The Money is the Point

Deals between Artificial Intelligence companies and media brands are fairly criticised for not being future-thinking. But that was never the point.

Last week the usual stream of talking heads and loud voices piped up in irritation over several high profile deals media brands (The Atlantic, News Corp, etc) announced with AI companies for hundreds of millions of dollars. The worry, obviously, was that all of this was simply taking an easy way out; a quick punch of funds from a tech industry that had (and has) already crippled media plenty. Haven’t they taken enough? And for a team of media executives and Rich People Pointing, seemingly making decisions by twirling on the spot and throwing knives at a dart board, all of this made up a perfect recipe for the rest of us to scream: haven’t we been here before?

Which is… true? Fair? A tremor of trauma I understand and sympathise with.

But to consolidate these latest deals as anything other than money making, and to think of them as some hammfisted way for CEOs to guide their companies to The Future without nostalgia and without considering recent history is, I think, foolish. These people are not stupid. They just have different motivations than most. Sadly, in a lot of ways, they have different rewards and metrics of success than the majority of people who work for them.

The point is that they know and they don’t care.

There are two types of people in media: those who believe in the future and those who believe in making money while the getting is good. It is rare to find a model, or a business throughout history, where both of these stances hold equal rate. It is rarer still to find any Future Thinking Media Company that is truly successful in a way that is measurable and tested over time. The future, to anyone paying attention, only needs to be around the corner. Figure the rest out when you have to. Redundancies, cutbacks, bankruptcies, the works: these are unfair, unkind, uncaring realities of an industry that isn’t built to be sustainable. Not anymore, kid. At least not at the scale everyone with a chequebook seems to want.

AI is coming, has come, will continue… and that is good to the people looking to make the most out of it.

The mistake being made is the assumption that the media models managed by these people are good; are designed to be scaled; and are going to continue growing. I repeat myself: it is about what it has always been about. The money. And it is about the money Right Now. If you want to point a finger at these companies for refusing to think of the future in a logical way, and for refusing to accept the realities of the pain felt over the last 15 years as a result of similar tech-funding debacles, then you must consider that to them the future is only ever a bad month away. To them, whatever logic exists is proven out every month when their salary drops softly, pleasantly, consistently into their bank accounts. When you are building something unsustainable by design, the future is as long as you can manage to convince the world to buy into.

You will point to Google and Facebook and their angry obsession with ripping off media companies, destroying entire advertising markets, and laying waste to a digital media industry many thought was taking off, all in the name of their own billion dollar profits. And you would be right. That is morally questionable, wrong, gross and truly… what? American?

And you will say: it is happening again. And you will be right. But don’t be fooled twice. The lesson from the digital media bubble of the 2010s was not learned from the way it burst, but by who got off in the end. Even our industry’s largest failures from the last decade (objectively, speaking in terms of whether it exists anymore or even whether they have declared bankruptcy recently) have made a lot of people rich. These are businesses — and, like almost all businesses outside of banking and finance, these organisations exist to make rich a percentage of the employees that is so small, often so uncaring, often having too much fun to care. Forget any of the poor schmucks you may generously say are doing the actual work. Myself included.

Here’s a few: the idea of BuzzFeed, or whatever it was, has collapsed and, yes, made a lot of people unemployed, nostalgic, cautious, angry, and sad. But it made people rich, too. Lives were turned over backwards, but some turned out just fine. Ben Smith, head of the entire news department that pumped out hits like no tomorrow but was, it seems, perhaps never a money driving initiative, is doing just fine. The various heads of editorial / vibe / whatever you want to call it are doing just fine. Plenty of people are. Jonah Peretti is laughed at routinely, constantly, like he is some sad Pagliacci clown with no idea what he’s doing. I bet it bothers him (truly) but it is probably easier to live with yourself when you can do so in one of fifteen spa baths across your Beverly Hills home. And BuzzFeed still exists, at least in some capacity. It still employs people. It still has a body and a presence and something to sell. Shane Smith, from VICE? He’s kicking back in his big house, too. Mic? Vox? They are at varying levels of success, sustainability, and waxing and waning. They are happy, they are sad. They exist. And the tech money from the 2010s went somewhere. I know I am skimming over dozens of media brands that are missed and perhaps should never have truly disappeared. Their failures and implosions can be rightfully aimed at poor management and bad aptitude. For that I am sorry. I believe the internet used to be better. But I don’t believe in living in the past.

Do I dream of a better media for everyone? Of course. But I’m not the one making the decisions and, perhaps, that is why I spend my time renting a studio apartment in Sydney with no heating and no cooling and an occasional flirtation with ground-floor flooding.

The faltering giants of our last digital media wave (many of them still with us, still trying, still hoping) fell under the weight of deals made with tech companies who lied through their teeth about audience and reach and commitments. But they were never lies everyone wasn’t, if they were honest with each other, aware of. Oh yes, sure, a billion views. I believe you. Maybe, while we’re at it, I should get that subprime mortgage for my fifth house. Nothing will ever go wrong.

Is it good to do a deal with a lion trying to eat your face? Probably not. But those making the deal are not trying to live forever. They are just trying to look after their own kind.