The Power of Marketers To Shape Media Products - With Vox Co-Founder Matthew Yglesias.

Matthew Yglesias represents a rare breed of journalists: both cerebral and compassionate, partisan and intellectually honest, progressive and unabashedly patriotic. Matthew is also Co-Founder of left-leaning Vox Media, signer of the now-infamous Harper’s Letter on cancel culture, and author of the new book, One Billion Americans – The Case for Thinking Bigger. Part of his promotional strategy was to enter remarkably civil interviews with the likes of Ben Shapiro and Glenn Beck. This week, Matthew joins us on The Divided States of Media to discuss how we can engage our differences across the political divide and find common points of agreement — which he has successfully achieved in the marketing of his book. He also describes the influence that advertisers have on the media products our nation has gone from devouring to choking on: “The advertising business fundamentally decides what kinds of media are worth creating.” His advice to the advertising community: “think about the consequences of your actions and the power that you have to shape the media going forward.” For marketers feeling sidelined by the vitriolic nature of modern media, this episode is your rallying cry to be part of the solution. Listening to Matthew not only makes you smarter, but it’s also a fun ride. Let me know what you think.

-Dan

Highlights:

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• 11:30 – People on the left don’t try to sell things to people on the right, and vice versa
• 13:33 – This country is still a tremendous land of opportunity
• 16:31 – It’s bad for the symbols of the American nation to become coded into partisan politics
• 21:50 – What we’re seeing in the media is not an appealing vision of America
• 25:39 – How Disney’s censorship of content to appeal to China could play out in the long term
• 32:57 – Being a journalist and avoiding the worst of it — clickbait journalism
• 45:04 – Citizens — you’ve got to think about what you click on and what you spend your time on… what message does that send to the rest of us?
• 51:14 – It’s the advertising business that fundamentally decides what kinds of media are worth creating
• 54:31 – This week in Unsolicited Advice…