idiot, right? You're like, what's wrong with me? Are narwhals even real? Did you make up narwhals too? And then I looked at the account and it's just all AI animal stuff of like animals that do exist, but doing like crazy things. And it makes you feel really nuts. Ben, from your perch as the media columnist at the New York Times, I feel like you were like kind of against all of the journalism truth academic types.

13:26Like, I feel like you were one of the people who was out there being like, why are we using the word misinformation? That's not like really, that's very imprecise, and I don't really like it. I feel like, has your mind changed on some of this, experiencing, you know, kind of our post-truth era with all the conspiracies on X and the AI slop garbage? Has your perspective changed? Hold on, Ben, hadn't we previously in private maybe made fun of Democracy Dies in Darkness? I feel like you and I, I'm sure, have made fun of that. Yeah, we definitely have. No, it's, yeah, no, I definitely, gosh, I was thinking of blaming those pieces that you think you've read of mine on AI.

14:03I'm pretty sure I read it in the New York Times. No, I have always, right, sort of disliked these formal misinformation monitors, you know, who I think often were confusing, to me at least, political claims for factual claims. Like the thing, you know, when Trump makes something up, his audience doesn't necessarily think he's saying something true. But maybe I should go back and revise my point of view on this because it doesn't feel like misinformation. It doesn't seem like it's mostly being purveyed by people who are advancing a political line, particularly. It's just this kind of onslaught of garbage that's really kind of keyed to the For You page more than anything else.

14:35This was probably, to Ben's point, the first year where I feel like smart people I know and friends were sending me links not from what we would all agree are credible news sources, but it was all sort of weird social media things and podcasts you've never heard of. I mean, it just really revealed that the reliance on mainstream news as we grew up with is sort of gone. And the White House has really embraced this. And the White House has really embraced this and really doesn't care. Janice, like you said, with YouTube, like replacing TV, I've been in my parents' house before where it's like starts autoplaying playlists and the story's like getting more and more altered.

15:21Like it kind of goes from a real documentary to like the truth about Epstein or something. pretty quickly. Well, we have to take a short break, but we'll be right back with more from Janice and Emily right after this.

15:44In this week's branded segment from Think with Google, I spoke with Google's VP of Marketing, Josh Spanier, about what he saw at CES. So Josh, you were at CES at the beginning of this year. Why does that event matter for CMOs? So CES gives us a real view into how people are going to be living their lives and spending their money in two, five, even 10 years' time. I know from the outside, it looks like a giant toy show. There's smart rings and foldable laundry robots and flying cars. But I was chatting with Shelley Palmer, who I interviewed for my new podcast. He's an AI visionary and tech leader.

16:23And he swears by, and I agree with him, that the ability to see patterns amongst all the gadgets is actually really, really compelling for near term and into the future. So what did you learn from that conversation? Well, the gadgets aren't really the thing. Stuff gets announced. Some of it launches. Some of it doesn't launch. What you're really looking for are business model changes, the new paradigms that are emerging. So two that I saw and we spoke about. One is around agentic commerce. Google announced during CES and just after CES a whole bunch of partnerships with Shopify, with Walmart, with Target around agentic commerce.

17:02Super interesting building the new protocols for machines doing the shopping for you where appropriate. And then separately, I also saw a lot of expansion of what you might call intelligent ecosystems. These are technologies from different companies coming together, meshing together to enable you to do more interesting and engaging things. And again, with Google and Gemini leading the way. They're really fascinating forerunners of where we're all going to be in the near and medium term. And where can people listen to the whole thing? You can listen to my conversation with Shelley Palmer in my new podcast, Frontier CMO, on YouTube or wherever you download podcasts.

17:41Or you can sign up for my weekly newsletter over on LinkedIn. Great. Thanks, Josh.

17:56Emily, I want to ask about Substack. It feels like it's been a really big year for Substack. They raised a lot of money this year. they announced that they have 5 million paying subscribers, which is huge, or 5 million people who are paying. Do you feel like the platform fundamentally changed this year, that Substack changed? It would be hard for me to say, like, this is how it felt one year ago and this is how it felt today. I would say the biggest difference is that I'm seeing a lot more, you know, publications and brands experiment on there and it's less just individuals. I think more people are trying to create businesses on Substack in a way that's beyond just monetizing subscriptions.

18:33Like I see people trying to build out like events or you see more interesting ad formats and brands coming on there. And obviously Substack in that unusual way announced that they're now doing native ads. And the only place you can find information on that is in FeedMe, which I think they need to do a more formal announcement of that with some details around it. Like they asked me to remove the paywall on it because that's the only source of information on that pretty big feature that they launched. I'm sure they'll do something more formal next year. I hope they do because that's how you get brands to get interested in even using that feature.

19:10Do you think things are getting, I don't know, re-bundled, more complicated? You know, like you guys all talk about this re-bundling thing or not you guys all. Sorry. We do. We do all the time. We talk about it constantly. I talk about it constantly. But it sounds like I'm wrong. Have you seen any examples of that yet? Or are we all waiting for the first person to do it? I think there's a lot of private equity money out there thinking this is going to be a thing. If somebody does that, it's going to be B-list talent. The A-list people know that they can do it on their own. They don't need to join 10 other people and do it in some decided way.

19:46I think that if that bundle happens, it's not going to be the top-tier killers. And you don't think Substack will start selling me a bundle where I can get you, among others, for a few hundred bucks a month or something? I think that people are self-organizing and offering that between themselves, like an Emily and a Janice. And if somebody else say, like, we are going to offer you a subset of our content together, I think that Substack will have to, like, reckon somehow with the amount of money that people are spending on newsletters every year. I wrote today about one of my readers named David, who spends$28 ,000 on newsletters every year.

20:21That seems like a little bit much. That kind of thing. We did a whole interview about this. Yeah, we love him, though, for sure. Love him. But I read it, and I was like, you could end up spending a lot of money on this stuff. Well, it's December. Every December, towards the end of the year, you end up losing a lot of people. And it's because everyone's home for the holidays. They're looking at their bills. They're like, oh, crap, what? I'm spending this amount of money? And like, I'm probably going to do it with my like probably seven subscriptions to Paramount Plus or something over the holidays.

20:50Right. You just are like going through your credit card and like, dang, like this is crazy. Like we look at the economic numbers right now, the economy, you know, this is the number one topic for everyone. Affordability, you know, even if Trump doesn't believe that's an issue. But I have to imagine the market eventually drives, if not sub stack, some of these other platforms like Beehive into offering bundles. And whether or not that's operationalized by someone investing in all these things, or if it's just as, to your point, Emily, like kind of ad hoc, I think that will start to happen. Emily, could I push on the B-lister thing a little?

21:24Because that's amazing. And a bunch of like private equity people just had to like return a bunch of money to their LPs when they heard that. But I guess, I mean, I think part of it is that somebody is going to come to you and say, isn't it a headache to run your own health care? And also I can sell a few million dollars worth of advertising for you a year. I don't think that somebody's going to get like Janice, Emily, TBPN, like all under the same roof. And it's like the new New York Times or like the new Bloomberg or something like that. It just it will be somebody further down those like top lists on Substack because I don't need any outside cash.

22:03So I figured out my health care and my lawyer and all that. So why would I compromise my business and how I'm setting things up? What if someone offers you the Barry Weiss deal, not to run CBS News? I don't want that much attention. I don't want that many readers. My subscriber list is the perfect size. I don't need to double that and have that many more eyes on what I'm doing. If I was a better capitalist, I would. If I wanted to move out of the apartment that I'm in with and get faster Wi-Fi, I would. but I really like how my business is set up. Wait, can we just talk about these media newsletters for a second?

22:41And obviously, I love yours. There are so many. There's so many, but also, like, this goes back to the CBS News, Barry Weiss, this is a really small audience argument. Like, they're writing about MS Now, you know. Yeah, it's a total circle jerk, too. It's an absolute circle jerk. And like they write about these places like like Walter Cronkite is still anchoring the news, right? That they're driving the whole narrative of government and the world. And it's like, no, these are really tiny, struggling businesses that no one under the age of 70 is watching. Well, but somehow politics became about media, like for real, like national American politics that elected, you know, makes life and death and war and peace decisions really became via Donald Trump.

23:29but also via our friends on Blue Sky and whatever else, like, obsessed with declining, collapsing mainstream media coverage. I mean, that's just a true fact. But there is this interesting phenomenon that's going on with all of these newsletters, and we're guilty of this occasionally at some point, which is that we're writing about how these industries are declining, and they're so non-important and whatever, and then also covering them all the time relentlessly, which I think is something that we try to balance with our newsletter. Well, I think because I think, you know, that if you're working in a burning building, you will pay to read anything about what's happening around you.

24:01Right. And so I think it's I think it's a very reliable source of subscribers. Whereas I don't know if you're writing about Candace Owens and Erica Kirk, you're not moving their audience to come read your media newsletter, most likely. Right. It's a narcissism or the navel gazing of people in media. Right. But I do think in general, it is true that these a lot of these figures are, you know, people like Candace Owens, like it can't be overstated how important and huge she is. And it can't be like understated how like little coverage she kind of gets like, obviously, she's important and people write about her.