Jonah Goldberg is a longtime conservative pundit and author who is in the process of leaving his positions at National Review and the American Enterprise Institute to start a new conservative media enterprise, along with Stephen Hayes, who until last year was editor-in-chief at the conservative Weekly Standard magazine.
Jonah has been thinking quite a bit about some of the themes of this podcast, and its specifics around political parties. He had good insights about the ways that many modern media outlets — on the left and right — now actually are political parties, or at least are functioning as part of a what are modern parties. And Jonah said he and Steve Hayes were setting out to create something that does not fall into that trap.
We talked about whether their as-yet-unnamed venture will have anti-Trumpism as part of its core DNA, since both Jonah and Steve have been among the most vocal and persistent critics of Trump on the right. Jonah said it would not be anti-Trump in nature, but rather “post Trump.” In a style that won’t surprise those who have followed Jonah’s work over the year, however, he couldn’t resist making the comment that the rise of Trump is fundamentally “a story about old people."
We talked about how he and Steve are envisioning this new venture will work, what reader or market demand it will satisfy, and how they are intent on avoiding a click-based business model. And he talked about how as they have talked to investors, they have shifted away from a traditional model where a central website is the focus, to a different model where the central website is a hub and the landing page for the brand, but the activity and focus of the work is centered around newsletters, podcasts, and events.
Outro Music: "Sow Good Seeds" by Mavis Staples
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Jonah Goldberg On His New Media Venture: 'We Don't Want To Be An Anti-Trump Thing'