Ep. 71: The Return of the Gatekeepers

Donald Trump, just sworn in as the 47th president, was reelected to be a wrecking ball, a middle finger, the people’s punch to the Beltway’s mouth. And while this populist moment feels “unprecedented,” it’s not. The rebuke of the ruling class is encoded in our nation’s DNA. We ha ... Show More

The Re-Education host Eli Lake has a new show called Breaking History, brought to you by The Free Press.Breaking History breaks down the news, by breaking down history. Host Eli Lake covers everything from LBJ and the Roman Republic to Donald Trump and the chaos at Columbia. This ... Show More

<p>We’re back with one long episode in two cracking segments. First up, Welch and Moynihan (<em>Ed. note:</em> Kmele is currently peering through a telescope on the South Side of Chicago or something) catch up on all the stupid news of the last week, including…</p><p>* The news o ... Show More

The media world over the last few week has been rocked by major disruptions: Fox ousts Tucker Carlson, CNN fires Don Lemon, BuzzFeed News is shutting down, Twitter has become a less reliable resource, and Vice Media shutters its flagship program “Vice News Tonight.” Over the last ... Show More

It’s our first four-way pod, featuring BuzzFeed founder Jonah Peretti, Gawker founder Nick Denton, and Semafor founder (and former editor-in-chief of the recently shuttered BuzzFeed News) Ben Smith, who wrote a book about them both. Peter Kafka talks to all of them in conjunction ... Show More

Ben Smith, former media columnist at the New York Times and now the editor-in-chief of Semafor, joins Dan to talk about today's ultra-challenging news media landscape. The industry is significantly weaker than it was in 2016, and Trump's aggressive lawsuits have the executives in ... Show More

To make sense of a turbulent and important week in media, we turn to Ben Smith who was the founding Editor in Chief of Buzzfeed News (2012 to 2020) and the former New York Times media critic (from 2020 to 2022). On the agenda: the shuttering of Buzzfeed News, the meaning of Murdo ... Show More

Discussion on Lebanon's media landscape begins at 15:15. Ben and Nizar are joined by Jean Kassir, co-founder of Megaphone, an independent news platform, to discuss Lebanon's media landscape, the constraints and failures of traditional media and the challenges facing alternative m ... Show More

Jon welcomes Max Fisher, Crooked’s newest team member, to the Offline family! Max, former New York Times reporter and author of The Chaos Machine, joins the show as a recurring contributor, bringing fresh commentary, segments, and even interviews to Offline. This week he and Jon ... Show More

Guests: Ben Brody, Bloomberg Tech policy reporter, Tony Blinken, Biden for President Senior Policy Advisor, and former Deputy National Security Advisor under President Obama, Drew Littman, Policy Director at Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, and former Chief of Staff for Senator A ... Show More