00:05:31.400Yes. So, you know, I saw this news item the other day about how Carly Kloss, the supermodel who is married to Josh Kushner, the venture capitalist who is Jared Kushner's brother, had laid off most of the staff of ID magazine.
00:05:55.180and i was like huh and then i remembered the news that she had bought the magazine
00:06:04.000in november 2023 and so these layoffs came a few weeks ago they came at the end of march
00:06:09.800um and it just we you and i started talking about just the whole phenomenon of very wealthy
00:06:18.020usually billionaires buying media properties oh yeah I mean they love them they've been
00:06:24.940they've been a project a pet project forever right yes yes so it just you know it just really
00:06:32.580interested me and I started thinking about all of the various media properties that have been
00:06:38.600bought by billionaires over the years and kind of what had happened to them now before we get into
00:06:42.700this I do just want to remind everyone that they can email us at too much money podcast at gmail.com
00:06:49.060we love to hear your thoughts we love your feedback we love your suggestions
00:06:52.660we love your compliments we do we do I thrive I thrive on compliments right now it's like my air
00:07:00.060so I just really appreciate them Jo actually before we get into it do you want to just like
00:07:05.160briefly briefly briefly talk about what the last like week of your life has looked like
00:07:10.060oh my gosh i mean i kind of feel like i've just like you know been thrashing around in a dumpster
00:07:19.320fire also like filled with cannolis and joy i mean it's like high highs and low lows i've been
00:07:24.820on book tour for the sicilian inheritance yeah um i've been in five or six cities uh we've done
00:07:32.700magical sold out events all over the country for this book and i've also you know in the past six
00:07:39.660months I've recorded 100 podcast episodes like other people's podcasts oh my god including
00:07:45.560including forever 35 which may have been my favorite oh it brought me so much joy to talk
00:07:53.240to you and Kate and ditto and it's been awesome and also hard because selling books is hard and
00:08:01.520getting people to you know get excited about buying books like literally the day that it
00:08:08.940comes out is insane. It is absolute insanity. And I think that has to do with what we're talking
00:08:14.900about today. Because the places where people will read about books and see books have been
00:08:22.980completely gutted and eviscerated in the past, you know, 10, 15 years. And I will say it mainly
00:08:30.980because these editorial properties keep being bought by billionaires as hobby projects yes and
00:08:39.220when they start them as hobby projects they're like i just i just want to create a beautiful
00:08:44.800quality product but they can't help themselves they want to make money and immediately they're
00:08:50.280like you know what doesn't always make money or ever really make money books coverage yeah and so
00:08:57.780it is often the first to go and then you know coverage of books moves to places like tiktok
00:09:06.080yeah i mean that's real anyway buy joe's book buy my book that's a long long long story short
00:09:14.160buy my book the sicilian inheritance it got a great review in the times like i was saying
00:09:17.840high highs low lows like you know we got a great review in the times and then our amazon number
00:09:24.140wasn't moving and like also the fact that you can see your book rise and fall on amazon is
00:09:30.000unhealthy really yes it's really unhealthy it's unhealthy so you know i'm just i'm kind of i mean
00:09:37.060i am i'm not kind of i'm happy just to be back here just sitting here doing our thing good me
00:09:42.680too i'm happy to have you back yeah so tell me talk to me about how some billionaires have ruined
00:09:47.240media okay well i want to start with carly claus because i think that people were kind of surprised
00:09:53.560by this because she doesn't fit sort of the typical mold of billionaire who acquires media0.82
00:09:59.380property which is typically like older white man billionaire and she's a relatively younger white0.57
00:10:07.900woman um but she so in 2020 she was part of an investor group that acquired w magazine
00:10:18.800okay okay i i was a big fan of w magazine and i'm gonna tell you i didn't even know it was still
00:10:26.420being is it still being published so now it's part of dustle dustle no it's part of bustle oh my god
00:10:32.840bustle okay bustle um so they it's a it's a sort of interesting ownership structure that like we
00:10:42.240don't have to really get into but carly kloss is part of this ownership structure so she's definitely1.00
00:10:47.360i think developing like this niche in like cool fashion-y publications um and then she bought
00:10:55.220id magazine and the guardian had a really interesting i thought analysis of um
00:11:06.220the whole situation she also has a company called bedford media that is what she's kind of using
00:11:14.040the vehicle that she's using for all these acquisitions um and there's a quote from this
00:11:24.300um writer and editor named daisy alioto who is a founder of a company called dirt media
00:11:30.640that is of course i know dirt media yeah um and she said that she sees this as like a very like
00:11:41.340a renaissance patriot like patron-esque thing she said um it reminds me of this very old thing which
00:11:49.380is patronage this old concept where when people attain a certain level of wealth there's only so
00:11:54.320many things you can buy and if you have an inclination towards art and entertainment
00:11:58.340it makes sense that you would enter some form of patronage around that not just for profit
00:12:03.340so this was really interesting to me because it kind of like crystallized a lot of the thoughts
00:12:10.680i had had around billionaires acquiring media properties because they do frame it as you kind
00:12:17.320of alluded to in the beginning as like not just something that they're trying to make money out of
00:12:22.560they they sort of have this like this is for the greater good kind of vibe um but it ultimately
00:12:29.900is a patronage situation where like the patron can just decide that they don't feel like funding
00:12:37.300this thing anymore like yeah a hundred a hundred percent that is exactly what they can do or they
00:12:44.620can decide oh in the beginning i just wanted art to thrive but now i would really like money
00:12:57.280yes i like i like money so make money yes and so we have seen this happen again and again um
00:13:06.940and again and again again yeah so we are going to take a short break and when we come back i'm
00:13:13.460going to talk about some of the other billionaires who have acquired media properties over the years
00:13:19.040and what has happened so i can't wait i can't wait and also i'm terrified and yeah
00:13:36.940so I I actually I did work for um a company that was a media company that was bought by
00:13:51.860a billionaire because I worked for the New York Observer um I no wasn't I mean I believe that the
00:14:00.440Daily News was also bought by a billionaire yes Mort Zuckerman also bought the news right so we
00:14:05.720both worked for properties that were bought by billionaires and i also i do think it's important
00:14:09.720to make a distinction between companies that were bought by billionaires versus families that own
00:14:18.380media companies and have become very wealthy from those media properties but like they were the ones
00:14:25.540like the salzburgers the founders of the new like the people who run the new york times they've been
00:14:31.180running the new york times for like 150 years or something so they didn't buy it recently
00:14:40.840but exactly you know what i mean and yes with like the new houses from conde nast like
00:14:47.640there is like a slight i think there is a distinction there um versus people who have
00:14:54.400made their money in a totally different industry and then kind of parachute into media
00:14:59.340yes exactly i mean it's like old old media money versus new media money and i'm not saying
00:15:06.400that you know either is the greatest thing that's ever happened to media right but there is a
00:15:12.360difference between you know the billionaires billionaires millionaires uh robber barons
00:15:17.540that bought these properties you know 100 years ago and it did become their main industry and
00:15:24.400just a very rich person that decides they want a magazine in the same way that they might say
00:15:31.220wake up and decide they want the hope diamond totally totally yes exactly um all right so
00:15:41.480jared kushner bought the new york observer in 2006 and the new york observer at the time was
00:15:50.100a weekly newspaper that was famously printed on salmon colored paper like the financial times
00:15:58.460and it was it didn't have like a huge circulation but it was read by like all the important people
00:16:05.840in in new york i think it is it was a very new york-centric publication
00:16:10.180it covered media it covered real estate it covered like celeb new york celebrities um
00:16:17.680the the intellectual scene very highbrow and they had covered the story of jared kushner's
00:16:30.000disgraced father and how he had gone to prison and the the story that i had always heard was that
00:16:37.500part of the motivation for buying the paper was that the kushner family wanted a media
00:16:45.360property that they could kind of where they could kind of control the narrative around what was
00:16:50.720written about their family and i was a new yorker at this time also so many of our friends worked
00:16:58.200at this newspaper yes yes yes yes and and yes yeah um so i worked there from 2007 to 2009
00:18:54.960Right, right. Digital online savvy. Digital online savvy. But the Tribune company had also been bought by a billionaire, Sam Zell. So Sam Zell was a billionaire who bought Tribune Media, which owned the Chicago Tribune, the Baltimore Sun, Newsday, Hartford Courant.
00:19:18.940It also owned the Chicago Cubs. It owned Wrigley Field. And he bought that company in December 2007. And I think it is fair to say that, like, he ultimately kind of ran it into the ground.
00:19:33.340um less than a year later they filed the largest bankruptcy in the history of the american media
00:19:40.000industry um and he sold off various parts of the company um and then in 2016
00:19:50.660they rebranded as trunk which stood for tribune online content it's also the worst name ever
00:20:01.240hey the worst name ever we we own trunk trunk so there is a funny article about this in the ringer
00:20:10.700in 2018 where they basically talked about what a disaster the whole rebrand of the company had been
00:20:19.340um and soon this is from the article soon after the rebrand then chairman michael farrow was
00:20:28.240mocked for his predilection for buzzwords and his dream of turning the news gathering company into a
00:20:33.180virtual farm for robot generated viral videos quote right now we're doing a couple hundred
00:20:39.540videos a day we think we should be doing 2 000 videos a day he told cnbc now this is interesting
00:20:45.380this was interesting to me too because i read this and i thought oh this is what like he was
00:20:49.660kind of predicting the ai future yep yep yeah he was yeah he was but like to me that also feels
00:20:57.220like like the dream of billionaires like they don't want the messy parts of running the media
00:21:02.540company of like all these pesky journalists like of the humans like they yeah they acquire i mean
00:21:09.120much like a certain billionaire who acquired a lot a lot of land in hawaii where humans lived
00:21:16.840and then they realized oh my gosh it's messy having to care for humans these same billionaires
00:21:23.980acquire a media company that you know used to require humans to run and they're like that's a
00:21:28.960lot that's a lot yeah handle yeah what if we could get rid what if we could get rid of those humans
00:21:34.680right exactly i have to say two things that really scared me this week in terms of ai one is that i
00:21:41.680was at a mom influencing conference in nashville uh and there were many many sessions on how to use
00:21:50.240ai as an influencer and nearly every human there told me that their newsletter and their captions
00:21:56.360and even their like email subject lines are all being at least helped if not fully almost fully
00:22:04.500articulated by artificial intelligence really yes 100 and it was made and like not to like you know
00:22:14.440they they equated it and i'm not i'm not slamming anyone for this because i'm also like
00:22:19.740the world is hard and I freaking get it. Uh, they equated it to an efficiency thing. It's like,
00:22:26.140I can just do more. And frankly, we're all trying to do more and make more content because it's
00:22:32.720quantity over quality at this time. And it's, it's as if it's like a housewife saying I bought
00:22:38.620a washing machine. So I just am more efficient in my job. And then, and then I work, I do consulting
00:22:45.500for a media company which i won't name but they are they they said they're quote experimenting
00:22:52.140with ai right now and and they gave a list of words that they have told ai not to use in their
00:22:59.680in their content and i just love it when a media company tells you they're quote experimenting with
00:23:05.000ai and i'm like no you're figuring out how to replace our jobs like this is you're literally
00:23:10.620trying to train a machine to do what we do and you're not even being shy about it yeah i mean i
00:23:19.760am i am really fearing the future to be perfectly honest um so the whole sort of debacle with
00:23:33.040Tronk also coincides with another billionaire purchasing of a media property that I want to
00:23:44.300talk about after we take another break. Can't wait. Okay, we'll be right back.
00:24:03.040okay so this next one that i want to talk about is is i feel like is the one that has affected
00:24:14.400me probably the most recently because i live in los angeles um which is the purchase of the los
00:24:21.720Angeles Times by the billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong. He bought the paper in 2018
00:24:30.680from Tronk. Now, Patrick Soon-Shiong is, he's, in 2021, he was estimated to be worth at least
00:24:41.240$8 billion. He's been called the richest man in Los Angeles. He was a doctor,
00:24:46.640um and he made all his money through like medical research patents vaccines like
00:24:56.420all like all those all those all those medical things that can be very lucrative
00:25:02.760um he made his money in in an interview with a new yorker he um they they characterized him as
00:25:12.500that he likes to present himself as an accidental billionaire and he said i would like to remember
00:25:17.160it primarily as a physician scientist um oh oh okay which you know of course um and
00:25:28.480he paid 500 million dollars for the la times i think the the general my sense is that the
00:25:35.220consensus is that he overpaid um for the paper like jeff bezos bought the washington post for
00:25:41.220250 million dollars in 2013 which was only five years earlier the washington post um i think had
00:25:48.220a bigger circulation bigger newsroom like my sense is that um he probably paid too much
00:25:57.520um he also got the sand i agree i agree yeah um and
00:26:06.400so this is funny too so he he um appointed norman perlstein who was this like very well-known
00:26:17.040long-time um top editor at time inc and he appointed him as executive editor and this is
00:26:26.320what perlstein told the new yorker he made the acquisition with very little due diligence
00:26:31.880because he thought that it had to be easier than curing cancer i'm not sure whether he still
00:26:39.260believes that so like this to me just feels like the hubris the billionaire hubris that we see
00:26:46.620again and again where like these these people come in from a completely different industry
00:26:51.920i mean he patrick soon shiong had zero media experience yes he was good zero but zero media
00:27:00.600experience and that's the thing i'm like why do billionaires think that they can do and like the
00:27:06.480hubris is just amazing it's like you have no experience in this industry i as someone i'm like
00:27:12.180i'm not tooting my own horn but i think i've been very successful in media i've created a lot of
00:27:18.980websites i've run magazines you know i've written best-selling novels i am not going to wake up one0.77
00:27:24.740morning and say i can cure fucking cancer right exactly exactly exactly um right like we don't0.54
00:27:37.300we don't think we can just like do all this other stuff it's just unbelievable people think that0.97
00:27:43.360media is like this thing that you can just do if you you can just do it you can just do it anyone
00:27:51.660it's just up for grabs it's just up for grabs any anyone can you know
00:27:58.080objectively report and share all of the information um all over the world easy peasy
00:28:06.780i mean the thing that drives me nuts is like none of these so many things drive me nuts i mean i get
00:28:12.420into a very deep dark depression over this subject because so many of my friends have lost their
00:28:18.300livelihood as incredible reporters and storytellers because these billionaires have failed to to help
00:28:26.080these these properties thrive I don't know what what all of these incredibly smart and capable
00:28:31.540people will do next because we are not creating better or new media to I mean nor is anyone
00:28:39.400paying them to do these things but also because you know they just it just keeps happening over
00:28:47.780and over again i mean frankly i've got to say the the billionaire that's doing the best with
00:28:54.080a property is probably bezos i would think right now with the washington post uh but he is pretty
00:29:00.780hands-off i mean but correct me if i'm wrong because i probably don't know enough so he he
00:29:06.080is pretty hands-off but there have been um some controversies about how they covered how they've
00:29:16.080been covering amazon um and there's also there were also layoffs at the washington post um so
00:29:28.800you know it hasn't it hasn't been like all smooth sailing over there for sure um for sure but
00:29:36.520definitely i think i think you're right in that it it has been somewhat smoother sailing than
00:29:43.660than the LA Times. The LA Times just did a big layoff like a couple months ago that
00:29:52.260was very, very disruptive and controversial. And people were very upset about it,
00:30:02.800understandably, because, you know, I think the other thing is like these people come in and he
00:30:06.600definitely came in like this saying like I am going to invest all this money I'm gonna build
00:30:13.420this out it's gonna be great we're hiring all these people like he hired a ton of people
00:30:18.600and then like you know two years later three years later it's like it's not profitable in
00:30:28.220the way that I thought it was gonna be because I thought I could cure cancer and thought I could
00:30:33.020also run the la times exactly exactly so yeah it's like it is it's kind of you know it's kind
00:30:41.580of depressing um in january so in january there were layoffs and he said that the cuts were
00:30:57.740necessary because the paper could no longer lose 30 to 40 million dollars a year without making
00:31:03.540progress toward building higher readership that would bring in advertising and subscriptions to
00:31:07.480sustain the organization drastic changes were needed he said including installing new leaders
00:31:13.480who would focus on strengthening the excuse me the outlets journalism to become indispensable
00:31:17.600to more readers which like okay that's a that's a laudable goal but like sure of course it is of
00:31:26.560course it is but they i feel like they always go in with laudable goals yes and then and abandon
00:31:32.020other thing that they go in doing and you kind of alluded to this earlier too is like they go
00:31:37.200in saying that they're okay with losing money but they're they're never going to be they can't it's
00:31:43.080like they're tipped okay they're never going to be okay with losing money okay with losing money
00:31:48.040and so for him to say like 30 to 40 million dollars a year yes that sounds like a lot but
00:31:54.540he has eight billion dollars exactly exactly another problem is that billionaires like
00:32:01.700the bright and shiny things that often come with these media companies uh like the fancy building
00:32:09.680and you know the new the news helicopters like think very expensive line items that actually
00:32:17.800probably really could be downsized I just keep I just keep thinking about the the media property
00:32:24.740that just failed the messenger one of my friends uh was working at that and yeah they had like the
00:32:31.480fancy New York City office space which to be honest they didn't need right and so like they
00:32:37.860they like to spend the money on the things that don't actually make the news yeah because it's
00:32:42.360shiny and shiny and it's pretty yeah totally totally
00:32:47.360so you know i don't think we've seen the end of it there's also you know laurine powell jobs um
00:32:57.060has a media company called well she has a company called emerson collective that has invested in a0.83
00:33:05.820lot of media properties that similarly like she has like suddenly taken funding away she has decided
00:33:15.740that companies need to make money like she it's just you kind of see this again and again um same
00:33:23.140with pierre omidyar um who his company was called i think was it called first look media
00:33:34.900um yes it was called yeah first look media um and he launched the intercept and then he kind
00:33:48.520of like disappeared um yeah yeah that's what they do yeah that's what when they're like oh
00:33:54.200maybe it's hard yeah then they just disappear yeah so you know i don't think i don't think
00:34:01.280we will i don't think we've seen the end of this trend i mean i think we're gonna probably see more
00:34:08.260people like carly claus like these very wealthy people from kind of other industries maybe
00:34:17.940investing in media properties that are like close to their niche um but you know it is it is a i
00:34:28.300think it is a scary thing for democracy when a society is unable to sustain journalism
00:34:36.040so and has to like rely on billionaires like it's it's very it's very scary um it it's terrifying
00:34:46.800and then it you know leaves news in the hands of really anyone who wants to put things on on
00:34:55.820social media yeah and two things another two more terrifying things that happened to me last week
00:35:02.900one is that I was having a conversation with someone about two days before the eclipse and
00:35:08.740they said well did you see on the news that all the banks are going to shut down for those three
00:35:14.680minutes when everything goes dark and I was like that's not true that's not a thing and they're
00:35:21.540like it was on the news. And I was like, where did you see it? And they said, TikTok. And I was
00:35:27.960like, well, you know, I don't think that is actual news. And they're like, well, I don't care. I took
00:35:32.700all my money out of the bank anyway. And I'm like, okay, okay. I just saw very dangerous
00:35:39.240misinformation happen right in front of me. And then I've been using Canva a lot for like
00:35:45.540promotions for the book tour and the most popular most used canva templates to create social media
00:35:52.920assets are the ones that mimic a breaking news news font and so they're videos that actually
00:35:59.800say breaking news with the news chyron on it and they just make it so easy to make any bit of
00:36:06.000information look like news and no one's talked about that yet i was like could we get like a
00:36:10.620can we get a good story about how the most popular canva assets are imitating news and that that's
00:36:17.180not okay wow yeah yeah let's let's let's leave everyone on a dark listen if there's any billionaires
00:36:31.600who want to invest in our podcast we are open to it totally if you want to dictate what we talk
00:36:37.980about i mean i guess i would be okay with that we will stop talking smack about you pesos and musk
00:36:44.620but that's the only way that's the only way it's the only way you you literally have to pay us
00:36:52.680yeah you do you have to pay us yeah because i mean yeah at the end of the day what else am i
00:36:57.620gonna do there's nowhere else i can work anymore true it's so true oh god well joe i'm sorry that
00:37:04.920this ended up being like a little more depressing and less fun than
00:37:09.540really nice way really nice way to come back yeah than our than our typical our typical romps
00:37:17.600um but you know i think it is an important thing to to talk about so yeah 100 100 and i think i
00:37:27.680think there's more to it too like i really do think that we could even do another episode into
00:37:33.560like specific media properties i would actually love to go back and do do something fun we've
00:37:38.340been there's so much billionaire bullshit going on in the present day that we've been bored a lot
00:37:43.000of historic billionaires i think we could really have a whale of a time with hearst totally oh my0.98
00:37:48.240god yes yeah like just like the lesser known hearst evils yeah a really yes yes yes yes
00:37:58.840wow well joe let's also remind everyone that too much money is hosted and produced by us
00:38:08.420dory shafrier and joe piazza our music is by lisa brenner and our network partners a cast