July 19, 2023 • 51 mins
The disgraced CEO of Theranos, the scam blood testing company, built her career with savvy press moves. Now she’s headed to prison, but not before doing a flashy New York Times Magazine profile on the way in. Bridget talks with legendary media OG Lea Goldman, deputy editorial director of G/O Media and founder of the social first media newsletter Hazmat Hotel about what it means, what it tells us about women’s media, celebrity profiles, and why it matters.
FOLLOW HAZMAT HOTEL! I ALWAYS LEARN SOMETHING FROM LEAH’S MEDIA MUSINGS: https://www.instagram.com/leajgoldman/
Liz Holmes Wants You to Forget About Elizabeth: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/07/business/elizabeth-holmes-theranos-interview.html
The New York Times’ Elizabeth Holmes Profile Is Causing Drama in the Newsroom: “What the Hell Happened Here?”: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2023/05/elizabeth-holmes-new-york-times
She’s left the Firm behind. Harry’s found a polo team in Santa Barbara. The kids are doing great. Now she’s ready for her next act: https://www.thecut.com/article/meghan-markle-profile-interview.html
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
She checked a lot of boxes in that regard, and
she knew it, and she worked it, and she worked
it all the way to the slammer.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
There Are No Girls on the Internet as a production
of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative. I'm Bridge Tad and this
is There Are No Girls on the Internet. You probably
know the story of Elizabeth Holmes, the scrappy, deep voice
Stanford dropout who used her college money to start fair Nose,
(00:36):
a company that promised to disrupt blood testing with the
use of a device capable of screening for everything from
cancer to aids with a single drop of blood. She
even had a piffy little story about how she was
inspired to start their Nose because she was afraid of
needles and couldn't stand to let a little prick to
draw her blood be stronger than she was. Honestly, it's
(00:58):
kind of a great story and it worked. In twenty fourteen,
Forbes named Elizabeth Holmes the world's youngest self made female billionaire,
and by that time Tharaohnose had raised over four hundred
million dollars in venture capital and was estimated to be
worth billions. But it was, of course all a scam.
(01:18):
Pharaohnos's devices could never test blood. Elizabeth Holmes and her
former partner COO Sonny Balwany played everyone wealthy investors and
board members, including Rupert Murdoch, former Secretary of Education Bessi Devas,
and former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. The retailed pharmacies
meant to house the devices, and most importantly, the patients,
(01:42):
like the mother with a history of miscarriages whom their
nose devices wrongly told that she would never be able
to have a baby, someone given a false HIV diagnosis
who then had to wait months until they could afford
a follow up test, and someone given a false cancer diagnosis.
Elizabeth Holmes hurt real people, but that fact did not
stop her from doing a fluffy profile in the New
(02:04):
York Times magazine back in May, right as her sentencing
for fraud was in the headlines called Liz Holmes wants
you to forget about Elizabeth. I'm sure she does, where
she soft launches her new nickname, Liz not Elizabeth, and
gives us the I'm just like you treatment, complete with
glossy photographs of her cradling her newborn infant in her arms.
(02:27):
A lah Madonna and child if Madonna had been facing
jail time now. The piece was pretty universally reviled, and
with the recent news from last week that Elizabeth Holmes's
sentence is being quietly shortened by two years, the profile
seemed like a perfect bookend because Elizabeth Holmes rose to
prominence with the help of slick media profiles, and it
(02:49):
left me wondering about the role that those exact profiles
had in her rise and ultimate fall from grace and
the business of how those slick media profiles come to be.
So I turned to an expert.
Speaker 1 (03:02):
Hi, my name is Leah Goldman. I am the deputy
editorial director of Geomedia. I also run a newsletter, a
social first newsletter called Hazmat Hotel, which is media analysis
and criticism, unfiltered, uncensored.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
Whenever I'm looking for like an insidery media hot take,
I go straight to your feed. You know you've always
got something interesting to say. How did you get here?
Speaker 1 (03:26):
I've been in media, yeah, since the dawn of time.
It feels like. I started out in Forbes magazine. I
was a business reporter. I knew nothing about business, but
those were the good old days where you could learn
on the job. You didn't need advanced degree or even
a j school degree. And I was there for ten
years and I learned how to write an edit and
report from some of the smartest people in the game.
Those were the days where you could get fired for
(03:48):
a fact checking error, so we were just a very
buttoned up group. And after that I went over to
Marie Claire. I wanted to try more general interest magazine,
and I was very fortunate because it was the you know,
media had started to coalesce around women's media. There really
wasn't a formal women's media outside of Jezebel really at
(04:10):
that point, so I was there. It was pre lean in,
so I was there at a very formative time, which
was kind of exciting and also strange because suddenly women
were hot and in like a business sense right, and
it was exciting. There was a lot of interest on
the advertising side, which was unusual, so that was cool.
I got to do very cool things there. Then I
went over to run Refinery twenty nine newsroom before I
(04:32):
got recruited to work in television at A and E,
which was really the I would say the seminal moment
in my career because I got to see how the
other half lives. If you're in media, you know, you
sort of look over that fence with envy, with lust,
with your nose pressed against the wall and your tongue
hanging out. I want to work in. Everybody, whether they'll
admit it or not, wants the story that gets optioned
(04:53):
for a movie that becomes argo. And so I got
to work where those things get made, and I got
to see how see what that was really like, which
blew my mind, taught me a lot. I call it
my business school. I just actually used that phrasing this morning.
It was my business school in a lot of ways.
And then decided after that I'm gonna write I'm a writer,
(05:14):
and I am a writer. And after I left A
and E, I was working under Nancy Debuke. Nancy went
over Device, so I had to write out my contract.
I was writing. I was writing full time, and then
COVID came and ended up working at Goo, which has
been its own crazy trip. That's what That's how.
Speaker 2 (05:33):
I got here as a pioneer of women's media especially.
How have you seen that field evolve?
Speaker 1 (05:38):
Well, I'm always like a little leery of that, of
being tagged with that, because in fact, there were like
real pioneers in women's media, not you know, I just
got lucky to be at an establishment kind of media
outlet that happened to be in fashion, so in beauty.
Speaker 2 (05:54):
So it was.
Speaker 1 (05:55):
Flush, right, it had resources, which a lot of the
other like Jezbel didn't have that. So they they you know,
they all credit where it's due, and it's not Mary
Claire where it's due. But I will say this, The
one thing I do, you know, feel like I can
crow about, I'm proud of it is that when I
was at Mary Clare, I created the very first dedicated
section in a women's magazine devoted to career.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
Right.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
So historically women's magazines would cover it through the lens
of money and like the big cliche was that credit
card stuck in a block of ice. That's how we
talk to women about their careers. It was through like
how you spend your money and how to be frugal.
You know. So here was the first time we weren't
talking about getting to the top. We were talking about
what it was like at the top, and I think
that was very new. And so the idea was to
(06:42):
focus less on the burdens though there were certainly burdens
and less on the challenges, though there were absolutely challenges
of getting to the top, but more like, this is
the view from the top, and this is how you
can change things once you get there, and this is
why it's important that you get there. And so when
it feels like you're ready to quit, or you feel
like you don't have a shot, or you feel you know, discouraged,
(07:04):
just remember this is the view from the top.
Speaker 2 (07:07):
To really understand Elizabeth Holmes, you need to understand the
era where she rose to prominence. The twenty tens were
just a different time. You kind of had to be there.
It was a different time for media, a different time
for women. In twenty thirteen, Facebook's then COO Cheryl Sandberg
released her book lean In, which was kind of pushed
(07:27):
as a manifesto for a certain kind of working white lady.
A year later, in twenty fourteen, Sofia Amoroso, founder of
the retailer Nasty Gal, releases girl Boss, which is kind
of the same thing as lean In, but with an alty,
punk rock diy ethos. That same year, Elizabeth Holmes's media
attention explodes, Fortune Forbes, t The New York Times Style
(07:50):
magazine inc. She's not just in these magazines, she's on
the cover writing about women and work and money and success.
Just felt hot. It's an era that Leah remembers very well.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
It was an exciting time to be alive. It felt
like we were on the cusp of something and then
lo and behold, we were on the cusp of something.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
What was it like to be doing this work through
so many different eras like the lean In era, the
girl Boss era, whatever era we're in now. I don't
even know what the era is that we're telling women
through media, Like, what is it bed like to see
all of these different changes?
Speaker 1 (08:27):
You know, it's hard, it's hard to relive the Rah
Rah era. It definitely felt It definitely felt like we
were in the hot place, like we were in a
hot zone that were exciting. There were conferences. Oh my god,
it was all about the conferences. It was always about
the fucking conferences. And it was always the same people
(08:48):
you'd see both on the panels and in the audiences.
That's what I remember. It was like, Oh she's here again,
Oh she's here. Like there were just you know, people
who denizens of these things. So it was like a
club right, and coming out of Forbes, I never felt
like I belonged to a club because Forbes really did
not subscribe to this idea that there was like a
(09:09):
media community. It always was standoffish about being part of
a club. And so when I got to Hurst, which
owned Mary Clare, I wasn't terribly well connected because I didn't,
you know, it wasn't part of my upbringing, so to speak.
And so now I was part of a club, and
people started knocking on my door, and suddenly I'm editing
Sophia Marusso and suddenly I'm in a off the record
(09:30):
conversation with Cheryl Samdberg, and it was like, oh my god,
Like it was cool, you know, and it was fun,
and it came with all sorts of crazy perks. The downside, obviously,
is like now in retrospect, we can see how, you know,
how much of a herd mentality it was. In fact,
I was like, you know, looking through I always I
have all my stuff from that period, all my spreadsheets,
(09:53):
all my contacts, my ROLLO ad act hey, like you
know Elizabeth Holmes from there, nos, and like it was.
Speaker 2 (09:59):
We were we were or not?
Speaker 1 (10:01):
I could I let me talk for myself, I could
have done a better job of being more circumspect and
asking more questions and holding people accountable instead of buying
into this very heady era for women. And it was
heady like it was. It was like things, you know,
it was like the era where Hillary Clinton was going
(10:21):
to be president and like things were changing, things were afoot.
So obviously we all are living with the fallout from that,
you know, that tunnel vision, and I was part of that,
Like I have to own that I was part of
that tunnel vision.
Speaker 2 (10:36):
Part of Elizabeth Holmes's success is how she worked media.
A young blonde Stanford dropout in a black Steve Jobs
turtleneck who was going to revolutionize blood testing. It was
just too perfect to pass up, not just for women's media,
but for media in general.
Speaker 1 (10:53):
I think Elizabeth Holmes checked a lot of boxes for starters,
like she got it right. She got that for media,
not just's media, but especially women's media, which could help
drive a train.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
Like.
Speaker 1 (11:03):
The dirty secret about media even now, right even after
all the reckonings and the closures, is that we all
look at each other and we're all like, oh, how
they get they got the exclusive, or who's on their list.
And it's not that we're lazy, but we're just like
always looking over at the other person's like who did
they get and why did they get that person? I
need to invite that person to my event. So, you know,
(11:25):
when you made like if you could get into a
women's book, if you could get into a women's magazine,
other we started to notice that other people would put
these women who we had discovered or we had you know,
and I'm not talking about there no specific Elizabeth specifically,
but just generally, you know, they would start to appear
on other lists. So we felt like we were part
of the game. And I think she understood that innately
(11:47):
that she could be a very She was a very
good shorthand for a certain type of woman that fit
a very accessible profile. I mean, the most obvious, the
most obvious billboard for that is her wardrobe, right, Like,
I'm the female Steve Jobs, Like, you can't get you
can't get a shorter shorthand than that, right, Like how
(12:09):
easy to digest is that? So she instantly got how
to navigate media, which I find fascinating because generally speaking,
I think tech people in tech and other industries outside
media still don't get media. But she got it. So
she got the look, she got the speak, she got
the way to distill your story and your what your
(12:30):
company does in a way that made sense for like
an article that was only three you know, a little
caption that was only three sentences, or a full on profile.
So she understood how to you know, she understood how
to make it sing for a media person. Like when
we go into I think, you know, it's helpful for
people to understand how it worked in the magazine business,
(12:50):
and though it's changed considerably since then, it'll give you
a sense of why people ended up occupying the spaces
in you know, in the culture that they did. When
we would go in to pitch someone for a magazine page,
it wasn't a done deal. I wouldn't just go in
and be like, I'm gonna put so and so on
a page. I had to get approval. I had to
get my editor's approvally editor and she's approval. So you
would always walk in with you know, your pitch, you
(13:12):
want it, and of course you want your pitch to
get approval. You want your pitch to win. And a
picture pitch in a picture and you know, and so
they're looking at it like, oh, I won't do I.
Is it diverse enough, is it glossy enough? Is it
you know? Is it gonna work? Like I'm not going
to bullshit you and pretend that it was very well meaning,
(13:34):
because there were pieces of it that weren't well meaning.
There were pieces of it that were like, is this
gonna look good on a page? And I hate that that's.
Speaker 2 (13:41):
What it was. But it was.
Speaker 1 (13:42):
So she checked a lot of boxes in that regard,
and she knew it, and she worked it, and she
worked it all the way to the slammer.
Speaker 3 (13:53):
Let's take a quick break eder back.
Speaker 2 (14:06):
Everyone's heard of fake it till you make it, and
it's especially a thing in tech and media. Uber famously
has never turned a profit. But when does fake it
till you make it cross over from an ethos to
an actual crime? Just ask the folks at Ozzi Media,
whose CEO Carlos Watson was arrested earlier this year for
fraud for allegedly overvaluing his media company's audience in an
(14:30):
attempt to defraud investors. According to journalist Ben Smith at
the New York Times, the company COO and co founder
Samir Rau even went so far As disguising his voice
to impersonate a YouTube executive on a conference call with
Goldman Sachs in an attempt to secure a forty million
dollar investment. Stories like this one and Faranos makes clear
(14:51):
how much of the shiny, flashy success can just be
a grift, one that is buttressed by tech press failing
to peek behind the curtain and ask the right questions,
questions like what's going on here? How are you making money?
Is this whole thing legit? Do you think that there
are ways that there are tech people who are kind
(15:11):
of playing that game today where you kind of I
don't want to use the word trick, but you know
how to play the game. And you know that journalists
and media folks might also have deadlines, might also want
their their piece to look a certain way. So they're
just like, we're not going to ask too many critical questions.
We're just going to run with this and if it
turns out to be a scam, well phobe.
Speaker 1 (15:32):
It one hundred percent. This is like when we talk
about my SO, I like, I I have a nose
for this. I get to my DNA as much as I,
you know, often entertain the idea of going into another
industry like I can't. It just keeps pulling me back in.
But these this is why, because I often have these
conversations like I don't understand this, Like I don't understand
(15:55):
they're there. I get the optics of it, I get
why it works and why they're getting the press, but
I don't get there there. And I'm going to tell
you that Ozzie Media. I was talking about Ozzie Media
in my for what It's Worth. I mean, I have
no evidence of this and credit where's due to bed Smith?
But like I was talking about Azzimedia forever because I
remember those three years when Ozzi Fest was trying and
(16:16):
they could never do an actual Azzi Fest. But I
remember seeing ads on the subway and the tickets were expensive,
and I was like, who's going to these things? And
also like, more pressingly, how did they get that talent?
Because having tried to book events at Hurst and Forbes,
I know that it's hard to get even one person
to agree, let alone all those people to agree without
(16:37):
paying them, So like are they getting paid and if so,
where's the money coming from? Like I had very like
basic questions about how this all worked. And so it
wasn't surprising to me when it was all smoke and mirrors.
But I have those conversations all the time. There are
some women and men, but some women in the space
that I often like, I have this parlor game I
(16:59):
play with some friends. It's like how does what's It's like,
how does this person get by? That's the game I play,
How does this person get by? Because I see I
see this like world of success and a business, but
I don't see that business in the wild, right, Like
I don't see people using the company, the product. I
(17:20):
don't see the copy, the content. I don't understand how
it works. And maybe I'm just not that smart or
maybe I don't understand the business. But like I sometimes
ask myself, how is that a thing? And then I'm like, oh,
they're playing a media game. That has to be the
only answer.
Speaker 2 (17:36):
Well, that really goes back to Elizabeth Elizabeth Holmes, where
like there is so much fake it till you make it.
I have that same thing where I look at people.
It's a lot of men, but not all men, who
are building media products, right, And it's like part of
me is like I don't understand how they have this
much funding, how they have this many people on their masthead,
(17:59):
but it doesn't seem like people are reading this, like
are people subscribed? But I just don't know, like how
is the mathmathing on this? And I do think there's
this there is this dynamic of people faking it till
they make it, and you're not supposed to really peek
behind the curtain because if you did, you might see
that it's a house of cards or it's a little
(18:19):
bit of a grift.
Speaker 1 (18:21):
Yeah. Absolutely, And now that I'm a little older, a
little wiser, a little more bruised from you know, certain
people or things that I myself pushed in those you know,
raw ra days, I this is partly what I do
with Hazmat Hotel, is I ask those questions like is
this really someone we should be covering with this much
(18:43):
breathless you know, like eye eyes, wide saucer eyes, kind
of bullishness, or is this something we should be a
little more skeptical about? And so like the Elizabeth Holmes thing,
that story that ran recently, the one you know, after
she'd been convicted, and it was like the Madonna and
Child picture now like a notorious picture that they ran
(19:06):
in the business section. If I recall, like, to me,
that was scandalous, Like I actually, I think it's a
testament to how fractured media is that it wasn't a
bigger scandal because that it managed to pass all those
checkpoints and get not just the coverage but the length.
(19:27):
Do you know how expensive it is to commission a
photographer for a shoot like that? There were wardrobe changes
in that shoot. There was probably a stylist on that shoot.
Now did Elizabeth Holmes pay for it? I don't know,
but like we're talking, this was like a resource intensive
shoot for a newspaper, you know. Over I think it
was like three jumps front page and then two and
(19:48):
then spread. So like that's that's an investment of a story.
And so that response afterwards that like oh it's winking,
you know, like there's a winking aspect to the store.
You just don't get the joke. No, no, no, no, no, no no
no no. We don't do that at the Times, like
you're not GQ. You don't get you know, like no,
and also like don't talk down to me that you
(20:08):
and ps. I love the New York Times. I love
and hate the New York Times. It's like it's my
Bete noir. I'm like obsessed with the times, but I
just felt like that response did not wash with me.
And I was insulted by that response because I felt like, you,
of all people, should not go around pretending you're smarter
than your audience. Like that's not cool, that's not the
deal we have with each other. That, oh you didn't
(20:30):
get the joke, it was a winking story. No, no, no,
Well that bothered me.
Speaker 2 (20:34):
What do you make of that response? Because I read
the Vanity Fair piece about how the profile came to
be and they were like, oh, it wasn't a pr piece,
like it was pitched to us and it was all
above board. It certainly didn't sound that way. I agree
with you. But I read another take that was like,
maybe it's a piece about how easy it is for
(20:54):
you to get conned and the reporter also got scammed
by Elizabeth, and it sort of meant to be like
a like a warning piece about how easy it is
to fall for a grifter. What do you what do
you take of that? Of that or what do you
make of that response?
Speaker 1 (21:09):
Well, this is exactly what I mean when I say,
you know, the winking aspect of it, and why I
didn't wash with me for starters like, look, we're in
an era now where you have a nanosecond. Even The
Times maybe has two nanoseconds with its audience, like it
gets the benefit of the doubt. But broadly speaking, like
we're in an era where the competition for your attention
is ruthless. So as I tell you know my colleagues
(21:33):
at GEO and beyond, you don't get the benefit of
sitting on the reader's shoulder and whispering in their ear.
It's tongue in cheek. The idea that you have that
is is ludicrous, it's laughable, and it's ridiculous, Like it's
on its face it's ridiculous. And in the business section,
no less, not the style, like all of it just
didn't was like irritated me that that that's what we're
(21:55):
going to go out with, that's the that's the narrative
we're going to go out with. This. It was a
total come on, It was a total pr thing. Listen,
if I got a call that said you can have
the pre jail Elizabeth Holmes for a Q and A
hell yeah, I would take it. But that's not the issue.
The issue is not that they took an interview with her.
(22:17):
It's how it was packaged and how it was and
how it was delivered to us at this moment in time.
Her crime maybe not as worse as you know, the
we work guy, but like according to who right like
her crime she heard people. She defrauded people. So not
(22:37):
only is the issue this like you know, this a
notion that we didn't get the nature of the story,
but also you're giving three pages of real estate to
a woman who's had plenty of ink by the way,
and has been convicted of very serious crimes. Like I
just that bothers me. For every story you do, there's
a story you're not doing. We're in the age of
(22:59):
limited restore for media, like notoriously, these resources are scarce,
even at a company like The Times, So I forever
story you're doing, there's a story you're not doing. And
that's what I spent a lot of time thinking about,
why did this story pass muster? So like, for example,
what caught my eye just recently was you know, I
can't remember if it was Twitter or threads, but Washington,
the Washington Post was pushing a newsletter about Barbie, which
(23:23):
blew my fucking mind because Washington Post a newsletter which
is a separate product that requires resources. It requires some
engineering support, it requires product support, it requires editorial support,
so lots of different stakeholders, resource intensive. It has to
be populated with content, has to have a calendar like
these are all things that go into something like that
(23:45):
about Barbie. So that tells me Barbie's doing phenomenal numbers
for the Washington Post. Otherwise why would they do it?
Which is interesting given their audience and their and their
birth right, their remit. That's caught my eye, and I
just thought I need to hear more about that. I
need to understand how that came to be.
Speaker 2 (24:02):
How do you sniff it out? Cause you're no one
is sniffing out these like these questions that need to
be asked in stories like you what gets your alarm
bells ringing when you see something you're like, I don't
know about this, Like I saw your your story about
Amazon Prime Day and the way that that was getting coverage,
which I never thought about it before. How all of
these different publications are like here are the best deals
(24:25):
for Amazon Prime Day? Even publications that every other day
are critical of Amazon and their business practices. How do
you sniff it out when something just doesn't seem right
to you.
Speaker 1 (24:34):
I just I'm obsessed with media, Like I'm a media junkie.
I sound so stupid when you hear yourself say it,
But I just love media. I love it and I
hate it. I'm both tortured by it and obsessed with it.
And I you know, it's like it's just how I'm
wired at this point. So how do I sniff it out?
I don't know. Like I read a lot and I
ask a lot of questions. It's why I got into
(24:56):
the business. I'm a curious cat. And I also love
to talk to people. Love to talk to people and
find out like what's hurting their business, what they're thinking about,
who's up and coming in their business, who they're afraid of,
and if they'll talk to me, I will absolutely talk
to them. So there's just a lot, you know, I
guess I'm just interested.
Speaker 2 (25:20):
More After a quick break, let's get right back into
it today. Part of Leea's work is sniffing it out
when media stories just don't seem right and more times
(25:40):
that I'm proud of. Leah's work has challenged me to
think outside of my own preconceived frameworks. For instance, back
in May, I came across a viral TikTok purporting to
show boxes and boxes of books being removed from a
school library in Florida. Naturally I instantly contextualize this story
within the larger cond text of book bands happening in
(26:01):
Florida and across the country. Now, this is obviously a
real thing that is happening in Florida, but that particular
thirty second TikTok might not have actually been showing the
full story. I mean this as a compliment. It might
not sound like it you often are saying. It's often
like not what you might think, right, So, like, your
coverage really challenges me to look beyond my own biases
(26:25):
or my own understanding of how I think stories come
together in media, and it doesn't always align with my
conventional wisdoms or you know, biases or whatever I might
be thinking. Like, and you do such a good job
of pulling back the layers to what's actually going on.
I'm thinking, in particular of that viral TikTok where it
was like a school library and they had all these
(26:45):
boxes and boxes of books, and presumably these are books
that are being removed from the school library because they're
inappropriate really feeds into the conversation we're all having about
things like book bands and you know, books being challenged
in libraries. You called the school or call the library
to actually ask what's going on. And there was actually
more to that story than like that thirty second TikTok.
(27:07):
What have you believe?
Speaker 1 (27:08):
No, yes, I remember that. It feels like a century ago,
but I think it might have been a month or
two ago. Yeah, so there was that viral TikTok of
like two bins filled with books. So there was the
knee I guess the knee jerk reaction is what usually
catches my attention, and then I'm like, huh, you know
in that case, I also like to test myself, right,
(27:30):
I like to see if I can find a source
who's going to give me this scoop quickly. So I'm
always like, if I see that in the morning, I'll
buy all my goals to get it done by the
end of the day because I want to be able
to tell a reporter despite whatever deadlines you have, you
can usually get a response by the end of the day.
So part of it is just me staying on my
toes in that way. It was pretty easy because I
(27:52):
think it was Broward County and there's like a Department
of D there, and they put me in touch with
their comps person, So I did get an answer by
the end of the day. Now then sevitable follow up
I should have done to that was do we believe
the Department of ED right like they said? If I
recall correctly, They said that they are.
Speaker 3 (28:07):
Oh.
Speaker 1 (28:07):
Yes, there was a settlement. So that was the interesting
piece of this. I learned from calling the comms person
at the Department of ED, at the Board of ED
whatever it is, that there was a lawsuit several years
ago from black and brown students the parents of them
because their schools did not have books that were as
recent as new, as in good quality and like the
(28:29):
breath of books in their school libraries that the more
affluent white schools had. So I'm pretty sure it was
Barra County Pass there was a lawsuit. In the settlement,
they agreed that every ten years or so that they
were going to upgrade the libraries. They had to by law,
and so this was part of that settlement. We are
required to upgrade these books, and these are the books
that no longer meet our standards because they're old and
(28:51):
they're dated and whatever. And so that's kind of fascinating
because that turns the whole narrative on its head. Right, Actually,
they're complying with a lawsuit that's supposed to provide equity
for students who might otherwise not get it. And that's like,
that's an important thing we should be talking about.
Speaker 3 (29:08):
Now.
Speaker 1 (29:08):
That's not to say the book bannings are not important,
that one hundred percent are. But we have a big
problem in this country of misinformation and people believing that
there's bias in media. And I do see it sometimes,
and I think that's an example of it where and
it's not coming from a venal place, it's not coming
(29:29):
from a malicious place. It's coming from a place like
it's easy to believe that it makes sense that that.
Of course, we're looking at them throwing away books that
might be, you know, about subjects that we want them
to learn about. But we have to do our job.
Speaker 2 (29:43):
Leah critiques journalism because she has so much respect for
the field. Journalists like Evan Gerskovich, the first American journalist
to be imprisoned in Russia since the Cold war base,
imprisonment and worse, just for doing their jobs and reporting.
So journalism is something to be respect affected and protected.
Speaker 1 (30:02):
You've opened the door to my big spiel. My big
spiel is that journalists want to be seen as a
noble profession, and there is a nobility to it. But
to be afforded the rights and privileges that reporters get
in the courts, in people's minds and culture, you have
to live up to standards that are a tradition, an
(30:26):
honor bound tradition of the profession, and that is reporting
and doing your due diligence. That's like fundamentally the basics
of it. You need to do your homework and you
need to make the calls and so. And it has
real life repercussions because we're seeing courts claw back writes
and privileges for reporters all the time. We're seeing, you know,
reporters not be able to maintain confidentiality with sources. In
(30:48):
certain cases they have to turn over their notes. They're
being imprisoned for maintaining confidentiality court case after court case.
This is very worrisome. I know this because I work
with a for amendment lawyer who's like the top of
the game. I'm one of the privileges of my job
is I get to work with this like well known
First Amendment lawyer Ky Falkenberg, So I hear about these
(31:11):
cases all the time, and so they're having real life
impact on journalists around the country. So we damn well
better do our part and not buy into narratives because
they make for cheap stories. Have I written my share
of them? You bet I have, and I am embarrassed
by them. I am regretful of them, and I hope
(31:32):
I never repeat them. But like, these are the lessons
we have to learn from the last decade, and it
pains me to no end to see you know, reporters
like just like I think it's something we need to
champion as a group. We have this, you know, this
poor Wall Street journal reporter stuck in a Russian jail
for doing exactly what he should be doing for reporting,
(31:55):
you know, for reporting, and he you know, he's missing
his family, he's he's probably suffering. Lord knows what we
can't take for granted that there are repercussions to what
we do. I think it's very serious our jobs, and
it is a noble profession, but then we have to
do our part to live up to what makes it noble.
We have to report, we have to like make the calls.
(32:18):
It's that simple. That's how I see it.
Speaker 2 (32:20):
I briefly worked in a newsroom, and I could see
myself just seeing that TikTok, for instance, and just writing
it up like this gave me a big emotional reaction
that aligned with my preconceived biases or my understanding of
the world, and not picking up the phone and making
that call, not doing the work of actually getting that
(32:42):
there's more to the story than what I just saw
on this TikTok. I'm really grateful that you're modeling how
to not just fall right into that like easy story,
easy write up, and tell a fuller story because it
really matters well.
Speaker 1 (32:58):
I appreciate hearing that I've certainly know endured my shirt
blowback for having that opinion, because I think it's often
confused or conflated with conservatism, and I absolutely do not
identify as a conservative. I think I'm pretty upfront with
my politics, which is also odd for a journalist. But
I will tell you this, like one of the most
(33:19):
memorable conversations I've had was during covid. I started this
podcast because I was like, you know, home like everybody
else was, and I wanted to stay sharp. So I
taught myself had a podcast, and part of it was
just like figuring out who to talk to. I need
to talk to smart people who have thoughts on what's happening.
And one of the first conversations I had was with
Errol Lewis, and Erra Lewis is New York famous, like
he's New York One reporter, like like old school, like
(33:42):
this guy is it right? But he also appears on
I forget what network, but he appears on cable all
the time. He's just he just knows his shit. Era
Lewis is the guy and I had a nice conversation,
like I really memorable. I remember like listening to it
again and again after because what he said was so
so it was profound, like I'd never thought about it
(34:02):
like that. We talked about objectivity, which is the hot
button issue for journalists right now, and he was like, look,
I have opinions. I don't shy away from sharing my opinions,
but they're informed, like nobody knows this town better than
I do. When I show up to a meeting and
I'm covering it. I know exactly what happened at the
ten meetings before. I know who the players are, and
I know why they're saying what they're saying. So I
(34:24):
come to it with this breath and with this experience
that is not challenged. By the way, you will never
hear anyone challenge Erra Lewis for bias. Why because he
did the work. He did the work, and so I
thought that's so interesting, Like, yes, of course, of course,
you're a human being, Like you're not one hundred percent objective.
You have feelings about this issue, you believe in right
(34:45):
and wrong, you believe some issues fall on certain sides,
and you're you know, And he doesn't necessarily write it
like down the line, but it's informed and he brings
that expertise to the four and I think that's that
for me, was like, that's become my north star. Whether
he realizes or not, but he had a real impact
on me. That conversation.
Speaker 2 (35:06):
That girl Boss lean in era that allowed Elizabeth Holmes
to rise up in the ranks has kind of come
and gone. And after all that, all that flash and
promise around women in the twenty tens, today it's kind
of hard to not feel like we're in a bit
of a rougher place. But one truth is that, with
all its flaws, women's media has always been there telling
(35:28):
our stories and speaking to us, even when other types
of media.
Speaker 1 (35:31):
Work it's a super fraud conversation. When I was at
Murray Clare, there were some things that were inviolable, right,
women's abortion, women's reproductive rights, gay rights, LGBTQ rights. There
were certain values that the women's magazine was not negotiable
(35:53):
on this, certainly this one, and I think that's true
across women's media written large. There are certain things if
you're going to be and we don't speak of them.
We just not We just live them. We say that
because for decades women's magazines this like afterthought in media,
This looked down upon category occupied a very i won't
(36:18):
even say protected, but like a special place. We were
in nail salons, We were in hair salons, places that
men weren't, and so we could have conversations with you
that you couldn't have at home, because your husband would
beat the shit out of you if you talked to
him about it. Right, we could talk about how like,
oh I got a terrible sonogram back and I'm not
sure I can keep this baby, or oh my husband's
beating me, or oh I you know, I'm not satisfied sexually.
(36:41):
Like these were stories that women's media was telling, and
we can hold our nose up at them and say, oh,
women in peril, and you know they they codified certain
stereotypes of women, and there's they're sure, like we can
have that discussion, but we also need to talk about
how this sneered at form of me was the one
(37:02):
place where you could talk to a woman like she
was in the bathroom at a restaurant and asked for
a tampon, Like you couldn't do that in US Weekly
or USA Today or People magazine. And so I just
want to like acknowledge you couldn't do that because we
(37:22):
allowed for women that freedom. And that's part of the
DNA of this repro rights thing, you know, it just
it just is we take for granted that it is
because it was early on it was like this secret,
private forum we could have discussions where we didn't judge women.
Maybe we judge them about their weight, We definitely did that.
(37:42):
We judged them about their skin and their age. We
one hundred percent did that. But we also talked to
them about the you know, like nothing is as black
and white as like good bad. It was a very
nuanced thing and so strange. But it's hard to have
nuanced conversations about media with media people.
Speaker 2 (37:58):
Do you ever worry that I don't even know how
to phrase this.
Speaker 1 (38:01):
Now I'm gonna get canceled?
Speaker 2 (38:03):
Yeah, they think get do you word? Is this something
that because you you say what's on your mind and
you tell it like it is. I don't always agree,
like I'm always sometimes all read things and I'm like, ah,
that hits me, that hits me weird, but it's not
not true.
Speaker 3 (38:16):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (38:16):
Do you worry about being too outspoken or saying the
wrong thing?
Speaker 3 (38:20):
Sure?
Speaker 1 (38:20):
I mean my husband hates it, you know, he's just like,
you know, what are you doing it? It's not that
it's like I don't know. I guess Like I'm a
middle aged person who's been in media for twenty five years.
I've seen the best of our business. I've seen the
worst of our business. But I've also seen like the
very thing that I love about this business, like the
(38:43):
wanting to talk about things and talk to people and
hear what they have to say, whether you like it
or not, Like I just don't like that we're becoming
resistant to it. And I get it, Like I get it.
I get why I don't have a trans child who's
rights are up for grabs. I'm not raising a kid
(39:04):
who you know, I'm not looking for, you know, like
I don't have as much on the line as a
lot of other people do. And so I get that.
Maybe I don't appreciate the stakes, but there's something about
not being able to talk about it, not like I
don't like that I'm the only person or like that
comes with risks, Like I don't like that we're not
(39:25):
supposed to talk about things, Like what's wrong with talking
about things? I'm not I'm not like trying to shove
policy down your throat. I'm just trying to have a conversation.
I'm trying to understand the world a little better, trying
to understand like we should be able to talk. You know,
I've been spending a lot of time with I've been
spending a lot of time watching Phil Donahue.
Speaker 2 (39:45):
Ooh, oh my god, my mom would If my mom
were here, she would be so down for a conversation
about Donna Yu. I saw your tweet about wanting like
we need a documentary, like a look back.
Speaker 1 (39:56):
Yes, and it makes me feel very old that you
reference your mother. Maybe as old as your mother.
Speaker 2 (40:01):
No, no, not yet. No if he just happened. Still
love Donahue.
Speaker 1 (40:04):
I love Donahue. He was on after school when I
got home, and I remember it was the first time
I'd seen anyone with AIDS. I can still remember that
episode with Ryan White and Jeanie White. It was the
first time i'd seen you know gay in talk about
you know being gay. But I just remember, like there
wasn't the chair throwing that came afterwards, right, like it's
not it's not new to this era. We saw that
(40:27):
shortly after. But he had a way about him that
felt like I don't know if it was the error
or him or maybe a bit of both, but he
had a way about him that opened the floor to
people to talk about how they really felt and want
what they could learn from someone who didn't feel that way,
And there was something like nonjudgmental about it. And he
also pushed like if you watch some of those episodes,
(40:48):
he would push them so, but why do youth, you know,
like he was pushy, and I just there's like it
was special. It was like a special thing to watch
because he did not shy from hot button issues. We
could never there could never be a sho like that
right now, never ever, ever, ever, and why not? It
was like, why can't we just talk to each other anyway?
I sound corny, but that's how I feel.
Speaker 2 (41:08):
No, it doesn't. It doesn't sound corny at all. I
can't wait to if younger listeners are like who, I
can't wait to spark a Donna Hue.
Speaker 1 (41:19):
Yeah, render for Donna Hue renaissance.
Speaker 2 (41:23):
The New York Times magazine's profile of Elizabeth Holmes and
the collective grown it inspired from readers makes me wonder
if we've just moved past the shine of the big
important public figure profile piece in general. Take that now
infamous Megan Markle profile and the Cut, for instance, what
probably would have been a standard profile about her thoughts
(41:44):
on parenthood and her morning routine included one small detail
that gave readers a quick glance beyond the polished pr
talking points and preapproved subjects that were used to in
these kinds of profiles. The profile says that Megan sometimes
sounds like she has a tiny bachelor producer in her
brain directing what she says. At one point in our conversation,
(42:04):
the piece reads, instead of answering a question, she will
suggest how I might transcribe the noise she's making. She's
making these gunneral sounds, and I can't quite articulate what
it is she's feeling in the moment because she has
no word for it. She's just moaning. Now, that little
detail about the noise that Megan makes before answering a
question seemingly confirmed what we all know, that a famous
(42:25):
person's public persona is actually carefully manufactured, and it proved
just too good to resist. But in this day and age,
what exactly is the celebrity profile?
Speaker 3 (42:36):
Like?
Speaker 2 (42:37):
What is it and who is it for? At best,
they feed the live that celebrities aren't just like us
when we all know that of course they're not. And
at worse, they help scammers like Elizabeth Holmes rise to power.
I wanted to talk to you about the Elizabeth Holmes'
profile and sort of how that was a thing. You
made a really interesting point about this profile of Megan Markle.
(42:58):
I think in the cut where you know it's a
song profile about her life blah blah blah. And there's
one little bit where she gives the author like suggestions
of how she might be able to describe a specific
little noise that she made, and that tiny, little throwaway
thing became the thing, right, so there's a whole profile
(43:18):
that was the thing that people zeroed in on. Do
you think that we're I don't know, kind of beyond
the usefulness of the problem the public profile, like, what
are your thoughts on how how that is evolving as
a media product.
Speaker 1 (43:34):
I find them mostly boring. A lot of magazines do
them because it's part of the trade off with the
entertainment industry. It's a business. It's a business decision to
cover to write a certain profile. You know, you'll see
them in all kinds of media for whether it's a
CEO or what have you. But it's a trade off, like,
make no mistake about it. But occasionally you'll get a
(43:55):
story like that where something is revealed, right and it's
not off, and that something is revealed about someone who
we think we know everything about, and that's interesting to me.
So in the case of Elizabeth Holmes, it revealed something
about the paper and not Elizabeth, which I thought was interesting,
but like a process that you didn't know could happen there.
(44:16):
But in the case of Megan Markle, like what I
found astonishing about it was that it did. It was
contrarian because at the time here in the US, there
was this especially coast on the coasts, there was this
like we must protect her, this kind of vibe, right,
like she deserves our protection. She's you know, she's being
(44:39):
vilified for her race. It's racist and and in fact
that might be true. But there was like something that
went against that narrative in that piece, and it was
brave because doing so opened up the reporter to you know,
all the kind of kinds of attacks that we see
on social media now and we don't like what someone says,
(45:00):
but it revealed something pretty amazing, and it confirmed this
kind of you know, other narrative about her, that it's
all contrived, that it's all manufactured. I mean, it literally
confirmed that, like you couldn't pick a better which is
partly why it was so juicy and delicious and tasty,
because she's literally confirming that this whole thing is artifice,
(45:21):
not that I think it is, but that it actually is.
And I thought that was just really an incredible detail
for the writer to put in, But how could she
not write, like, Wow, what a thing to have happened
in an interview with celebrity. I've done a few celebrity profiles.
They're always negotiated to the nth degree, which is partly
why I find them so boring, because publicists are so
(45:42):
wrapped up in them. It's very rare to get a
piece with someone where a published publicist is not negotiating
everything from where it's at.
Speaker 2 (45:50):
Oh no, she.
Speaker 1 (45:51):
Doesn't want to go to a restaurant because she doesn't
want to be seen or you know whatever. You can't
talk about the marriage. She doesn't want to talk about
the marriage, and you know, oh she you know, don't
ask her about anything political because you we're not talking
about that. Like everything is so you know, it's just
like so massaged that I already know, having seen the
(46:11):
Sausage get Mede, that so much of it is bullshit.
So I rarely find them interesting, And I would love
to see data that shows if people actually get through
these pieces, because I don't think they don't. I don't
think they do. I'm trying to think of the last
profile I read. I can't remember, but they're just like
as an art forum, they're like they're just they are
for an era when we didn't have as much access
(46:33):
to celebrities as we do now, so they are a
very dated art form in my mind.
Speaker 2 (46:37):
I remember being part of a team that worked on
one with a famous woman and I don't want to
say who it is, but people can probably guess. She
had just been married to a high profile political the family,
a high profile political family. But the list of things
that we were not supposed to talk about, we could
not even allude to this wedding, this recent wedding, And
(47:00):
so basically it was like, what the hell are we
going to talk about? Like this?
Speaker 1 (47:02):
This is what do you think people want to talk about?
Speaker 3 (47:05):
Right?
Speaker 2 (47:05):
It's like, if you're reading this profile, you're gonna want
to talk about this recent marriage, right, Like what else
would you want to read about? And it was like,
oh no, not even you can't even allude to it
in the most oblique of ways. It was like, well, then,
how is this going to be an interesting piece that
anybody wants to read? This is the one thing that
people have on their mind when it comes to this person.
Speaker 1 (47:24):
Well, so this goes back to I don't want to
like make it a larger point, but it is part
of a larger point in that it's partly it contributes
to this overall awakening that people are having about media,
that they're wise to the game and they resent it.
So that game is because we need the celebrity, We
need the we need the access to the other celebrities
(47:46):
in that publicist roster. We need the studio not to
be mad at us, because then they'll invite us to
important events and also maybe advertise with us, you know,
or or the beauty brand that that person is an
ambassador for. We need their advertise and we want to
piss them off, and like there's a whole like business
behind those decisions, and people are wise to it. One
(48:08):
of the one of the most frequent questions I got
asked when I was at Marie Claire and even after,
was you know, oh, tell me what mescarity use, or
tell like a makeup question, or oh I saw that
in the magazine. And I would always be like, you
don't really believe that they're they like that, right, because
it was obvious to me that it was all part
(48:28):
of this like game about you know, And I learned
actually I learned, you know, there are certain number of
credits that credits being appearances in the magazine that a
brand is either formally or informally allowed, like oh, that
we owe them credits. I used to hear that all
the time, like we have to put this on your page.
You're doing a career Q and A with so and so,
(48:49):
but I need to put this shoe on the page.
So we're going to do a sidebar of things you
should wear to your work when you're going out afterwards.
So because we owe this brand credits like they're not,
you know, there's it's a business behind those decisions. It's
sad but true, and I think people are wise to it.
Speaker 2 (49:03):
So I don't consider myself to be like a media insider,
but for just your average consumer of magazines media, how
important do you think it is to be sort of
aware of how the sausage has made the business decisions
that go into what we're reading in the media that
we're consuming.
Speaker 1 (49:21):
I think it's very important. Magazines is already such an
anachronistic term. So whatever content you're consuming, wherever you're consuming it, right,
you should one hundred percent be aware of you know,
of what metabolic processes led to that moment. Now, that
(49:41):
doesn't mean you have to sit with it. And I
also don't think it's your responsibility. Like, you know, there
is something to be said for being an informed reader,
but there's also something to be said for being a
responsible journalist. And I just want, I guess, I just
want people to be aware of why we make the
choices we do as a business, as you know, as
a profession. So like the whole uh, you know, when
(50:05):
a movie comes out, there's a premiere, you're going to
see that that celebrity do a round robin of interviews.
All those outlets are going to try to get the
celebrity to say something off the cuff. It never happens.
Sometimes it happens like it's all just such canned garbage,
and it's it's like, we have to be a little
better now, I think because the audiences are wiser, and
(50:26):
what's the net result of that. They're going to TikTok
and they're going elsewhere where they can get a little
more authenticity from anywhere from people who you know, it's
like we've seen the diminished value of celebrity culture, which
it's not. I don't have an opinion on It's just
fascinating that people are turning to forums where they are
getting authenticity and less makeup and less bullshit they're getting.
(50:49):
They want the real, real and I get it. I
get why, because we're feeding them can shit and telling them,
look how awesome this is, and they now know what awesome.
Speaker 2 (51:10):
Got a story about an interesting thing in tech, or
just want to say hi? You can read us at
Hello at tangody dot com. You can also find transcripts
for today's episode at tengody dot com. There Are No
Girls on the Internet was created by me Bridget Todd.
It's a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed creative. Jonathan Strickland
is our executive producer. Tarry Harrison is our producer and
sound engineer. Michael Almado is our contributing producer. I'm your host,
(51:32):
Bridget Todd. If you want to help us grow, rate
and review us on Apple Podcasts. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
check out the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
get your podcasts.
She checked a lot of boxes in that regard, and
she knew it, and she worked it, and she worked
it all the way to the slammer.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
There Are No Girls on the Internet as a production
of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative. I'm Bridge Tad and this
is There Are No Girls on the Internet. You probably
know the story of Elizabeth Holmes, the scrappy, deep voice
Stanford dropout who used her college money to start fair Nose,
(00:36):
a company that promised to disrupt blood testing with the
use of a device capable of screening for everything from
cancer to aids with a single drop of blood. She
even had a piffy little story about how she was
inspired to start their Nose because she was afraid of
needles and couldn't stand to let a little prick to
draw her blood be stronger than she was. Honestly, it's
(00:58):
kind of a great story and it worked. In twenty fourteen,
Forbes named Elizabeth Holmes the world's youngest self made female billionaire,
and by that time Tharaohnose had raised over four hundred
million dollars in venture capital and was estimated to be
worth billions. But it was, of course all a scam.
(01:18):
Pharaohnos's devices could never test blood. Elizabeth Holmes and her
former partner COO Sonny Balwany played everyone wealthy investors and
board members, including Rupert Murdoch, former Secretary of Education Bessi Devas,
and former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. The retailed pharmacies
meant to house the devices, and most importantly, the patients,
(01:42):
like the mother with a history of miscarriages whom their
nose devices wrongly told that she would never be able
to have a baby, someone given a false HIV diagnosis
who then had to wait months until they could afford
a follow up test, and someone given a false cancer diagnosis.
Elizabeth Holmes hurt real people, but that fact did not
stop her from doing a fluffy profile in the New
(02:04):
York Times magazine back in May, right as her sentencing
for fraud was in the headlines called Liz Holmes wants
you to forget about Elizabeth. I'm sure she does, where
she soft launches her new nickname, Liz not Elizabeth, and
gives us the I'm just like you treatment, complete with
glossy photographs of her cradling her newborn infant in her arms.
(02:27):
A lah Madonna and child if Madonna had been facing
jail time now. The piece was pretty universally reviled, and
with the recent news from last week that Elizabeth Holmes's
sentence is being quietly shortened by two years, the profile
seemed like a perfect bookend because Elizabeth Holmes rose to
prominence with the help of slick media profiles, and it
(02:49):
left me wondering about the role that those exact profiles
had in her rise and ultimate fall from grace and
the business of how those slick media profiles come to be.
So I turned to an expert.
Speaker 1 (03:02):
Hi, my name is Leah Goldman. I am the deputy
editorial director of Geomedia. I also run a newsletter, a
social first newsletter called Hazmat Hotel, which is media analysis
and criticism, unfiltered, uncensored.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
Whenever I'm looking for like an insidery media hot take,
I go straight to your feed. You know you've always
got something interesting to say. How did you get here?
Speaker 1 (03:26):
I've been in media, yeah, since the dawn of time.
It feels like. I started out in Forbes magazine. I
was a business reporter. I knew nothing about business, but
those were the good old days where you could learn
on the job. You didn't need advanced degree or even
a j school degree. And I was there for ten
years and I learned how to write an edit and
report from some of the smartest people in the game.
Those were the days where you could get fired for
(03:48):
a fact checking error, so we were just a very
buttoned up group. And after that I went over to
Marie Claire. I wanted to try more general interest magazine,
and I was very fortunate because it was the you know,
media had started to coalesce around women's media. There really
wasn't a formal women's media outside of Jezebel really at
(04:10):
that point, so I was there. It was pre lean in,
so I was there at a very formative time, which
was kind of exciting and also strange because suddenly women
were hot and in like a business sense right, and
it was exciting. There was a lot of interest on
the advertising side, which was unusual, so that was cool.
I got to do very cool things there. Then I
went over to run Refinery twenty nine newsroom before I
(04:32):
got recruited to work in television at A and E,
which was really the I would say the seminal moment
in my career because I got to see how the
other half lives. If you're in media, you know, you
sort of look over that fence with envy, with lust,
with your nose pressed against the wall and your tongue
hanging out. I want to work in. Everybody, whether they'll
admit it or not, wants the story that gets optioned
(04:53):
for a movie that becomes argo. And so I got
to work where those things get made, and I got
to see how see what that was really like, which
blew my mind, taught me a lot. I call it
my business school. I just actually used that phrasing this morning.
It was my business school in a lot of ways.
And then decided after that I'm gonna write I'm a writer,
(05:14):
and I am a writer. And after I left A
and E, I was working under Nancy Debuke. Nancy went
over Device, so I had to write out my contract.
I was writing. I was writing full time, and then
COVID came and ended up working at Goo, which has
been its own crazy trip. That's what That's how.
Speaker 2 (05:33):
I got here as a pioneer of women's media especially.
How have you seen that field evolve?
Speaker 1 (05:38):
Well, I'm always like a little leery of that, of
being tagged with that, because in fact, there were like
real pioneers in women's media, not you know, I just
got lucky to be at an establishment kind of media
outlet that happened to be in fashion, so in beauty.
Speaker 2 (05:54):
So it was.
Speaker 1 (05:55):
Flush, right, it had resources, which a lot of the
other like Jezbel didn't have that. So they they you know,
they all credit where it's due, and it's not Mary
Claire where it's due. But I will say this, The
one thing I do, you know, feel like I can
crow about, I'm proud of it is that when I
was at Mary Clare, I created the very first dedicated
section in a women's magazine devoted to career.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
Right.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
So historically women's magazines would cover it through the lens
of money and like the big cliche was that credit
card stuck in a block of ice. That's how we
talk to women about their careers. It was through like
how you spend your money and how to be frugal.
You know. So here was the first time we weren't
talking about getting to the top. We were talking about
what it was like at the top, and I think
that was very new. And so the idea was to
(06:42):
focus less on the burdens though there were certainly burdens
and less on the challenges, though there were absolutely challenges
of getting to the top, but more like, this is
the view from the top, and this is how you
can change things once you get there, and this is
why it's important that you get there. And so when
it feels like you're ready to quit, or you feel
like you don't have a shot, or you feel you know, discouraged,
(07:04):
just remember this is the view from the top.
Speaker 2 (07:07):
To really understand Elizabeth Holmes, you need to understand the
era where she rose to prominence. The twenty tens were
just a different time. You kind of had to be there.
It was a different time for media, a different time
for women. In twenty thirteen, Facebook's then COO Cheryl Sandberg
released her book lean In, which was kind of pushed
(07:27):
as a manifesto for a certain kind of working white lady.
A year later, in twenty fourteen, Sofia Amoroso, founder of
the retailer Nasty Gal, releases girl Boss, which is kind
of the same thing as lean In, but with an alty,
punk rock diy ethos. That same year, Elizabeth Holmes's media
attention explodes, Fortune Forbes, t The New York Times Style
(07:50):
magazine inc. She's not just in these magazines, she's on
the cover writing about women and work and money and success.
Just felt hot. It's an era that Leah remembers very well.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
It was an exciting time to be alive. It felt
like we were on the cusp of something and then
lo and behold, we were on the cusp of something.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
What was it like to be doing this work through
so many different eras like the lean In era, the
girl Boss era, whatever era we're in now. I don't
even know what the era is that we're telling women
through media, Like, what is it bed like to see
all of these different changes?
Speaker 1 (08:27):
You know, it's hard, it's hard to relive the Rah
Rah era. It definitely felt It definitely felt like we
were in the hot place, like we were in a
hot zone that were exciting. There were conferences. Oh my god,
it was all about the conferences. It was always about
the fucking conferences. And it was always the same people
(08:48):
you'd see both on the panels and in the audiences.
That's what I remember. It was like, Oh she's here again,
Oh she's here. Like there were just you know, people
who denizens of these things. So it was like a
club right, and coming out of Forbes, I never felt
like I belonged to a club because Forbes really did
not subscribe to this idea that there was like a
(09:09):
media community. It always was standoffish about being part of
a club. And so when I got to Hurst, which
owned Mary Clare, I wasn't terribly well connected because I didn't,
you know, it wasn't part of my upbringing, so to speak.
And so now I was part of a club, and
people started knocking on my door, and suddenly I'm editing
Sophia Marusso and suddenly I'm in a off the record
(09:30):
conversation with Cheryl Samdberg, and it was like, oh my god,
Like it was cool, you know, and it was fun,
and it came with all sorts of crazy perks. The downside, obviously,
is like now in retrospect, we can see how, you know,
how much of a herd mentality it was. In fact,
I was like, you know, looking through I always I
have all my stuff from that period, all my spreadsheets,
(09:53):
all my contacts, my ROLLO ad act hey, like you
know Elizabeth Holmes from there, nos, and like it was.
Speaker 2 (09:59):
We were we were or not?
Speaker 1 (10:01):
I could I let me talk for myself, I could
have done a better job of being more circumspect and
asking more questions and holding people accountable instead of buying
into this very heady era for women. And it was
heady like it was. It was like things, you know,
it was like the era where Hillary Clinton was going
(10:21):
to be president and like things were changing, things were afoot.
So obviously we all are living with the fallout from that,
you know, that tunnel vision, and I was part of that,
Like I have to own that I was part of
that tunnel vision.
Speaker 2 (10:36):
Part of Elizabeth Holmes's success is how she worked media.
A young blonde Stanford dropout in a black Steve Jobs
turtleneck who was going to revolutionize blood testing. It was
just too perfect to pass up, not just for women's media,
but for media in general.
Speaker 1 (10:53):
I think Elizabeth Holmes checked a lot of boxes for starters,
like she got it right. She got that for media,
not just's media, but especially women's media, which could help
drive a train.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
Like.
Speaker 1 (11:03):
The dirty secret about media even now, right even after
all the reckonings and the closures, is that we all
look at each other and we're all like, oh, how
they get they got the exclusive, or who's on their list.
And it's not that we're lazy, but we're just like
always looking over at the other person's like who did
they get and why did they get that person? I
need to invite that person to my event. So, you know,
(11:25):
when you made like if you could get into a
women's book, if you could get into a women's magazine,
other we started to notice that other people would put
these women who we had discovered or we had you know,
and I'm not talking about there no specific Elizabeth specifically,
but just generally, you know, they would start to appear
on other lists. So we felt like we were part
of the game. And I think she understood that innately
(11:47):
that she could be a very She was a very
good shorthand for a certain type of woman that fit
a very accessible profile. I mean, the most obvious, the
most obvious billboard for that is her wardrobe, right, Like,
I'm the female Steve Jobs, Like, you can't get you
can't get a shorter shorthand than that, right, Like how
(12:09):
easy to digest is that? So she instantly got how
to navigate media, which I find fascinating because generally speaking,
I think tech people in tech and other industries outside
media still don't get media. But she got it. So
she got the look, she got the speak, she got
the way to distill your story and your what your
(12:30):
company does in a way that made sense for like
an article that was only three you know, a little
caption that was only three sentences, or a full on profile.
So she understood how to you know, she understood how
to make it sing for a media person. Like when
we go into I think, you know, it's helpful for
people to understand how it worked in the magazine business,
(12:50):
and though it's changed considerably since then, it'll give you
a sense of why people ended up occupying the spaces
in you know, in the culture that they did. When
we would go in to pitch someone for a magazine page,
it wasn't a done deal. I wouldn't just go in
and be like, I'm gonna put so and so on
a page. I had to get approval. I had to
get my editor's approvally editor and she's approval. So you
would always walk in with you know, your pitch, you
(13:12):
want it, and of course you want your pitch to
get approval. You want your pitch to win. And a
picture pitch in a picture and you know, and so
they're looking at it like, oh, I won't do I.
Is it diverse enough, is it glossy enough? Is it
you know? Is it gonna work? Like I'm not going
to bullshit you and pretend that it was very well meaning,
(13:34):
because there were pieces of it that weren't well meaning.
There were pieces of it that were like, is this
gonna look good on a page? And I hate that that's.
Speaker 2 (13:41):
What it was. But it was.
Speaker 1 (13:42):
So she checked a lot of boxes in that regard,
and she knew it, and she worked it, and she
worked it all the way to the slammer.
Speaker 3 (13:53):
Let's take a quick break eder back.
Speaker 2 (14:06):
Everyone's heard of fake it till you make it, and
it's especially a thing in tech and media. Uber famously
has never turned a profit. But when does fake it
till you make it cross over from an ethos to
an actual crime? Just ask the folks at Ozzi Media,
whose CEO Carlos Watson was arrested earlier this year for
fraud for allegedly overvaluing his media company's audience in an
(14:30):
attempt to defraud investors. According to journalist Ben Smith at
the New York Times, the company COO and co founder
Samir Rau even went so far As disguising his voice
to impersonate a YouTube executive on a conference call with
Goldman Sachs in an attempt to secure a forty million
dollar investment. Stories like this one and Faranos makes clear
(14:51):
how much of the shiny, flashy success can just be
a grift, one that is buttressed by tech press failing
to peek behind the curtain and ask the right questions,
questions like what's going on here? How are you making money?
Is this whole thing legit? Do you think that there
are ways that there are tech people who are kind
(15:11):
of playing that game today where you kind of I
don't want to use the word trick, but you know
how to play the game. And you know that journalists
and media folks might also have deadlines, might also want
their their piece to look a certain way. So they're
just like, we're not going to ask too many critical questions.
We're just going to run with this and if it
turns out to be a scam, well phobe.
Speaker 1 (15:32):
It one hundred percent. This is like when we talk
about my SO, I like, I I have a nose
for this. I get to my DNA as much as I,
you know, often entertain the idea of going into another
industry like I can't. It just keeps pulling me back in.
But these this is why, because I often have these
conversations like I don't understand this, Like I don't understand
(15:55):
they're there. I get the optics of it, I get
why it works and why they're getting the press, but
I don't get there there. And I'm going to tell
you that Ozzie Media. I was talking about Ozzie Media
in my for what It's Worth. I mean, I have
no evidence of this and credit where's due to bed Smith?
But like I was talking about Azzimedia forever because I
remember those three years when Ozzi Fest was trying and
(16:16):
they could never do an actual Azzi Fest. But I
remember seeing ads on the subway and the tickets were expensive,
and I was like, who's going to these things? And
also like, more pressingly, how did they get that talent?
Because having tried to book events at Hurst and Forbes,
I know that it's hard to get even one person
to agree, let alone all those people to agree without
(16:37):
paying them, So like are they getting paid and if so,
where's the money coming from? Like I had very like
basic questions about how this all worked. And so it
wasn't surprising to me when it was all smoke and mirrors.
But I have those conversations all the time. There are
some women and men, but some women in the space
that I often like, I have this parlor game I
(16:59):
play with some friends. It's like how does what's It's like,
how does this person get by? That's the game I play,
How does this person get by? Because I see I
see this like world of success and a business, but
I don't see that business in the wild, right, Like
I don't see people using the company, the product. I
(17:20):
don't see the copy, the content. I don't understand how
it works. And maybe I'm just not that smart or
maybe I don't understand the business. But like I sometimes
ask myself, how is that a thing? And then I'm like, oh,
they're playing a media game. That has to be the
only answer.
Speaker 2 (17:36):
Well, that really goes back to Elizabeth Elizabeth Holmes, where
like there is so much fake it till you make it.
I have that same thing where I look at people.
It's a lot of men, but not all men, who
are building media products, right, And it's like part of
me is like I don't understand how they have this
much funding, how they have this many people on their masthead,
(17:59):
but it doesn't seem like people are reading this, like
are people subscribed? But I just don't know, like how
is the mathmathing on this? And I do think there's
this there is this dynamic of people faking it till
they make it, and you're not supposed to really peek
behind the curtain because if you did, you might see
that it's a house of cards or it's a little
(18:19):
bit of a grift.
Speaker 1 (18:21):
Yeah. Absolutely, And now that I'm a little older, a
little wiser, a little more bruised from you know, certain
people or things that I myself pushed in those you know,
raw ra days, I this is partly what I do
with Hazmat Hotel, is I ask those questions like is
this really someone we should be covering with this much
(18:43):
breathless you know, like eye eyes, wide saucer eyes, kind
of bullishness, or is this something we should be a
little more skeptical about? And so like the Elizabeth Holmes thing,
that story that ran recently, the one you know, after
she'd been convicted, and it was like the Madonna and
Child picture now like a notorious picture that they ran
(19:06):
in the business section. If I recall, like, to me,
that was scandalous, Like I actually, I think it's a
testament to how fractured media is that it wasn't a
bigger scandal because that it managed to pass all those
checkpoints and get not just the coverage but the length.
(19:27):
Do you know how expensive it is to commission a
photographer for a shoot like that? There were wardrobe changes
in that shoot. There was probably a stylist on that shoot.
Now did Elizabeth Holmes pay for it? I don't know,
but like we're talking, this was like a resource intensive
shoot for a newspaper, you know. Over I think it
was like three jumps front page and then two and
(19:48):
then spread. So like that's that's an investment of a story.
And so that response afterwards that like oh it's winking,
you know, like there's a winking aspect to the store.
You just don't get the joke. No, no, no, no, no, no no
no no. We don't do that at the Times, like
you're not GQ. You don't get you know, like no,
and also like don't talk down to me that you
(20:08):
and ps. I love the New York Times. I love
and hate the New York Times. It's like it's my
Bete noir. I'm like obsessed with the times, but I
just felt like that response did not wash with me.
And I was insulted by that response because I felt like, you,
of all people, should not go around pretending you're smarter
than your audience. Like that's not cool, that's not the
deal we have with each other. That, oh you didn't
(20:30):
get the joke, it was a winking story. No, no, no,
Well that bothered me.
Speaker 2 (20:34):
What do you make of that response? Because I read
the Vanity Fair piece about how the profile came to
be and they were like, oh, it wasn't a pr piece,
like it was pitched to us and it was all
above board. It certainly didn't sound that way. I agree
with you. But I read another take that was like,
maybe it's a piece about how easy it is for
(20:54):
you to get conned and the reporter also got scammed
by Elizabeth, and it sort of meant to be like
a like a warning piece about how easy it is
to fall for a grifter. What do you what do
you take of that? Of that or what do you
make of that response?
Speaker 1 (21:09):
Well, this is exactly what I mean when I say,
you know, the winking aspect of it, and why I
didn't wash with me for starters like, look, we're in
an era now where you have a nanosecond. Even The
Times maybe has two nanoseconds with its audience, like it
gets the benefit of the doubt. But broadly speaking, like
we're in an era where the competition for your attention
is ruthless. So as I tell you know my colleagues
(21:33):
at GEO and beyond, you don't get the benefit of
sitting on the reader's shoulder and whispering in their ear.
It's tongue in cheek. The idea that you have that
is is ludicrous, it's laughable, and it's ridiculous, Like it's
on its face it's ridiculous. And in the business section,
no less, not the style, like all of it just
didn't was like irritated me that that that's what we're
(21:55):
going to go out with, that's the that's the narrative
we're going to go out with. This. It was a
total come on, It was a total pr thing. Listen,
if I got a call that said you can have
the pre jail Elizabeth Holmes for a Q and A
hell yeah, I would take it. But that's not the issue.
The issue is not that they took an interview with her.
(22:17):
It's how it was packaged and how it was and
how it was delivered to us at this moment in time.
Her crime maybe not as worse as you know, the
we work guy, but like according to who right like
her crime she heard people. She defrauded people. So not
(22:37):
only is the issue this like you know, this a
notion that we didn't get the nature of the story,
but also you're giving three pages of real estate to
a woman who's had plenty of ink by the way,
and has been convicted of very serious crimes. Like I
just that bothers me. For every story you do, there's
a story you're not doing. We're in the age of
(22:59):
limited restore for media, like notoriously, these resources are scarce,
even at a company like The Times, So I forever
story you're doing, there's a story you're not doing. And
that's what I spent a lot of time thinking about,
why did this story pass muster? So like, for example,
what caught my eye just recently was you know, I
can't remember if it was Twitter or threads, but Washington,
the Washington Post was pushing a newsletter about Barbie, which
(23:23):
blew my fucking mind because Washington Post a newsletter which
is a separate product that requires resources. It requires some
engineering support, it requires product support, it requires editorial support,
so lots of different stakeholders, resource intensive. It has to
be populated with content, has to have a calendar like
these are all things that go into something like that
(23:45):
about Barbie. So that tells me Barbie's doing phenomenal numbers
for the Washington Post. Otherwise why would they do it?
Which is interesting given their audience and their and their
birth right, their remit. That's caught my eye, and I
just thought I need to hear more about that. I
need to understand how that came to be.
Speaker 2 (24:02):
How do you sniff it out? Cause you're no one
is sniffing out these like these questions that need to
be asked in stories like you what gets your alarm
bells ringing when you see something you're like, I don't
know about this, Like I saw your your story about
Amazon Prime Day and the way that that was getting coverage,
which I never thought about it before. How all of
these different publications are like here are the best deals
(24:25):
for Amazon Prime Day? Even publications that every other day
are critical of Amazon and their business practices. How do
you sniff it out when something just doesn't seem right
to you.
Speaker 1 (24:34):
I just I'm obsessed with media, Like I'm a media junkie.
I sound so stupid when you hear yourself say it,
But I just love media. I love it and I
hate it. I'm both tortured by it and obsessed with it.
And I you know, it's like it's just how I'm
wired at this point. So how do I sniff it out?
I don't know. Like I read a lot and I
ask a lot of questions. It's why I got into
(24:56):
the business. I'm a curious cat. And I also love
to talk to people. Love to talk to people and
find out like what's hurting their business, what they're thinking about,
who's up and coming in their business, who they're afraid of,
and if they'll talk to me, I will absolutely talk
to them. So there's just a lot, you know, I
guess I'm just interested.
Speaker 2 (25:20):
More After a quick break, let's get right back into
it today. Part of Leea's work is sniffing it out
when media stories just don't seem right and more times
(25:40):
that I'm proud of. Leah's work has challenged me to
think outside of my own preconceived frameworks. For instance, back
in May, I came across a viral TikTok purporting to
show boxes and boxes of books being removed from a
school library in Florida. Naturally I instantly contextualize this story
within the larger cond text of book bands happening in
(26:01):
Florida and across the country. Now, this is obviously a
real thing that is happening in Florida, but that particular
thirty second TikTok might not have actually been showing the
full story. I mean this as a compliment. It might
not sound like it you often are saying. It's often
like not what you might think, right, So, like, your
coverage really challenges me to look beyond my own biases
(26:25):
or my own understanding of how I think stories come
together in media, and it doesn't always align with my
conventional wisdoms or you know, biases or whatever I might
be thinking. Like, and you do such a good job
of pulling back the layers to what's actually going on.
I'm thinking, in particular of that viral TikTok where it
was like a school library and they had all these
(26:45):
boxes and boxes of books, and presumably these are books
that are being removed from the school library because they're
inappropriate really feeds into the conversation we're all having about
things like book bands and you know, books being challenged
in libraries. You called the school or call the library
to actually ask what's going on. And there was actually
more to that story than like that thirty second TikTok.
(27:07):
What have you believe?
Speaker 1 (27:08):
No, yes, I remember that. It feels like a century ago,
but I think it might have been a month or
two ago. Yeah, so there was that viral TikTok of
like two bins filled with books. So there was the
knee I guess the knee jerk reaction is what usually
catches my attention, and then I'm like, huh, you know
in that case, I also like to test myself, right,
(27:30):
I like to see if I can find a source
who's going to give me this scoop quickly. So I'm
always like, if I see that in the morning, I'll
buy all my goals to get it done by the
end of the day because I want to be able
to tell a reporter despite whatever deadlines you have, you
can usually get a response by the end of the day.
So part of it is just me staying on my
toes in that way. It was pretty easy because I
(27:52):
think it was Broward County and there's like a Department
of D there, and they put me in touch with
their comps person, So I did get an answer by
the end of the day. Now then sevitable follow up
I should have done to that was do we believe
the Department of ED right like they said? If I
recall correctly, They said that they are.
Speaker 3 (28:07):
Oh.
Speaker 1 (28:07):
Yes, there was a settlement. So that was the interesting
piece of this. I learned from calling the comms person
at the Department of ED, at the Board of ED
whatever it is, that there was a lawsuit several years
ago from black and brown students the parents of them
because their schools did not have books that were as
recent as new, as in good quality and like the
(28:29):
breath of books in their school libraries that the more
affluent white schools had. So I'm pretty sure it was
Barra County Pass there was a lawsuit. In the settlement,
they agreed that every ten years or so that they
were going to upgrade the libraries. They had to by law,
and so this was part of that settlement. We are
required to upgrade these books, and these are the books
that no longer meet our standards because they're old and
(28:51):
they're dated and whatever. And so that's kind of fascinating
because that turns the whole narrative on its head. Right, Actually,
they're complying with a lawsuit that's supposed to provide equity
for students who might otherwise not get it. And that's like,
that's an important thing we should be talking about.
Speaker 3 (29:08):
Now.
Speaker 1 (29:08):
That's not to say the book bannings are not important,
that one hundred percent are. But we have a big
problem in this country of misinformation and people believing that
there's bias in media. And I do see it sometimes,
and I think that's an example of it where and
it's not coming from a venal place, it's not coming
(29:29):
from a malicious place. It's coming from a place like
it's easy to believe that it makes sense that that.
Of course, we're looking at them throwing away books that
might be, you know, about subjects that we want them
to learn about. But we have to do our job.
Speaker 2 (29:43):
Leah critiques journalism because she has so much respect for
the field. Journalists like Evan Gerskovich, the first American journalist
to be imprisoned in Russia since the Cold war base,
imprisonment and worse, just for doing their jobs and reporting.
So journalism is something to be respect affected and protected.
Speaker 1 (30:02):
You've opened the door to my big spiel. My big
spiel is that journalists want to be seen as a
noble profession, and there is a nobility to it. But
to be afforded the rights and privileges that reporters get
in the courts, in people's minds and culture, you have
to live up to standards that are a tradition, an
(30:26):
honor bound tradition of the profession, and that is reporting
and doing your due diligence. That's like fundamentally the basics
of it. You need to do your homework and you
need to make the calls and so. And it has
real life repercussions because we're seeing courts claw back writes
and privileges for reporters all the time. We're seeing, you know,
reporters not be able to maintain confidentiality with sources. In
(30:48):
certain cases they have to turn over their notes. They're
being imprisoned for maintaining confidentiality court case after court case.
This is very worrisome. I know this because I work
with a for amendment lawyer who's like the top of
the game. I'm one of the privileges of my job
is I get to work with this like well known
First Amendment lawyer Ky Falkenberg, So I hear about these
(31:11):
cases all the time, and so they're having real life
impact on journalists around the country. So we damn well
better do our part and not buy into narratives because
they make for cheap stories. Have I written my share
of them? You bet I have, and I am embarrassed
by them. I am regretful of them, and I hope
(31:32):
I never repeat them. But like, these are the lessons
we have to learn from the last decade, and it
pains me to no end to see you know, reporters
like just like I think it's something we need to
champion as a group. We have this, you know, this
poor Wall Street journal reporter stuck in a Russian jail
for doing exactly what he should be doing for reporting,
(31:55):
you know, for reporting, and he you know, he's missing
his family, he's he's probably suffering. Lord knows what we
can't take for granted that there are repercussions to what
we do. I think it's very serious our jobs, and
it is a noble profession, but then we have to
do our part to live up to what makes it noble.
We have to report, we have to like make the calls.
(32:18):
It's that simple. That's how I see it.
Speaker 2 (32:20):
I briefly worked in a newsroom, and I could see
myself just seeing that TikTok, for instance, and just writing
it up like this gave me a big emotional reaction
that aligned with my preconceived biases or my understanding of
the world, and not picking up the phone and making
that call, not doing the work of actually getting that
(32:42):
there's more to the story than what I just saw
on this TikTok. I'm really grateful that you're modeling how
to not just fall right into that like easy story,
easy write up, and tell a fuller story because it
really matters well.
Speaker 1 (32:58):
I appreciate hearing that I've certainly know endured my shirt
blowback for having that opinion, because I think it's often
confused or conflated with conservatism, and I absolutely do not
identify as a conservative. I think I'm pretty upfront with
my politics, which is also odd for a journalist. But
I will tell you this, like one of the most
(33:19):
memorable conversations I've had was during covid. I started this
podcast because I was like, you know, home like everybody
else was, and I wanted to stay sharp. So I
taught myself had a podcast, and part of it was
just like figuring out who to talk to. I need
to talk to smart people who have thoughts on what's happening.
And one of the first conversations I had was with
Errol Lewis, and Erra Lewis is New York famous, like
he's New York One reporter, like like old school, like
(33:42):
this guy is it right? But he also appears on
I forget what network, but he appears on cable all
the time. He's just he just knows his shit. Era
Lewis is the guy and I had a nice conversation,
like I really memorable. I remember like listening to it
again and again after because what he said was so
so it was profound, like I'd never thought about it
(34:02):
like that. We talked about objectivity, which is the hot
button issue for journalists right now, and he was like, look,
I have opinions. I don't shy away from sharing my opinions,
but they're informed, like nobody knows this town better than
I do. When I show up to a meeting and
I'm covering it. I know exactly what happened at the
ten meetings before. I know who the players are, and
I know why they're saying what they're saying. So I
(34:24):
come to it with this breath and with this experience
that is not challenged. By the way, you will never
hear anyone challenge Erra Lewis for bias. Why because he
did the work. He did the work, and so I
thought that's so interesting, Like, yes, of course, of course,
you're a human being, Like you're not one hundred percent objective.
You have feelings about this issue, you believe in right
(34:45):
and wrong, you believe some issues fall on certain sides,
and you're you know, And he doesn't necessarily write it
like down the line, but it's informed and he brings
that expertise to the four and I think that's that
for me, was like, that's become my north star. Whether
he realizes or not, but he had a real impact
on me. That conversation.
Speaker 2 (35:06):
That girl Boss lean in era that allowed Elizabeth Holmes
to rise up in the ranks has kind of come
and gone. And after all that, all that flash and
promise around women in the twenty tens, today it's kind
of hard to not feel like we're in a bit
of a rougher place. But one truth is that, with
all its flaws, women's media has always been there telling
(35:28):
our stories and speaking to us, even when other types
of media.
Speaker 1 (35:31):
Work it's a super fraud conversation. When I was at
Murray Clare, there were some things that were inviolable, right,
women's abortion, women's reproductive rights, gay rights, LGBTQ rights. There
were certain values that the women's magazine was not negotiable
(35:53):
on this, certainly this one, and I think that's true
across women's media written large. There are certain things if
you're going to be and we don't speak of them.
We just not We just live them. We say that
because for decades women's magazines this like afterthought in media,
This looked down upon category occupied a very i won't
(36:18):
even say protected, but like a special place. We were
in nail salons, We were in hair salons, places that
men weren't, and so we could have conversations with you
that you couldn't have at home, because your husband would
beat the shit out of you if you talked to
him about it. Right, we could talk about how like,
oh I got a terrible sonogram back and I'm not
sure I can keep this baby, or oh my husband's
beating me, or oh I you know, I'm not satisfied sexually.
(36:41):
Like these were stories that women's media was telling, and
we can hold our nose up at them and say, oh,
women in peril, and you know they they codified certain
stereotypes of women, and there's they're sure, like we can
have that discussion, but we also need to talk about
how this sneered at form of me was the one
(37:02):
place where you could talk to a woman like she
was in the bathroom at a restaurant and asked for
a tampon, Like you couldn't do that in US Weekly
or USA Today or People magazine. And so I just
want to like acknowledge you couldn't do that because we
(37:22):
allowed for women that freedom. And that's part of the
DNA of this repro rights thing, you know, it just
it just is we take for granted that it is
because it was early on it was like this secret,
private forum we could have discussions where we didn't judge women.
Maybe we judge them about their weight, We definitely did that.
(37:42):
We judged them about their skin and their age. We
one hundred percent did that. But we also talked to
them about the you know, like nothing is as black
and white as like good bad. It was a very
nuanced thing and so strange. But it's hard to have
nuanced conversations about media with media people.
Speaker 2 (37:58):
Do you ever worry that I don't even know how
to phrase this.
Speaker 1 (38:01):
Now I'm gonna get canceled?
Speaker 2 (38:03):
Yeah, they think get do you word? Is this something
that because you you say what's on your mind and
you tell it like it is. I don't always agree,
like I'm always sometimes all read things and I'm like, ah,
that hits me, that hits me weird, but it's not
not true.
Speaker 3 (38:16):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (38:16):
Do you worry about being too outspoken or saying the
wrong thing?
Speaker 3 (38:20):
Sure?
Speaker 1 (38:20):
I mean my husband hates it, you know, he's just like,
you know, what are you doing it? It's not that
it's like I don't know. I guess Like I'm a
middle aged person who's been in media for twenty five years.
I've seen the best of our business. I've seen the
worst of our business. But I've also seen like the
very thing that I love about this business, like the
(38:43):
wanting to talk about things and talk to people and
hear what they have to say, whether you like it
or not, Like I just don't like that we're becoming
resistant to it. And I get it, Like I get it.
I get why I don't have a trans child who's
rights are up for grabs. I'm not raising a kid
(39:04):
who you know, I'm not looking for, you know, like
I don't have as much on the line as a
lot of other people do. And so I get that.
Maybe I don't appreciate the stakes, but there's something about
not being able to talk about it, not like I
don't like that I'm the only person or like that
comes with risks, Like I don't like that we're not
(39:25):
supposed to talk about things, Like what's wrong with talking
about things? I'm not I'm not like trying to shove
policy down your throat. I'm just trying to have a conversation.
I'm trying to understand the world a little better, trying
to understand like we should be able to talk. You know,
I've been spending a lot of time with I've been
spending a lot of time watching Phil Donahue.
Speaker 2 (39:45):
Ooh, oh my god, my mom would If my mom
were here, she would be so down for a conversation
about Donna Yu. I saw your tweet about wanting like
we need a documentary, like a look back.
Speaker 1 (39:56):
Yes, and it makes me feel very old that you
reference your mother. Maybe as old as your mother.
Speaker 2 (40:01):
No, no, not yet. No if he just happened. Still
love Donahue.
Speaker 1 (40:04):
I love Donahue. He was on after school when I
got home, and I remember it was the first time
I'd seen anyone with AIDS. I can still remember that
episode with Ryan White and Jeanie White. It was the
first time i'd seen you know gay in talk about
you know being gay. But I just remember, like there
wasn't the chair throwing that came afterwards, right, like it's
not it's not new to this era. We saw that
(40:27):
shortly after. But he had a way about him that
felt like I don't know if it was the error
or him or maybe a bit of both, but he
had a way about him that opened the floor to
people to talk about how they really felt and want
what they could learn from someone who didn't feel that way,
And there was something like nonjudgmental about it. And he
also pushed like if you watch some of those episodes,
(40:48):
he would push them so, but why do youth, you know,
like he was pushy, and I just there's like it
was special. It was like a special thing to watch
because he did not shy from hot button issues. We
could never there could never be a sho like that
right now, never ever, ever, ever, and why not? It
was like, why can't we just talk to each other anyway?
I sound corny, but that's how I feel.
Speaker 2 (41:08):
No, it doesn't. It doesn't sound corny at all. I
can't wait to if younger listeners are like who, I
can't wait to spark a Donna Hue.
Speaker 1 (41:19):
Yeah, render for Donna Hue renaissance.
Speaker 2 (41:23):
The New York Times magazine's profile of Elizabeth Holmes and
the collective grown it inspired from readers makes me wonder
if we've just moved past the shine of the big
important public figure profile piece in general. Take that now
infamous Megan Markle profile and the Cut, for instance, what
probably would have been a standard profile about her thoughts
(41:44):
on parenthood and her morning routine included one small detail
that gave readers a quick glance beyond the polished pr
talking points and preapproved subjects that were used to in
these kinds of profiles. The profile says that Megan sometimes
sounds like she has a tiny bachelor producer in her
brain directing what she says. At one point in our conversation,
(42:04):
the piece reads, instead of answering a question, she will
suggest how I might transcribe the noise she's making. She's
making these gunneral sounds, and I can't quite articulate what
it is she's feeling in the moment because she has
no word for it. She's just moaning. Now, that little
detail about the noise that Megan makes before answering a
question seemingly confirmed what we all know, that a famous
(42:25):
person's public persona is actually carefully manufactured, and it proved
just too good to resist. But in this day and age,
what exactly is the celebrity profile?
Speaker 3 (42:36):
Like?
Speaker 2 (42:37):
What is it and who is it for? At best,
they feed the live that celebrities aren't just like us
when we all know that of course they're not. And
at worse, they help scammers like Elizabeth Holmes rise to power.
I wanted to talk to you about the Elizabeth Holmes'
profile and sort of how that was a thing. You
made a really interesting point about this profile of Megan Markle.
(42:58):
I think in the cut where you know it's a
song profile about her life blah blah blah. And there's
one little bit where she gives the author like suggestions
of how she might be able to describe a specific
little noise that she made, and that tiny, little throwaway
thing became the thing, right, so there's a whole profile
(43:18):
that was the thing that people zeroed in on. Do
you think that we're I don't know, kind of beyond
the usefulness of the problem the public profile, like, what
are your thoughts on how how that is evolving as
a media product.
Speaker 1 (43:34):
I find them mostly boring. A lot of magazines do
them because it's part of the trade off with the
entertainment industry. It's a business. It's a business decision to
cover to write a certain profile. You know, you'll see
them in all kinds of media for whether it's a
CEO or what have you. But it's a trade off, like,
make no mistake about it. But occasionally you'll get a
(43:55):
story like that where something is revealed, right and it's
not off, and that something is revealed about someone who
we think we know everything about, and that's interesting to me.
So in the case of Elizabeth Holmes, it revealed something
about the paper and not Elizabeth, which I thought was interesting,
but like a process that you didn't know could happen there.
(44:16):
But in the case of Megan Markle, like what I
found astonishing about it was that it did. It was
contrarian because at the time here in the US, there
was this especially coast on the coasts, there was this
like we must protect her, this kind of vibe, right,
like she deserves our protection. She's you know, she's being
(44:39):
vilified for her race. It's racist and and in fact
that might be true. But there was like something that
went against that narrative in that piece, and it was
brave because doing so opened up the reporter to you know,
all the kind of kinds of attacks that we see
on social media now and we don't like what someone says,
(45:00):
but it revealed something pretty amazing, and it confirmed this
kind of you know, other narrative about her, that it's
all contrived, that it's all manufactured. I mean, it literally
confirmed that, like you couldn't pick a better which is
partly why it was so juicy and delicious and tasty,
because she's literally confirming that this whole thing is artifice,
(45:21):
not that I think it is, but that it actually is.
And I thought that was just really an incredible detail
for the writer to put in, But how could she
not write, like, Wow, what a thing to have happened
in an interview with celebrity. I've done a few celebrity profiles.
They're always negotiated to the nth degree, which is partly
why I find them so boring, because publicists are so
(45:42):
wrapped up in them. It's very rare to get a
piece with someone where a published publicist is not negotiating
everything from where it's at.
Speaker 2 (45:50):
Oh no, she.
Speaker 1 (45:51):
Doesn't want to go to a restaurant because she doesn't
want to be seen or you know whatever. You can't
talk about the marriage. She doesn't want to talk about
the marriage, and you know, oh she you know, don't
ask her about anything political because you we're not talking
about that. Like everything is so you know, it's just
like so massaged that I already know, having seen the
(46:11):
Sausage get Mede, that so much of it is bullshit.
So I rarely find them interesting, And I would love
to see data that shows if people actually get through
these pieces, because I don't think they don't. I don't
think they do. I'm trying to think of the last
profile I read. I can't remember, but they're just like
as an art forum, they're like they're just they are
for an era when we didn't have as much access
(46:33):
to celebrities as we do now, so they are a
very dated art form in my mind.
Speaker 2 (46:37):
I remember being part of a team that worked on
one with a famous woman and I don't want to
say who it is, but people can probably guess. She
had just been married to a high profile political the family,
a high profile political family. But the list of things
that we were not supposed to talk about, we could
not even allude to this wedding, this recent wedding, And
(47:00):
so basically it was like, what the hell are we
going to talk about? Like this?
Speaker 1 (47:02):
This is what do you think people want to talk about?
Speaker 3 (47:05):
Right?
Speaker 2 (47:05):
It's like, if you're reading this profile, you're gonna want
to talk about this recent marriage, right, Like what else
would you want to read about? And it was like,
oh no, not even you can't even allude to it
in the most oblique of ways. It was like, well, then,
how is this going to be an interesting piece that
anybody wants to read? This is the one thing that
people have on their mind when it comes to this person.
Speaker 1 (47:24):
Well, so this goes back to I don't want to
like make it a larger point, but it is part
of a larger point in that it's partly it contributes
to this overall awakening that people are having about media,
that they're wise to the game and they resent it.
So that game is because we need the celebrity, We
need the we need the access to the other celebrities
(47:46):
in that publicist roster. We need the studio not to
be mad at us, because then they'll invite us to
important events and also maybe advertise with us, you know,
or or the beauty brand that that person is an
ambassador for. We need their advertise and we want to
piss them off, and like there's a whole like business
behind those decisions, and people are wise to it. One
(48:08):
of the one of the most frequent questions I got
asked when I was at Marie Claire and even after,
was you know, oh, tell me what mescarity use, or
tell like a makeup question, or oh I saw that
in the magazine. And I would always be like, you
don't really believe that they're they like that, right, because
it was obvious to me that it was all part
(48:28):
of this like game about you know, And I learned
actually I learned, you know, there are certain number of
credits that credits being appearances in the magazine that a
brand is either formally or informally allowed, like oh, that
we owe them credits. I used to hear that all
the time, like we have to put this on your page.
You're doing a career Q and A with so and so,
(48:49):
but I need to put this shoe on the page.
So we're going to do a sidebar of things you
should wear to your work when you're going out afterwards.
So because we owe this brand credits like they're not,
you know, there's it's a business behind those decisions. It's
sad but true, and I think people are wise to it.
Speaker 2 (49:03):
So I don't consider myself to be like a media insider,
but for just your average consumer of magazines media, how
important do you think it is to be sort of
aware of how the sausage has made the business decisions
that go into what we're reading in the media that
we're consuming.
Speaker 1 (49:21):
I think it's very important. Magazines is already such an
anachronistic term. So whatever content you're consuming, wherever you're consuming it, right,
you should one hundred percent be aware of you know,
of what metabolic processes led to that moment. Now, that
(49:41):
doesn't mean you have to sit with it. And I
also don't think it's your responsibility. Like, you know, there
is something to be said for being an informed reader,
but there's also something to be said for being a
responsible journalist. And I just want, I guess, I just
want people to be aware of why we make the
choices we do as a business, as you know, as
a profession. So like the whole uh, you know, when
(50:05):
a movie comes out, there's a premiere, you're going to
see that that celebrity do a round robin of interviews.
All those outlets are going to try to get the
celebrity to say something off the cuff. It never happens.
Sometimes it happens like it's all just such canned garbage,
and it's it's like, we have to be a little
better now, I think because the audiences are wiser, and
(50:26):
what's the net result of that. They're going to TikTok
and they're going elsewhere where they can get a little
more authenticity from anywhere from people who you know, it's
like we've seen the diminished value of celebrity culture, which
it's not. I don't have an opinion on It's just
fascinating that people are turning to forums where they are
getting authenticity and less makeup and less bullshit they're getting.
(50:49):
They want the real, real and I get it. I
get why, because we're feeding them can shit and telling them,
look how awesome this is, and they now know what awesome.
Speaker 2 (51:10):
Got a story about an interesting thing in tech, or
just want to say hi? You can read us at
Hello at tangody dot com. You can also find transcripts
for today's episode at tengody dot com. There Are No
Girls on the Internet was created by me Bridget Todd.
It's a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed creative. Jonathan Strickland
is our executive producer. Tarry Harrison is our producer and
sound engineer. Michael Almado is our contributing producer. I'm your host,
(51:32):
Bridget Todd. If you want to help us grow, rate
and review us on Apple Podcasts. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
check out the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
get your podcasts.
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