Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 5/5/23: Anthony Fantano on AI Drake Music, FBI Accidentally Kidnap Wrong Man, CNBC Reporter Caught On Cam w/ Billionaire, Art of Class War, Michigan's Toxic Air, Elon Musk's New Company Town, 3 Reasons Buzzfeed Died

Episode Date: May 5, 2023

This week we look at Krystal talking to music expert Anthony Fantano @TheNeedleDrop about how AI created a Drake song that went viral, the FBI accidentally kidnaping the wrong man at a hotel, a CNBC reporter who hosts a show called "Capital Connection" caught on camera with a billionaire in her room, Max Alvarez from The Art of Class War, Jordan Chariton reports on the scene in Kalamazoo, Michigan where a paper mill dumps toxic air, James Li looks into Elon Musk's new company town, and Spencer Snyder gives us 3 Reasons Why Buzzfeed Closed.To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.supercast.com/To listen to Breaking Points as a podcast, check them out on Apple and SpotifyApple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/breaking-points-with-krystal-and-saagar/id1570045623 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4Kbsy61zJSzPxNZZ3PKbXl Merch: https://breaking-points.myshopify.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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So we've been covering here a lot, the current and potential impact of AI. And there was one story that we're really interested in, but didn't feel we had the expertise to fully tackle, which is there's been a few AI generated songs. The one that popped into my feed first was a Drake the Weekend song that sounded pretty good to my ear and sounded pretty realistic. So potential to upend the music industry. So to talk about all of this, we wanted to bring in music expert, Anthony Fantano. He's on YouTube at The Needle Drop. Great to meet you, sir. Hey, nice to meet you too. Yeah. So first of all, that first Drake and the Weekend song, just on a music level, like my ears, very untrained, et cetera. But did you like the song? I'm not a huge Drake fan. I like some of his music,

not all of his music. I like the Weekend actually more. And I kind of liked it, to be honest with you. Yeah, I thought the song was pretty good. I thought the instrumental, a little piano loop in that was cool. I thought The Weeknd vocals were decent, though maybe not as convincing because stylistically they sounded like something more from like an older era of his career. They didn't sound like kind of the more pop centric stuff that he's doing now. But the Drake vocal was like dead on. It was like, you know, completely nailed in terms of like it's sounding exactly like him.

So when you first heard the song, did you know it was AI generated or did you hear it before you realized that? And if you, do you think you would have been able to tell us what I'm trying to get at? Yeah, I don't think I would have been able to tell is what I'm trying to get at? Yeah, I don't think I would have been able to tell. However, you know, I feel like the AI conversation is kind of like two-pronged right now. And which one we're having can be kind of confusing at times. You know, I think like, you know, the conversation could kind of go two ways.

You're either discussing about like this idea of like AI-generated artists because you know there's kind of this hypothetical of I don't know you open up a program or some kind of AI learning um you know whatever it is interface and you sort of put in I want this kind of song that sounds like this and da da da da and then just like hands it to you and you know artists are kind of replaced in that way because it's sort of like creates this ease of of creation uh the other flip side of it the flip side of it is like this idea of impersonation like we're not just making music idly to replace other musicians who may be sort of putting that music out there we're literally impersonating a famous artist and making their music for them in a way and sort of passing it off as their stuff and

this conversation is very much in uh in in that Lane because when I dug more into the song you know of course like I came to learn that the ghost writer guy who created it like he produced the song himself so the song produced by a human the melodies and vocals written by a human the lyrics written by a human um the AI portion of it where that comes into play is when he laid down the vocals for the track he used this you know sort of like vocal AI deep fake whatever personality not personality but program to turn his vocals to sound like Drake's vocals and you know so like there's a very human touch throughout the entire song the ai came into play in order to sort of like make the vocal sound as if it was drake on the track now you know with

that being said there are still causes for concern that come into play here because you know for me this is like really not so much an issue of like our computers taking over but you know should people be allowed to use this technology to basically impersonate other people impersonate other artists to either you know undercut their potential earnings as artists because you know they could sort of make their songs for them or uh maybe make a horrible song or a defaming song or something that would be embarrassing in some way and sort of like pass it off as like yeah oh here's a drake demo where he says this like heinous thing or something like that um i don't know if you're aware of this artist but uh you know uh an art pop and sort of experimental pop artist who hails from canada who goes by the name grimes uh she recently like

you know put out this call to a lot of her fans and she's kind of very much of this vibe like she likes technology she likes machine learning she likes ai she likes you know kind of these futurists these futurist aesthetics um and you know viewpoints and she kind of puts that out in her social media and her art and she encouraged her fans sort of like start ai generating her music for her here you know here's some stuff some stems and whatever for my vocals which you can feed into this program or manipulate in whatever way you want to sort of make it sound like it's me singing on a song. And if you put it out and put my name on it, we can cut it 50-50 in terms of like the revenue. But, you know, in sort of

encouraging her fans to do that, she also had to sort of put out a message saying like, hey, listen, I can't really endorse the song or allow you to keep it up if you're using it to say crazy stuff or endorse or, you know, platform ideologies that I don't agree with that are like extreme or weird or something like that. So, you know, I think there's a lot of, you know, potential moral questions that come into play with, you know, the way that this technology could be used to, you know, ruin the reputations of other artists because it sounds so real. Because as you were saying earlier, I couldn't really tell it wasn't Drake on the track.

It sounds like freaking Drake on the song. Yeah, no, absolutely. Is that the same Grimes that was with Elon Musk? Is it that Grimes? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, okay. So it's interesting because this is a person who is sort of embracing the technology and saying go forth make them and even she's having to say but we got to put some limits on it and I can't really

endorse this music and you know keep it in the in the straight and narrow of not being too wild and crazy which I think does expose how many moral, difficult moral questions it raises. How have other artists, I mean, how have Drake and The Weeknd responded to this particular song? I think there were other songs that were put out similarly, right? As far as I can tell, they haven't sort of like made any kind of direct, you know, acknowledgements toward the track, mostly because i think in doing that it's going to bring more attention to it than they want and probably encourage more artists to do it uh any interaction they've had with those tracks from what i understand has been done through their record label and while the song and i believe there's another drake song that's been floating around

as well that may have been created the same way um those tracks are still kind of floating around in a few different places on social media but from what i understand they've been taken down off of streaming taken down in an official capacity on maybe other platforms where it could have potentially been monetized uh because they just want to make sure that like you know on the platforms where drake's music is making the labels money that this song is not like competing with other tracks that he has up and has out, because the song was getting hundreds of thousands of streams over the course of days. Wow.

Yeah, when I went to look for it, it was pretty hard to find, but I was at that point at least able to find it. Do you know if the technology is sufficiently advanced now where you said this was basically like a human did everything except the actual, and even the vocals, but then it's run through this AI program that switches his vocals to sound like Drake to sound like The Weeknd. Is the technology anywhere close to advanced enough that you could literally, as someone like me, just type in like, make me a song from Drake that

sounds in this kind of way and that it would come up with something that was reasonable? Yeah, no, no. It's nowhere near that at this point. Like, there are some instances of, you know, weird underground, like, band camp pages where somebody has, like, maybe fed a bunch of Beatles songs into something and then sort of asked to make a bunch of Beatles music, and it sounds like this really vague, weird mush

where it's kind of weird. It's like looking into, you know, a bunch of, it's like staring into a word jumble where it's like, if you stared at long enough, you could pick out certain words and circle them, but it mostly just looks kind of like noise, you know, mostly just sounds like noise. It's something that kind of resembles music, but not like, you know, accurately. However,

even though it's not there, it probably will eventually reach that point. Things will advance to the point where you could potentially just like punch in, I want a Drake song. And then it just like plops out a Drake song in front of you or something like that. And I think there has to be some kind of, I don't know, initiative on the part of Congress or somebody to sort of like nip this in the bud before it becomes like a bigger thing. I think there should potentially be at some point like repercussions for people who might possibly use this technology nefariously. And this doesn't just apply to artists. This applies to public figures, personalities, also individual people as well. Because, I mean, using this stuff, if you've had enough recordings of anybody's voice, you could potentially just kind of doctor a phone recording or something like that and

put it out and make it seem like so-and-so said this, that, or the other thing and sort of completely ruin their reputation you know it's it's it's kind of like a case of defamation in a way um so there is that and then you know i think um maybe there needs to be some kind of like you know um i i guess uh look or revision into the greater scheme of copyright law or something in terms of like being able to say you can't literally claim my voice as your own or you know I'm not advocating for you know anybody to be sued or sort of taken to court if they have a voice that's maybe similar to another artist's voice but you know using this technology to recreate someone's vocal and, you know, sell it or market it or commercialize it in some way. I,

I think there should be distance that should be de-incentivized, you know, I mean, if, if, uh, you know, right now I think it should be kind of treated in the same way that sampling is, you know, there's a lot of, there's a lot of sample based music out there and a lot of great sample based music, but a great deal of it is just kind of like, you know, operating in the underground. It's allowed to kind of like exist on social media or maybe put up for free on youtube and that sort of thing or

even if it is on a music streaming platform it's probably being you know uploaded by an artist who doesn't really have that much of a fan base or a following anyway um you know however if a certain song that does happen to sample a copyrighted track is on a platform where it is making money and it pops off and gains attention that's usually when record labels kind of come calling and want a cut of whatever it is that artist is making off that viral song yeah um you know is there an ed sheeran there's an ed sheeran case going on right now yeah currently there's an ed sheeran case going on i mean i would say topically like definitely you know in a different realm however it is a case that i'm watching and I'm very concerned about

because personally, I don't think the similarity musically between the Marvin Gaye song and the Ed Sheeran song are all that close. And there are other tracks out there that are pretty popular that I think have even greater similarities to, you know, popular songs in the past. Point ultimately being there, I think if you start kind of, you know, suing the past point ultimately being there I think if you

start kind of you know suing artists left and right over these you know not not even not even like a clear plagiarism of a melody or a lyric or something like that like literally just like you know it's a similar vibe or it's a similar set of chords you know like nailing an artist down over a set of chords which I mean the chords to chords to Let's Get It On, I mean, they're nice to listen to. It's a beautiful song. It's a great track, but like, they're not profoundly unique. Like it's not a profoundly, you know, it's like suing somebody over a drum beat, you know? Well, I think this gets into like, how it's tricky to draw the line because you also don't want to stifle creativity. And you can imagine, right. And so the way that Grimes is looking at this is almost like, oh,

this is a whole other genre of art that could be, could flourish, could be created. I mean, one thing that seems really clear to me is you have to have total transparency. You can't be trying to pass this track off of, oh, this is actually Drake or this is actually The Weeknd. It has to be really clear up front what this thing actually is. But even then, it's still incredibly tricky because you're taking away some of the uniqueness of that artist. I certainly wouldn't love it if there were a bunch of AI crystal balls who were doing a reasonable job of impersonating me and it became hard to tell what was the real me and what was, you know, what some human created and put my voice on top of it.

Right, exactly. You know, it's like I understand there are some people out there, a lot of fans who don't necessarily, you know, care for a handful of reasons one because you know the fans just want to be entertained and the idea the prospect of an ai song is interesting and you know it's they want to see how accurate it is how close it is is it actually a good song to vibe to um and you know drake at this point is as far as the music industry goes he has all the money in the world you know it's kind of hard to feel bad for drake missing out on you know a few hundred thousand or even a couple million dollars because somebody put out an AI song that's potentially more popular than tracks that he's put out. However, I do worry about the trickle-down effects that that could possibly have to smaller artists. I would hate to see an artist or a band

who's maybe more on that middle tier of popularity and they're living maybe closer paycheck to paycheck in terms of success and notoriety in the music industry, which may not be as big as Drake, but still valid. There are lots of musicians who operate on that sort of level. I would hate to see them sort of getting undercut by this technology. And in a way, sometimes they are, especially if they're like you know ambient artists or electronic artists maybe whose work could be a little more easily recreated through these programs and stuff um or you know uh sort of uh uh have their livelihoods threatened by you know spotify playlists that are just sort of like throwing generic music

onto it in the background that's not particularly, that's not specifically licensed to any artists who are actually popular in those fields, just so that they can sort of like save themselves streaming revenue money at the end of the day. So they don't have to, you know, sort of like include actual artists in those fields on these playlists. You know, so I worry about, you know, those artists kind of being hurt by this, by this technology, you know, because of the fans at this point, they're curious about it. And a lot of them don't really seem to air all that much, you know, in terms of whether or not it could potentially have negative effects. And the music industry, I think, is like having a really tough time figuring

out how to handle this really hot potato. Because in the past, as the music industry, I think, is having a really tough time figuring out how to handle this really hot potato. Because in the past, as the music industry has tried to go on crusade after crusade against various types of technology that are changing the paradigm of things, be it like home taping is killing music, burning CDs and pirating music is killing music. It's Napster. It's this. It's that. Every time they've gone on one of those crusades, streaming is killing music burning cds and pirating music is killing music it's napster it's this it's that every time they've gone on one of those crusades streaming is killing music it's only brought more attention to that thing and it's only further solidified that thing is like you know um the thing to do and like the way forward that everything's essentially going to be operating. So, you know, I think them going full throttle and trying to, you know, work against this could create almost like a Streisand effect,

you know? So I'm not really sure what their motivations or what their plan is going to be going forward from here, other than maybe to kind of play whack-a-mole with these tracks when and if they manage to get hot randomly. And where do artists make the bulk of their money? Like, what's the most, what's like the largest percentage of their? Much of the time, it's like touring merch, stuff like that. I thought that that was the case. And I mean, that's something that can't be replaced by AI. So I guess that's hopeful for the existing music industry as it is. I mean, so far for now, I mean, there was like that Tupac hologram a while ago, which people didn't take to the hologram stuff, but like, who the heck knows? At some point,

it could be something that like, you know, comes back or, you know, has a research. I think human beings are biased towards human beings. So. No, I actually agree. And I think that's kind of like the strongest argument against the AI thing, because, you know, here's the thing in order for us to have a copy of a Drake song or, you know, like a, like a, uh, uh, an understanding of what a copy of a Drake song is that we have to have an entire catalog of Drake music and base that off of in the first place. You know what I mean? Um, you know, in past, and look, there are lots of like, you know, artists who are sort of like, I guess like, you know, not real or they're, you know, CGI representations of other artists or, you know, they're Vocaloids, something like that. You know, there are artists

out there sort of like are created by people behind the scenes. And a lot of the time, because there isn't a human touch or element to that scenes. And a lot of the time, because there isn't a human touch or element to that, and you know, there's no personality, there's no depth to that, because it's just a representation of something else. Like, it has an audience, but it only sort of goes so far, because as you said, people are interested in people. People are intrigued by Drake as an individual, as a personality, as a storyteller, as, you know, somebody who is flawed. He makes headlines, you know, through his triumphs and his lows as well. You know, people just find him interesting. And that's kind of the case with a lot of their favorite

artists as well. You know, people obsess with their favorites on a deeper level. You know, the fans of Taylor Swift, for example, aren't just into Taylor Swift because they think she's a good singer or a good songwriter. They like her storytelling. They really kind of get into the personal element of her songs. They sort of, like, understand all the lore in terms of, like, who she dated. What was the relationship? Right.

What was going on in this song? What was this all about? Exactly. What were the emotional, like, you know, what's the emotional context that brought this particular track to life? And the thing is, like, AI can't come up with that. You know, it's like an AI-generated program is never going to tell you like a heartwarming story about its grandmother with the specificity that a human being could. You know, and maybe the technology could advance to a point where, you know, it's there one day. But like, you know, I think there's a lot of people, at least at this point, I don't know if culturally things could change in 20 or 30 years, but at least at this point, I think your average person, you know, could potentially feel like

maybe a little gross at their core if they feel like, oh, wow, this like story that I got like really invested in and felt moved by didn't even happen. It was just like basically AI manipulation. Right, exactly. Because I think like, you know, the draw or kind of the emotional impact for a lot of music fans is like, when they're hearing a certain song from a singer or a songwriter or whatever, you know, they sort of get, you know, disappointed when they come to learn, and it does happen every so often, that, you know, the songwriter or rapper X, Y, or Z actually lied in their song, you know, or they made something up, or, you know, whatever it was, you know, didn't happen, and it wasn't really within the realm of, like, you know, artistic license, or the kind of, you know, slight exaggerations you could make in a song to maybe make it more salacious or interesting, you know, coming up with stuff that is completely fake,

whole cloth usually ends up, you know, disappointing fans and making people mad, you know, and to understand that or come to realization that the artist that you're listening to on top of it isn't even real. The stories aren't real and the thing that made the music isn't even a person. It's like not even a representation of anything.

You know, it could be a big disappointment to a lot of people and just kind of make them divest from the music in a person. It's like not even a representation of anything. You know, it could be a big disappointment to a lot of people and just kind of make them divest from the music in a way. Yeah. I think that's all very interesting and very thought provoking. So Anthony, thank you so much. It's great to have you. Great to meet you. Yeah. Great to meet you too. Thanks for having me on. My pleasure. We talk a lot here about rogue law enforcement. One of the best examples is a recent incident in Boston for a simulated FBI

and Department of Defense raid, where they mistakenly barged into the wrong hotel room, kidnapped basically a man who was sleeping there, and then held him hostage for several hours before he could convince them that it wasn't part of the drill. CBS News Boston uncovered the story. Here's what it said. FBI agents working with the Department of Defense barged into a room on the 15th floor of the Revere Hotel on Stewart Street in Boston. The FBI says it happened just before midnight on Wednesday. Agents banged on the door to room 1505. Inside was a sleeping Delta Airlines pilot who was a guest at the hotel. He opened the door and sources say agents barged in, handcuffed and interrogated the

pilot for more than 45 minutes and put him in the shower. Nearly an hour later, sources say they realized their mistake, took the cuffs off and released him. The FBI says agents were conducting a training operation and a mock interrogation to simulate what a Department of Defense employee deployed overseas could encounter. That's pretty nuts, Crystal. So first of all, I don't know why the hell we're even doing that. But what they also discovered is that- Like a regular hotel where regular people are sleeping? And even if you got the right door, surely there are people in like rooms next to him

trying to sleep and you're in there like banging on the door at midnight and interrogating somebody in the- Like, what are you doing? What are you doing? 45 minutes before they took his handcuffs off they threw him presumably while he was in his underclothes in the shower and they realized their mistake and they realized their mistake and apologized to him they said we were assisting the department of defense in this training exercise mistakenly

went to the wrong room detained the individual individual, not intended. Thankfully, nobody was injured. Boston police was called and responded to the scene. Safety is always a priority of the FBI and our law enforcement partners, and we take these incidents very seriously. Listen, I don't know who this pilot is, but you need to sue the living crap out of these people. Imagine how terrifying that would be. And I hope you get a massive payday because the feds can't just drag you out of your bed while you're asleep and throw you in the shower in handcuffs. And it's all just one big misunderstanding. So, Mr. Pilot, whoever you are, please sue these people.

And, you know, FBI, please don't do this at crowded hotels in the middle of the night in downtown Boston. You know, there are some crappy motels where you can probably simulate the same thing. And, you know, the craziest part is, Crystal, we're probably paying exorbitant amounts of taxpayer dollars to put this entire farce on in the first place. As actually somebody pointed out, you know, if you tried something like this down in the South, imagine you're doing this in a Texas hotel. You're going to get killed. If you walk into the wrong hotel room, somebody's going to blow you away. And a lot of people are strapped across this country. And stressed.

I mean, how many incidents have we had recently horrifying things of neighbors and, you know, people who show up accidentally at the wrong house and they end up getting murdered because they knocked on the wrong door. Yeah, people are stressed out. A lot of Americans have guns. Imagine how terrifying this is. If you barge into my house, you try and handcuff me or something like that, you're going to get killed. I'm sorry.

And it's one of those, especially if they're operating the way that you did. There are a lot of people who would do that. So they're lucky for their own sake and for their innocent agents that nothing happened. And then it's crazy it took them an hour. This guy's trying to persuade them like, I am not, whatever you're doing, I'm not part of it. I'm really not part of it. And for an hour, they don't believe him. Wow. Yeah. A lot of questions. Like I said, a lot of questions. Sue them. Sue them. Make sure

every single one of them gets fired. Do not drop this because this is some craziness. Yeah, anyway, we'll see you guys later. Got a little story for you about a CNBC reporter and the cozy relationship between Washington elites and the media class. Go ahead and put this up on the screen. So this is the headline here of the New York Post. The video that exposed the relationship between Trump donor, and not just any Trump donor, this is Tom Barak, he's a huge

name in Republican politics, and CNBC anchor. She was also the person who was involved with Jeff Schell, who was the CEO of NBC. He was fired, NBCUniversal, he was fired after an internal investigation revealed what they called inappropriate conduct, having some sort of a romantic relationship with this reporter. So put the next piece up on the screen. What happened is she was getting ready for a live shot, and he, Tom Barack, this major Trump donor, wanders into the background and she's seen in this video like you know telling him to get off the screen and then he walks away and her you know colleagues and co-workers who are able to see this and I'm sure this has been passed around CNBC quite a lot realize that this is this billionaire yes who by the way she put the next piece up, she had, you know, done interviews with

as a supposedly neutral journalist. There were also questions about how she had been able to secure an interview with Jared Kushner, who, of course, you know, Donald Trump's son-in-law and also a key aide in that administration. And so there were questions raised about, hey, maybe this relationship that you had, maybe that's what led to you scoring this big interview.

So, I mean, obviously incredibly embarrassing for her, but also I think does reveal the nature of the incestuous world that is the political media industrial complex. This reminds me of the Ali Watkins case. Do you remember this case? 2017. Allie was a star

CIA reporter here in Washington. She was actually my age. Well, she was getting all these great scoops over at BuzzFeed, and everyone said, how is Allie doing it? And then one of a 50-something year old man who had access to said intelligence gets indicted,

and it turns out that she was having a long-time affair with him, and he just so happened to be feeding her a bunch of information, which she never disclosed to her bosses. And by the way, Allie got—she rode on these scoops from her career, from online to the New York Times, where she was publishing some of this information. And then I remember this was a big scandal kind of at the time. She actually, crazily enough, was not fired by the New York Times for this behavior. I just looked it up. Now she's writing about subways in New York. So I'm happy for her. But the point is, is that this is more common than

I think a lot of people think. And yeah, it's just the incestuous, literally in some cases, relationships between sources and the people who cover them. And the only mistake that they made here was getting caught on camera. That was it. That's the only thing. And by the way, it turned out that she was not only having an affair with him, but also with the head of NBC, who was fired coincidentally on the same day as Tucker and Don Lemon, which is why nobody heard about it. Right. But that was a pretty big deal. Yeah, to have him get fired as well.

Yeah, I mean, putting the sex out of it, I think it really shows you how a lot of people in the industry, like they get ahead by the connections and the relationships. To the contrary of in an ideal world, this is a reporter who is holding power to account, who has an adversarial relationship with key, powerful figures in politics. But instead, the real way that you get ahead and the reason that power is often not held to account is by developing these close relationships with them. And then you get the scoop and you get the big interview and you get the access, et cetera, et cetera. So anyway, you know, very embarrassing for her,

but I think more broadly revealing about the game that's played in media. How is she having a fire? That's so insane. She fired yesterday. I mean, I guess there's probably some human resources, whatever, but it's been a long time. There was apparently some sort of human resources

investigation at CNBC back in 2021 over how the hell did you get this scoop with this interview with Jared Kushner? Because I guess, I mean, I wasn't familiar with her. Hadley Gamble is her name. I wasn't familiar with her. I also don't watch CNBC all the time, but I get the impression she's not like one of their top level talent. So then when she was able to score this big interview, people were like, what the hell is going on here? And it actually triggered a human resources investigation. Now, in fairness to her, apparently it didn't turn up at least enough wrongdoing or corrupt behavior to get her fired.

Then again, maybe they don't really care about corrupt behavior if it lands them a big interview. Yeah, that's totally nuts. All right. We'll see you guys later. I'm Maximilian Alvarez. I'm the editor-in-chief of the Real News Network and host of the podcast Working People. And this is the art of class war on breaking points. Look, it is no secret that I am no fan of corporate media. And if you are watching this channel, then you, like me, probably have a healthy distrust or even disdain for most corporate media outlets and pundits and would like to ignore them entirely if you could. But the fact remains that for better or for worse, we can't just ignore them. engaged, democratic, media literate citizens means at least having a good handle on what the media ecosystem looks like and how media, both independent and corporate media alike, shape our discourse, our public policy, our political activity, our culture, so on and so forth. And regardless of how we feel individually, we can still acknowledge that

the changes taking place as we speak across the corporate media landscape are a big story, and they will produce political ripple effects that we'll all have to contend with. Some good, some bad, others that we'll just have to wait and see how they develop from the earth-shaking news on monday april 24th that fox news has cut ties with its star host tucker carlson and cnn has done the same with host don lemon to the news that 538 founder nate silver is expected to be cut from abc and mbc chief executive Jeff Schell was fired for sexual harassment. There are some seismic shakeups happening in the world of corporate media right now. And everyone's talking about what these shakeups will mean. And everyone is, everyone seemingly

has an opinion on Tucker and Fox News, Lemon and CNN, and I completely understand why. But I can't help but wonder why, if we are all as invested in the inner workings of our media ecosystem as our reactions to this week's news would suggest, why has it been so difficult to get people to care about critical changes happening within other corners of that ecosystem. Changes that I would argue will have just as much, if not more, of an impact on our daily lives and our respective access to journalism that we need to be informed democratic citizens. Take, for example, the ongoing strike at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, a vital journalistic institution that is descended from the Pittsburgh Gazette, a paper established in 1786 and that has

been serving the broader Pittsburgh area for generations. In October of last year, over 100 workers represented by five labor unions, including production, distribution, advertising, and accounts and receivable staff, walked off the job on an unfair labor practice strike at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. The strike began after the newspaper's management, Block Communications, which is owned by the Block family, cut off health insurance for employees on October 1st. As Michael Sinato reported at The Guardian at the time, quote, the strike is unfolding in a U.S. media industry that has seen widespread layoffs over the past decade, with newspapers hit especially hard. Workers at the Post-Gazette have been working without a union contract since March 2017, claiming they haven't received any pay raises in 16 years, end quote. the broader media landscape tell us about the changes happening in the industry that we might

not be able to discern if we are only focusing on the big ticket news about Tucker Carlson and Don Lemon. To talk about all of this and more, I'm honored to be joined today by our two guests, Bob Batts Jr. and Steve Mellon. Bob is a lifelong journalist who worked at the Pittsburgh Post Gazette for 30 years before going on strike and being named interim editor of the Workers' Strike paper, the first in the digital age, the Pittsburgh Union Progress. This is a really cool paper that is run by striking members, by workers on strike at the Post-Gazette. As of today, they have published over a thousand stories, plus photos, graphics, ads, and even a fictional story, which you can find at unionprogress.com, which offers free subscriptions and a thrice-weekly newsletter. Steve Mellon has been a journalist and photo journalist for more than 40 years. For the past few decades, much of his work has focused on working people. He left the

Pittsburgh Press after a strike there in 1992 and spent much of the next four years traveling to industrial towns to report on the changes people there were experiencing. He returned to newspaper work in 1997, taking a job at the Post-Gazette. He's been on strike since mid-October 2022, along with his colleagues, and now co-chairs the union's Health and Welfare Committee and writes for the strike paper, the Pittsburgh Union Progress. Bob, Steve, thank you both so much for joining us today on Breaking Points. Thank you, Max. Thanks, Max. We have, of course, spoken at different points for the reporting that we've done on the strike here at the Real News Network, including a Worker Solidarity live stream where we had Bob on a couple of months ago and a full length Working

People episode, my podcast, where I got to speak at length with Steve. If folks want deeper context on the strike, I highly recommend that you go check those reports out. But for those who haven't seen those reports and for those who may in fact be learning about this crucial strike for the first time right now, I was wondering if we could start by going around the table and just sort of giving people the essential context they need about this strike, what led to it, how long, you know, that process had been brewing, what the sort of key issues are that brought you and your co-workers out on the picket line, and any other kind of essential context that you think folks need to know up front about this strike that they may just be hearing about right now. So, Bob, why don't we start with you, then

Steve will go to you. All right. Thank you, Max. And, you know, I feel like I'm sitting here at my dining room table, I'm caught in two different things that are going on, sort of the economic storm that's hitting the media industry in general, and sort of this labor uprising or recognizance or awakening that's also happening. We're certainly caught in both of those things. Our strike has a long history. It's very complicated. There's a lot of nuance, but Max, you started out right by talking about how people haven't gotten contractual raises in 16 years. That's older than my teenage son is. That's embarrassing to say, but that's the case with this strike. We work in the newsroom. We're both editors, photographers, reporters, so we make the news. We cover the news. But we were

preceded on strike by four other unions who had their health care taken away in October of 22. We already knew about that because that happened to us in 2020, which was three years after our last contract expired, and we could not come to terms with a new one. Our company imposed conditions on us, said we're at the impasse, we cannot come up with a contract, we're just going to tell you how it's going to be. And that includes this new health care that's different than what you guys bargained before. So when 2022 got here, we were ready to go on strike on our own issues, our own unfair labor practice charges, which we had already just finished this past fall, explaining to the National Labor Relations Board. And since we went on strike, a very memorable day that Steve was talking about,

an administrative law judge said that everything that we're mad about, everything that we are on strike over is correct. The company's wrong. They're breaking federal law. We felt good about that, but that was a couple of months ago and we're still on strike because we still have not been able to get that ruling enforced. We're hoping to get the NLRB to do that and to enforce basically what this law judge has said. In the meantime, here we are on strike. Yeah, actually, that's pretty good, Bob. You know, it's still depressing to me to think 20 to 2006. I mean, here I'm 63 years old. I haven't had a raise in 16 years.

You know, we've been without a contract since 2017. You know, I didn't need an administrative law judge to tell me that that the Post Gazette was bargaining in bad faith. That's it. And on these negotiating sessions and I'd listen to the company's attorney. It's always the company attorney. There are several of us from the guild that are usually in there. It's a bargaining team. And then there's a number of us who just come to witness and to be a part of the process. And I sit in there and I listen to the company. We will go through an extensive process of putting together a proposal on, say, health care, how to resolve this issue.

We'll have meetings and, you know, we'll debate a good plan and we'll take that plan in and we'll present that plan. And then what we'll hear after our extensive explanation is that that won't work for us. We like our original proposal. That's over and over and over and over again. And it was just it was good to hear an administrative law judge confirm that the company has not been bargaining in good faith, that, you know, that that they. They don't want us around. They don't want a union around. They want to have a union-free shop. I think that's pretty obvious. They want to be able to run the newsroom the way they see fit with no input from the workers, from the people that actually put this thing out. I think we all agree that that would be disastrous for the Post-Gazette. And Max, I was so glad to hear you talk a little bit about the history of this paper. And that's one of the things that really pains me about this is that, you know, this is a newspaper with a long story and a wonderful history in this city of doing a great job of covering local news, evolving with the city.

And the way I've seen this newspaper treat people in just the last, I don't know, four or five years. It's it's it's heartbreaking to me. I know Bob has committed a good chunk of his life to this paper. I have a number of our colleagues have. We have a number of younger colleagues who've come in, very talented people who are committed to telling the story of the city, to reporting the important things that people need to know. And to see them treated like this is over and over and over again, it's really frustrating to me. And it angers me. And, you know, one of the things that I really appreciate is this, is being able to talk about it. You know, we've been out for seven months now. And there was a time when it was, you know, we were on the news a lot because it was new. It was a new strike. It was, you know, we were on the news a lot because it was new. It's

a new strike. It was, you know, first newspaper strike, I think in more than two decades. So there was a uniqueness to it. Um, and, uh, but that time has passed and other things come along, Max, you mentioned the Tucker Carlson thing and then Don Lamott and, you know, we kind of get shoved to the side and, uh, and it's important that that that this story stay in front of people for a number of reasons, not just because of what the impact that this strike is going to have on the news industry, but the role this plays in the general movement now that I see around the country where people are standing up in the newsrooms and they're saying enough of this. You know, unions have been hammered since 1980, since Reagan took on the PACO workers. And, you know, I think here we are 40 years later saying enough of that.

We're tired of getting pushed around. We're tired of getting stomped on. We want to have a say. We deserve that. We're the ones who put the paper out with the production workers. We're the journalists who put this paper out. We want to have a say in how we're treated. You know, I've got, I'm going to, in an hour, I'll be downtown, downtown Pittsburgh for a rally. The Starbucks United workers are having a rally today. They're in the middle of their own bargaining sessions. That to me is a great thing. I look, these are, you know, I remember unions when I first came to Pittsburgh in the eighties and, you know, there were guys like me now, they were older white guys. I go down to stand on these Starbucks line. These are younger people that are fired up. It's a very diverse crowd. And they hang with us. They'll come and they'll stand with us on a picket line. These

are people my daughter's age, 24 years old. I'm standing next to Tori Tambolini a couple weeks ago. We were trying to stop a truck, one of the delivery trucks from delivering the Post Gazette. We were standing in front of an idling Mack truck. That's a very uncomfortable thing. And Tori looked at me and she said, I'm not moving. Are you moving? I said, I'm not moving if you're not moving. So we did not move. And that truck didn't get through. There were probably 30 of us there, 20 or 30 of us. That's good to see. That warms my heart. And something that I really don't want to be lost on folks as a crucial part of this story, right? We're going to finish off by talking about what the Post-Gazette strike means

in the context of the labor movement in general, which we cover relentlessly here for my segments on breaking points at the Real News Network, so on and so forth. But I think in that vein, right, it's really significant that a the striking journalists at the Post-Gazette have been keeping a strike newspaper going to continue serving the communities that they are reporting on and for while they are on strike, not getting paid. That in itself, I think, is a really remarkable accomplishment. And everyone should go subscribe to the Union Progress, because that is one way that you can support striking workers of the Post-Gazette. But also, like you said, Steve, I mean, the fact that y'all are standing in solidarity with Starbucks workers who are fighting their own fight, right? That is what

the bosses fear. That is what we need more than ever. And that includes folks who are watching this. We all have a role to play in that. market that you guys serve over there in the broader Pittsburgh area, right? Because there's a lot going on here, as we said, that I think for the average news consumer may be hard to parse out, right? Because media gets sort of like lumped into this giant bucket, right? In fact, a lot of people's well-founded disdain for, say, corporate media or the media in general tends to come from, you know, people who they perceive to be, you know, the partisan hacks and figureheads on the mainstream networks like Tucker Carlson, Don Lemon, the people at the opinion section at the New York Times. Right. I hate the opinion section at the New York Times, but even I have to admit that it's like, well, you know, the New York Times sucks ass because, pardon my French, for the opinion section, but they still do, the news desk does, you know, reporting that's important. They got a lot of resources, right? I just have to kind of accept that, right? So even that's just like one example of how this slippage can occur where we lump in the people that we righteously hate in the media and we throw the

baby out with the bathwater. Right. And that we can see that kind of happening on the local media level as well. Right. But we have like a real like intense drama unfolding here where, you know, the former owner of the paper, Bill Block, you know, passed away. And then this sort of succession style drama unfolded with who was going to inherit the paper, what direction it was going to take, and how that connects to the larger sort of kind of changes that we're seeing in the industry with local newsrooms closing, basically continuously for the past 20, 25 years. As we speak right now, I mean, there are there's a bit of a bloodbath kind of going on in the media industry with

layoffs at a wide range of outlets from fandom, ESPN, Vox, NBC News and NBC and MSNBC, Vice News, BuzzFeed, The Washington Post. There are union drives at outlets like Business Insider and Hearst-owned magazines. I mean, there's a lot going on here, and it may be hard for people to parse through. So I just wanted to ask if you guys could say a little bit about what it means to have a union workforce at a local outlet like the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Like, why should people care about that? Well, I mean, you care about what's happening in your community and what your local officials are doing and what your neighbors are up to and how much they paid for their taxes on that woods that got torn down next to your house and they're building a development to it. Local news matters to your community.

I'm here to tell you that you can cover a community very well with corporate news because seven months ago, I was corporate news. I got paid by a corporation to cover local news. Suddenly, six, seven months ago, I was independent media because I was suddenly not getting a paycheck. I was doing exactly the same thing. Boots on the ground, butt on the ground. I live on your ground, journalism, telling you what's going on and what somebody says is going on isn't true, how the state playoff basketball championships are going to work, who's running for county executive, you know, who pays for it. Corporately funded good local news is great because you have a lot of people who are very good at what they do and they are keeping a watch on your officials and your culture and your everything so uh we chose to just keep doing

that on strike because that's what we do that's what we do that's what we're made of so we don't care if we get we do care but we can do it if whether or not we get paid for it but the the i would say like the north star to quote something that that Steve was talking about at a meeting we had the other night, is covering your local news and being smart about it. I mean, there's a big difference between me and Steve and Tucker Carlson, and I'm nothing but glad about that. We are journalists. Tucker Carlson was like a celebrity, you know, figurehead. Keep your eye on local news. You'll care about it at one point, even if you think you don't. And that's the thing that we're

fighting for with this strike in Pittsburgh. Yeah, Bob, I'm glad you mentioned that. I mean, we're doing this now without any pay. So that's, I think, a testament to our colleagues who are committed to this. You know, there are a couple of disconnects here. One, you're right, Bob, there's a disconnect between what we do and what Tucker Carlson and Don Lemon does. I mean, there's a huge divide there

and it pains me that we're sometimes lumped in that category, you know. We're the ones who go sit in three-hour meetings and take endless notes and then pour over that story until 11 o'clock at night to figure out, okay, what's an important take out of here? What do the readers need to know? That's the kind of thing. We go sit in these high school ballgames because that's important. It's important to a community that takes pride in these high school ball games because that's important. You know, it's important to a community that takes pride in its high school athletes, you know.

That's how the community gets a sense of who it is, a sense of identity for a community. You know, a local newspaper forms a lot of functions. It does inform people, lets people know the important things, what's happening at the county jail. You know, why this has been an issue here in Pittsburgh. Why do we have so many people die in the county jail? They're tanned down that wood, just like Bob said, who's, what's going to happen with the taxes. What's that mean to me? Those are all really important things. In addition, it helps, you know,

it's a reflection of the community and this gets to the feature stories, the obituaries that we publish, you know, the community sees itself reflected in the news and the local newspaper in a way it does not going to see itself reflected on CNN or MSNBC or Fox News or any of the others. That's a fantasy world. If you want to see what the world actually looks like, what your community looks like, go to your local paper. The other disconnect here is that Bob is right. We're committed to this. The people who walked out of that newsroom on the 18th of October are committed to local journalism. They're committed because we're still doing it. We're not getting paid, but we're still doing it. We still think it's important.

Obviously, the owners of the paper don't share that belief. And I think that's the thing that bothers me so much about many of the newspaper owners now owned by hedge funds or whoever, their values are not our values. Their values are treating these newspapers like piggy banks that they can drain dry and then cast aside, cast the carcass aside. What's that do to the community? It's heartbreaking to see what that does. We've got some communities now that have major metropolitan areas that have newspapers that have a staff of 40 people. You cannot cover a place like Pittsburgh with 40 people. You know, we're trying to do it. But Bob, how many people? We now have a dozen.

We're working our butts off and we're just, we're not even scratching the surface here of what needs to be covered in this city. So that's heartbreaking to me. I think what's happening here in Pittsburgh is important. You know, I've had friends in this industry for 40 years That's heartbreaking to me. I think what's happening here in Pittsburgh is important. I've had friends in this industry for 40 years. And if I knew 50 people back in 1990 that were working in the newspaper, let's go to 2000 who are working in the newspaper industry. I can probably count two or three of them that are still in the industry now that are not here in Pittsburgh. So many of these people have gone on, they've retired, they've

taken other jobs, they're in PR, they've gotten out of the business, they're teaching, they're doing something else. And we can have a voice in this. The thing that's important, what I love about Pittsburgh is a union town and and we're a union shop. And so the company can't come in and just say, you're out of here. We're changing things. We don't need you 10 people. We're tossing you guys. No, we're going to stand up and say, no, you're not going to do that.

What we're doing, what happens at the Post Gazette is going to affect this community. And we're not going to put up with that. We have friends and neighbors. We know we have a community we care about. We're not going to let that happen. We care about what happens to our families and to ourselves. Obviously, it's all wrapped up into a hole. But if we didn't, if we did not have a union, we, Bob and I probably wouldn't be sitting here talking. We would have been out of here probably 10 years ago, given our age and everything that would have tossed our asses out of here. So, you know, I wish everybody in the newspaper industry had this opportunity. You know, somebody sitting in the middle of, in the Midwest, whose boss comes in, whose editor comes in,

the owner comes in and said, we're going to two days a week and I'm getting rid of 40% of the staff. Deal with it. And we can in Pittsburgh say, no, we're not going to deal with that. You have to deal with us. So like with the last five minutes that I've got you guys, I want to kind of drill down on this point, right? Because again, I'm speaking to viewers here at Breaking Points. I know you guys are a kind of heterodox bunch, right? That's why you're here. We got folks with more right-leaning politics, more left-leaning politics, somewhere in the middle. That's great. But I want to caution everyone watching against taking the partisan bait here, right? Maybe you

hate BuzzFeed News and the work that they did. That's, you know, that's fine. That's your call. And maybe you're cheering on the fact that they just, you know, you know, that's fine. That's your call. And maybe you're cheering on the fact that they just, you know, laid off, you know, like all their workers and they're going under. Like you may think that that's a win for your side, but what we are trying to communicate here is that the larger groundswell,

the larger systemic failings of for-profit journalism, corporate ownership, or private equity ownership over the vital civic institution of journalism and the media landscape writ large, this spells disaster for all of us, regardless of what side of the political spectrum we happen to be on. So you may cheer when people at an outlet that you hate kind of get fired, but I promise you it is coming for the outlets that you read as well. And the independent journalists, the folks on Substack or even outlets like ours at the Real News Network, we are not going to be able to serve all of the needs that need to be served here in the absence of those outlets. Like we've got a long way to go to rebuild a healthy functioning media ecosystem in this country,

especially one that is committed to actual journalism, not just corporate sensationalist crap like they peddle at the mainstream networks, right? And in that vein, we also, for that very reason, have a vested interest in the struggle at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette as far as it pertains to the labor movement, right? Because labor, workers banding together and actually forming fashion to say, we are not going to just let rich people and corporations and elites dictate everything that happens in our society. We have a say in what happens here. We deserve to be at the bargaining table to bargain over the

terms and conditions of our employment and, in fact, how these businesses, whether they be Starbucks, Amazon, or the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette are run. And we all have a vested interest in that as fellow workers, as consumers, so on and so forth. So I want to kind of end just with a kind of short round of the table, talking about that and the significance of the Post-Gazette struggle in terms of the broader kind of labor movement that we cover here at Breaking Points at The Real News and beyond. Because I think one thing that really sticks out to me, because I see, I get the press releases from you guys and your union. Um, every time there's another bargaining session with management at the post Gazette and they don't show up, uh, they, or they just show up and they stone

wall, every new proposition, they just fold up and they stonewall every new proposition they just fold their arms and say nope like what seems very clear to me and i'm speaking for myself here you know not speaking for anyone else but looking at what management at the post gazette is doing and how they are trying to stretch this strike out they don't they are not bargaining in good faith at the bargaining table. As the NLRB has said, they are trying to effectively kill the unions, right? They are trying to strangle the unionized workforce to the point that they could eventually push a decertification vote and get the union out of their newsroom. They don't want to close the shop down, but as you said, Steve, they want to get rid of the union. This is happening all across the board, right? Warrior

Met Coal, coal miners in deep red Alabama who were on strike for nearly two years. Warrior Met Coal has filed a petition to decertify the union there, the United Mine Workers of America. That was always their plan, was to stretch things out, demoralize people, not bargain in good faith, and ultimately try to kick the union out so that the company could better serve its Wall Street shareholders. Keep in mind, the number one shareholder of Warwick Met Coal is BlackRock in New York City. This is what Starbucks is trying to do. They're trying to delay. They're trying to union bust. They're trying to fire people and close down shops until eventually the union drive runs out of steam. This is what workers at CNH Industrial, who were on strike in the Midwest last year, told me when they were saying that

management also was not budging at the bargaining table and they were getting whispers that management was planning to push a decertification vote to get the UAW out of their shop. So this is class war that we are watching. And I wanted to ask Bob and Steve, if you just had a few words to say to folks in closing about the significance of the Post-Gazette strike in terms of the labor movement right now in this country, and what folks watching and listening can do to stand in solidarity with y'all. Well, I mean, as I said before, we're sitting here in the middle of the two storms, the economic storm that's hitting media and also this sort of labor, you know, uprising that we're part of, too.

So Steve and I laid out how passionate we and our colleagues are about local news. And that's coming from our place as journalists. Now we find ourselves as kind of labor activists, labor catalysts, and we care quite a bit about that as well. Steve is going to this Starbucks rally today, not just as a reporter, which he's very good at, probably as a photographer as well, but he's also going as someone that has a longstanding but certainly newly honed interest in and understanding of labor issues. And so one thing that I think is going to come out of this, I don't know where any of this is going to go, even our own strike. And this isn't my idea. I stole this from our National News Guild president, John Schloes. But when you have a whole bunch of journalists in Pittsburgh on strike, or we have 120 news workers, maybe now 40 of us are in the newsroom. When you have the New York Times workers, newsroom workers, descending on a shareholders meeting yesterday, you have the Washington Post newsroom workers taking like a lunch long strike.

You know, we're going to lunch out today. It's not just us. And what you're going to have is you're going to have journalists that at least are more sympathetic and empathetic and knowledgeable about labor and how strikes work and what it feels like to be on the line for two years in the case of Warrior Coal and everything that Starbucks workers are going through. So in some ways, I just think some of us media types, independent or corporate or both, are getting schooled on what some of this stuff means. And I think Steve and I and my colleagues are just as passionate about unions and having a voice in your workplace. And we want to be part of that as well. You know, we're, what, Bob, now seven months into this thing. And, you know, there are times when I'm on the phone on the people with some of my colleagues a lot, you know, as's a, it's, it's a member of the health and welfare committee. And, and so I had these conversations a lot and people tell me, you know,

six months, seven months into this, that, you know, it's like the world is going on without me that, you know, my life is stalled and the world's going on without me. These are fellow strikers. And, you know, I had these conversations with people and it's, it's easy to see that on the inside, what really helps. I've had a couple of conversations this week yesterday. I was on the phone with a young woman from the Pacific, I think it's the

Pacific Asian Labor Organization here in Pittsburgh. It's a fairly new organization advocating for people who are immigrants, who are new into the workforce here that really don't understand their rights, trying to teach people what those rights are and people newly entered in the workforce and how they can stand up for their rights. And, you know, she said to me, I was interviewing for her for a story, and she said to me afterwards, she said, Steve, she said, we're watching you guys. We're paying attention. And we really appreciate the stand you're taking. I've heard that a couple of times in the past week or so. And, you know, that really lifts my heart to, to know that, that, that this effort is, is, is worth it. You know, no matter what the outcome is here, you know, the fact that we're standing up, that we're, we are in, in some ways showing people how this done, you know, we've, one of the problems we have is that we, we can't

go to anybody for advice because nobody's been on strike that nobody in the newspaper is alive now involved in this has been on strike this long. So, you know, we are blazing a new pass. You know, the Starbucks workers, you know, one of them came up to me a couple of weeks ago and said, Steve, we kind of feel like you guys are our big brothers. So, you know, that makes me feel those comments like that, you know, it's, it's hard to state how, how sustaining those comments can be and how important it can be to hear those things from us. Because, you know, sometimes when you're in the bubble and you're getting up every morning, every day, and you're thinking, I'm still on strike. I still don't have

any money. I got to go to work for free. You know, we have all these other issues we have to deal with. You know, keeping the strike fund up, hearing that is important for sustaining this, keeping our mental health in good stead. You know, there's a Workers Memorial Day tomorrow. One of the big issues that they're dealing with now this year, it's not just people dying on the job. It's mental health. They realize that. So it's kind of fortuitous that we're talking about this at this time. Another big thing, you know, you're right, Max, the Post Gazette views this as a war of attrition, you know. They've got money, we don't. That's what it boils down to in their minds, and they think they can win with that. You know, we have a strike fund. You know, I hate to come down to this, but, you know but we have a strike fund. That's how people are paying their bills. And I hate to say it, but if you go to PUP, go to the donate page and donate some money to the

strike relief fund. We need mental health. We also need to be able to sustain this financially because the blocks are probably right. They've got more money than we do. What we have, we have the community on our side. We have the moral high ground here. I'm going to claim that. And we have the best journalists. One thing we don't have is we don't have the money that they have. They're right about that. I don't think that I'll take where I'm at with no money any day of the week. But the fact is we got bills to pay. From the Real News Network and Breaking Points, we are with you guys. We stand in solidarity with y'all. And I want to encourage everyone watching and listening to this to please go to the Pittsburgh Union Progress website,

subscribe to the strike paper. You can, as Steve and Bob mentioned, you can find links to donate to their strike fund there, post publicly about this, keep this story alive, let people know about it, reach out to the owners of the paper to express your thoughts and feelings about the strike and the value of having these workers secure the contract that they deserve so they can keep doing the work that they love and serving the communities that they are a part of. So I want to thank the great Bob Batts Jr. and Steve Mellon for joining us today on Breaking Points. Bob is a lifelong journalist who worked for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette for 30 years before going on strike and being named interim editor of the Workers' strike paper, the Pittsburgh Union Progress. As of today, they've published over a thousand stories, plus photos, graphics, ads, and even a fictional story, which you can find at unionprogress.com. Steve has been a

journalist and photojournalist for more than 40 years. For the past few decades, much of his work has focused on working people. He left the Pittsburgh Press after a strike there in 1992 and spent much of the next four years traveling to industrial towns to report on the changes people there were experiencing. And he returned to the newspaper work in 1997, taking a job at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, where he has been on strike with his co-workers since October of 2022. Bob, Steve, thank you both so much for joining me today on Breaking Points. Thank you all for watching this segment with Breaking Points, and be sure to subscribe to my news outlet, The Real News Network, with links in the show description. See you soon for the next edition of The Art of Class War.

Take care of yourselves. Take care of each other. Solidarity forever. Right now at around three o'clock Eastern, you could see that gray, black plume of smoke coming out, which gets worse and smells worse as the day moves into night and definitely as night goes into the early morning hey it's jordan with status quo news with a special report on the ground in kalamazoo michigan four breaking points i am wearing a mask

outside on a rainy day because right behind behind us is Graphic Packaging International, a multi-billion dollar packaging company that is literally poisoning the poor black part of Kalamazoo, Michigan. They are releasing over 30 different kinds of toxic gas, which is causing crazy rates of asthma, COPD, cancers in the community. And since 2015, 1950, let me repeat 1950 black infants under the age of one have died in Kalamazoo County. The majority of Black residents live in this area on the north side near Graphic Packaging Plant. My cameraman and I, both

yesterday and today, we reported right next to the plant yesterday and both had headaches and sore throat. And even being half a block away, you could feel it with a headache, dizziness. We have a lot more to tell you. What is being released from that plant? There's over 30 different toxic gases and chemicals, sulfur dioxide, hydrogen sulfide, methylmercaptan. I had to order to an asthma attack. Then she was 17. Then I found my son unresponsible. He couldn't breathe to an asthma attack. Now due to that, my son has a trach. He's on 24-hour oxygen, and I have a life support machine at my house.

How old is your son? My son is 32. She complained about the smell. Like I said, almost every day I had to take her to go get asthma treatment at the hospital to the point it got so bad that the hospital had her come in two times a week. They had a shot flown in from California that she had to get inserted into her and stay at the hospital like three hours to make sure she didn't have no kind of reaction from it to be able to come outside.

This is graphic packaging. And the smell out here is joking the shit out of me right now. You're out here? August 5th, this is graphic packaging. This is 1.15 in the morning. Today is Wednesday, August 24th at 3.15 in the morning. This is graphic packaging. It smells like raw eggs, like a sewage.

Look how thick the white smoke is. It's choking me as I'm trying to videotape it. It is September 4th, about 1.40 in the morning. This is graphic packaging. Once again, look at this. I'm at home now. Look at this. Full throttle.

This is graphic packaging. At 2.57 in the morning. It's probably 2.57 or 2.58 now. Look at this, y'all. They're killing us. As a young kid, my son was great. Active. You couldn't sit him down. He wouldn't stop moving. And he didn't have asthma when he was young. He didn't get asthma until we moved over here. When was that? About five years ago. What about your daughter?

Was she relatively healthy before you guys moved here? She had asthma, a little. I mean, she had asthma, but she was active, just like my son kept moving. Couldn't sit her down. She played football. She played basketball, baseball, ran track. She did everything she possibly could. So just a little case of asthma, which could be helped with inhaler. But it was after you moved here that, for her, the asthma got a lot worse.

And your son, same thing. Yes. We done reached out to several people. We have not got to respond back. It's like they don't care how we live. They don't care if we live or die. That's how I feel. We've been begging and begging and begging for them to do something about this factory.

And they did something all right. They gave them all them billions of dollars to expand to make it even worse for us over here. Governor Whitmer, yes, was dealing with COVID and many other things. But her administration, she came in office in 2019. Her administration was fielding these complaints from a lot of residents on the north side. And in 2021, I still don't understand it, but a multibillion dollar company, Graphic Packaging, which is international, they're all over the United States, headquartered in Atlanta, but I guess they wanted to expand here and the governor, her Michigan Economic Development Council, which is an arm of

the government, approved a deal that would allow Graphic Packaging a 125 million dollar bond deal to expand. Why would they have allowed expansion knowing all the complaints? And at that point, graphic packaging had also been fined quite a bit for leaks and things like that. Was the state not aware of all the complaints? We're not just talking like, oh, it smells bad, but it's not a safety problem. The smell is overwhelming, and you have kids dying of severe asthma attacks. Kids can't even play outside.

The school near the plant, they don't even take them outside for recess. So not that you have the governor on speed dial, but I have to assume she was aware aware her administration was aware of this problem and approved it anyway there there's no there's no rational explanation for the the state not being aware yeah because by that point graphic packaging had been fined several times there had been a number of complaints filed so yes they were aware like. Like it's affecting the whole city because at first Graphic Packaging was releasing 500,000 tons of toxic gases and chemicals. With the expansion they added an additional 700,000 tons of toxic chemicals and gases. So now there's 1.2

million tons of toxic chemicals and gases just blowing the whole on the whole city. 2 30 in the afternoon I am about a half a block away from Graphic Packaging which is the multi-billion dollar international packaging company that is basically poisoning the city of Kalamazoo predominantly the poor black part of Kalamazoo. I'm not going any closer because it really, the smell is overwhelming and it gives you a headache and sore throat. Yes, we smell it all the time. Been smelling it for years. It has affected my husband's breathing and he's on, he has asthma and breathing treatments.

And my daughter, she had asthma about five years ago when she was in high school. And I kept thinking, I didn't know it at first. I was thinking she kept getting tired and tired and tired. I'm thinking, okay, so what could be wrong? I mean, you're active in school, but when I took her to the doctor, that's what it was. In the summer, we can't even open our windows due to the smell at all my daughter's graduation party was in my backyard and I was so embarrassed because all I smelled was a pollution it's I mean it smelled like dog it smelled like a sewage and uh that's what it smelled like just like a sewage and as my company

was sitting around you know and I noticed the faces and, you know, people were just leaving. We always smelt it. We always thought it was the river. Kalamazoo River? Yeah. But it's bad. My grandkids been sick. My oldest been sick two years since he came into this world.

Nose running, coughing for the whole two years, though. They don't care about us. And did you notice that the more they were outside, where obviously the... The more they outside, the worse it would get if I keep them in the house. But you can't contain kids. They want to go outside, you know what I'm saying, bought pools and all that for them. And they can't go outside and enjoy it because they're going to be sick. It don't matter 100 degrees outside.

They're still going to be sick. It don't matter 100 degrees outside. They're still going to be sick. You know, it's so bad now that, okay, my granddaughter, she has asthma really bad. She's 20. And every time she comes over to my house, she's a granny. I'm not coming over here anymore because I always have to use my inhaler. Every time I come over. And then I also have a great-grandson, which is her baby. She says every time he comes over, he gets sick.

She said, you know what, every time you babysit, she said he never gets sick until he comes to your house. And she took him to the doctor because she thought he had a cold. And he's only seven months. And the doctor said he doesn't have a cold. They told her that it was asthma and asked her what kind of environment was he in. And she told him safe. That's all she would say was safe because she really, I think, didn't understand the question. But, yes.

And then my other great-granddaughter, I keep her every other weekend. And every time she comes over, she'll say, Granny, it stinks. And she gets sick for some reason, and we don't know why. And I ask her, Mom, I said, was she sick before she came over? She said no. But every time she comes to our house, she gets sick. And then when I take her home, I'll call her mom the next day. I said, how is she doing?

She said, oh, she's fine. She's not doing any of those things you said she was doing. So, oh, and my great-grandson, the doctor, he said since he doesn't have a cold they actually gave him some medicine for asthma so he's on he's on some medication and there's so many stories all the stories are the same like i'm the i'm the one that gets the messages and the calls all the time because i'm the one that filed the lawsuit we have a civil rights complaint against environmental great lakes and energy we have a civil rights complaint against environmental Great Lakes and energy. We have a civil rights complaint against the city of Kalamazoo. We're going to file another lawsuit against the government soon. And I just heard another story

from a lady that said she had to quit her job. She lives a couple blocks away. She has raising her grandchildren and she has to take them to the doctor every single day for breathing problems. Every day. This is not anywhere near as much of an issue on this side of town because prevailing winds push it away from here but yeah after the expansion it's become a lot more noticeable. So it took a little while after they got up and running with the full expansion before we started to notice it pretty regularly. And really in the last, since this last summer, it's been probably, I would say, three days a week or so where you can smell it and probably usually it'll be about one day a week where it's you get a headache going outside or my wife is a little

more sensitive she'll get her lips will burn and she's actually gotten some like rash on her skin but yeah it's it's it's like that about about once a week probably they tell them to move this plane out. Oh, it's shut down. Us, we go try to fight. They don't care because y'all minorities to us. They look at us like we beneath them. We all human. Why I'm beneath you?

Because I didn't take 10 extra courses at the college? They talking about slavery over and all that? No, it's not, because we still live in slavery. Because y'all still don't give a fuck about us. Why do we have to go through this? Because if somebody white stayed, this was on the way in Portage, and somebody white would have came and told them,

look at this gas, look at all this. They would have cut that shit out a long time ago. The smell is really bad. Um, I can't even describe it. It's just a mix of like rotten something. And it almost like the more you the closer you get, it's a rotten smell and it kind of goes up your nostrils a little bit. And this is at whatever time it is now, probably six o'clock. Sure, you've heard that now since the expansion, the smoke and the smell is starting to go to the west side in the whiter part of the town. White folks are starting to complain. Do you think if enough white people get angry, maybe they'll do something about it? That's what I'm thinking.

If enough rich white people complain that's over there by the western area and the west side area, the nice, nice neighborhoods, then I think they're finally going to do something about it. But right now, us black in this community, they don't care. They don't care at all. Whitmore, she doesn't care. I thought she did when I voted for her, but I see she don't care.

What about President Biden? Obviously, he's not the governor, but he talks a lot about environmental justice. And he likes, you know, he says he ran that, you know, I'm I've done a lot for the black community, he said. I find that highly questionable. But shouldn't the president step in if American citizens are basically being poisoned? Yes, the president should. That's what I think. He's the president. He got charged over Whitmore. He could tell them what to do and what not to do. I think he really just don't care neither. All they wanted was the votes that we gave them. They told a good lie until they got into office. And that's all it is, is a lie.

They're not doing anything that they said they was going to do. Hey there, my name is James Lee. Welcome to another segment of 5149 on Breaking Points, where we uncover together the true motivations and incentives underlying our political business and cultural institutions. And today, we're going to talk about Elon Musk's new company town. If you'd like to live in Elon Musk's proposed utopia town, get a job at one of his companies, and you could become the newest resident of Snailbrook. Musk employees have described it as a Texas utopia. What do you think? Does Elon's new utopia represent a form of benevolent paternalism where the company is there to take care of its employees' needs and provide them with a good quality of life?

Or is this just another incarnation of modern day serfdom? Reporting from the Wall Street Journal, quote, in meetings with landowners and real estate agents, Mr. Musk and employees of his companies have described his vision as sort of a Texas utopia along the Colorado River, where his employees could live and work. The Boring Company employees could apply for a home with rent starting at about $800 a month for a two or three bedroom. But if an employee leaves or is fired, he or she would have to vacate the house within 30 days. Depending on your background, your opinion of company towns can probably go one of two ways. Forbes magazine writes, affordable housing, corporate America can be part of the solution,

quote, as housing prices continue to rise across the nation, developers, local governments, This would be the most generous interpretation. I'll just put it that way. It's kind of perfect that Forbes Magazine, a flagship corporatist publication, was the one to actually put forth this take, a take that I'm very familiar with because it's the world where I come from. This is going to be a slight to my alma mater, but day one of business school, we were indoctrinated with this notion that we weren't in it for the money. We were in, quote, the business of doing good. But then we took classes about how to make money through private equity, how to union bust, how to personify a brand in a way to manipulate consumers to buy, buy, buy. And that

was somehow good. That was okay because it obfuscated the realities of what we were doing. This is just my opinion. The genesis of a lot of society's problems that the business community purports to want to solve are oftentimes byproducts of private industry's blind pursuit of profit. Okay, so I saw this tweet the other day about Elon Musk reportedly building a town in Texas for his employees to work and live in. And I saw up here that they were like, oh my gosh, the history of company towns. And I was like, oh no, we're back on this. Now this is the other take. The take that I think is more honest because it's based on history. You know, the old adage that past behavior is the best predictor of future behavior. So company towns were popular in the U.S.

from the 1880s to the 1930s. The company would own all the buildings and businesses in that town. And these companies tried to build a like utopian worker's society. Coincidence? I think not. This is the exact pitch that Elon Musk is making, a Texas utopia. And what does history tell us about such utopias? I'm in Lello, Colorado, where in 1914, Colorado National Guardsmen killed upwards of 20 plus citizens including women and children for striking against Colorado Fuel and Iron's extremely unsafe and exploitative labor practices. At the time Colorado Fuel and Iron built company towns to house their workers providing them with

health care, education, and basic amenities. However these towns were wholly owned and operated by the company and they were created to control their workers, exploit their labor, instill loyalty and to prevent unionization. I get it and I think you get it too. It will be a utopian worker society in the sense that it will be optimized for the company to extract the most amount of value

that it can out of the worker, key tenants of such utopia, productivity, efficiency, centralized control. Is it possible that it is not a coincidence why in America healthcare is tied to your employer, vacation days, if you get any at all, are set by the company, sick days, parental leave, all tied to your employer? I think this is done by design to increase the corporate sphere of influence and limit your recourse against potential exploitation. Do you really want to add housing to that list as well? I took a job that was ran by a billionaire and how the housing was set up is that you could either live in the housing or you could find your own like apartment

or house. And these homes were nice. They were mini mansions, okay? They were really nice. But it was terrifying because that job was so abusive. But I didn't want to leave because that meant I did not have housing. This is serfdom, no? I mean, I kind of get it.

The housing is going to be below market rate. But with every basic human need tied to your employer, are you really truly free? Really think about it. All the downstream effects. Imagine if you're being discriminated at work by your boss or if you spot a safety issue or you simply have a different viewpoint than Elon. If you're in constant fear of losing your job and your shelter in one fell swoop, do you actually have any freedom at all? We're talking about Elon Musk here, a hardcore kind of guy, one who really likes to test the boundaries of the law.

Case in point, his Tesla Gigafactory was purportedly built on wage theft and safety violations. Three little towns have downtown main streets with old buildings, and they're full of mom and pop restaurants and shops. Elon Musk came to town. His team are bringing a whole new energy to our county. Jobs that are not an hour away from where they live. A lot of times our kids grow up and they've had to go away to be an engineer. The more opportunities we plant, the more the kids will be with us. This is somewhat tricky for me to discuss because I am not in the Elon Musk is an idiot type camp. This is a guy,

he built PayPal, he revolutionized electric vehicles at Tesla, SpaceX is beating NASA at space exploration. Twitter, I'm not so sure about. I'm going to withhold judgment there. You can't take those successes away from him, but come on, let's be real. What do you think is going to withhold judgment there. You can't take those successes away from him, but come on, let's be real. What do you think is going to happen to that town? You think he's going to be like, guys, guys, we have to respect the history and culture of the town. We have to be sure not to displace the local population. We have to build responsibly. No way. He's already trying to dump wastewater into the Colorado River. And they say that the reason that they have to do that is that the facility right now doesn't tie into the city's treatment system. The infrastructure is currently not in place yet. So in the interim, this is their solution. And that's according to Rajiv Patel,

an environmental consultant working with the Boeing company. Yeah, what's the big deal? 140,000 gallons of wastewater? No worries. By the way, I did some digging. The environmental consultant Rajiv Patel is a partner at Green Think Consulting LLC, where they provide regulatory expertise in environmental compliance. I know, environmental consulting, it sounds really wholesome, but it is just corporate speak for, we will help you find the best way to skirt environmental regulations and not get sued. The dirt that you pull out of a tunnel, there are government regulations on what you have to do with that because there's oil, there's grease, there's products in there. There

are families down there drinking well water from the same well, from the same aquifer groundwater that I'm pulling from too. And I hope they're concerned. I want this to be a positive thing. I'm not anti-Musk. I'm not anti-growth. I'm not anti-tunneling. But I'm anti-breaking the law and I'm anti-corporations who think they can tell our officials that the rules don't apply to them. Right. I talked about this at length a few weeks ago, but we got a big problem in present day America. We got a case of billionaires acting like wannabe kings. People like Elon Musk think they are the law. Like he says all these wonderful things. I want to protect the environment. I want to preserve free speech. I want to build this utopian

town, save humanity, yada yada. But that's not who Elon Musk is. His approach is to do anything required to keep his businesses competitive. He is a ruthless businessman and a lot of people revere him for that. But that is all he is. He is for protecting his speech, his freedom, not yours. If he wants people to work like he wanted them to work at Twitter, they ain't never leaving that town. They ain't never leaving that town. You're not wrong about that.

They're going to work 24-7 in that town. They're not wrong. Company town or no company town, to Elon Musk, everything, everyone is a resource, a means to build his empire, to expand his empire. You are a cog in his machine. If you are working, great. But if you get sick, injured, step out of line, you will be discarded and replaced. Work like hell. I mean, you just have to put in, you know, 80 hour, 80 to 100 hour weeks every week. The thing about all this work is that because he owns the company, he reaps all the reward.

But if you're like on the factory floor, it's a little bit more akin to indentured servitude. So Snailbrook, Texas, Elon Musk's new company town. I hate to say it with his employees sounding pretty jazzed about it, but it's not going to be Utopia. Well, maybe for Elon, it'll be his Utopia, but for most everyone else, it'll be Dystopia. But hey, that's just what I believe. I want to know your thoughts. What do you think about Elon Musk and his utopian company town? Let's talk about it in the comment section below. If you found this video helpful, please take a second to go over to my YouTube channel, 5149. I have many videos breaking down various different subjects. The link will be in the description below. Keep on tuning into Breaking Points. And as always, thank you so much for your Three reasons BuzzFeed News closed in the style of a BuzzFeed listicle.

Decline in advertising revenue, challenges of the digital news landscape, over-reliance on social media. That's pretty much it. Those are the things I'm going to talk about. Obviously, a listicle is more than three things, but the ten things that it spat out didn't really all make sense. Also, the last time I did this, it gave me a funny title, like, Three Reasons BuzzFeed News Closed, and we're all totally bummed out about it. I don't know why it's not being funny anymore. So, when I was in college, BuzzFeed was just dumb quizzes and lists, and they spread around on Facebook or wherever. All it did was gather potentially viral content from around the web and try to capitalize on memes and nostalgia and stuff.

But in 2011 they hired Ben Smith from Politico to help make a news division. Over the following few years they added staff, built an investigative team, started winning awards. In 2016 they won a national magazine award. In 2021, they won a Pulitzer for their coverage of internment camps in China. They published exposés, had a spot in the White House press corps. They had become a mainstream outlet. Now at the same time, they operated at a loss. I don't think there's anything wrong with that. News is important. At one point, they tried to get a billionaire to buy them. They had advertising, but obviously it wasn't enough. In 2019, they laid off staff. In 2021, BuzzFeed proper went public. Then in 2022, there were a few more layoffs in the news

division. And finally, in April 2023, CEO Jonah Peretti announced that BuzzFeed News was closing. There are digital media companies that have done all. So why did Buzzfeed have to fail? And I think there are a few key reasons, well a couple key reasons, and actually the first I want to talk about, in order to talk about it, we should take a second to talk about the algorithm. Specifically the Facebook algorithm. I still don't understand the algorithm. Currently, the Facebook algorithm uses four factors to decide which posts you see.

Facebook takes all of your friends, all the pages you follow, all the photos that you never want to have to see again, but sometimes Facebook shows it to you anyway, and then Facebook assesses thousands of signals that are attached to that content, like who posted it and how often you interact with the person who posted it, whether you liked it or commented, and I'm sure countless other parameters that we would just find chilling if we knew about all of them. Then it takes those signals and makes predictions about what you want to see. So every time your friend from college who you haven't seen in 10 years posts a picture of her stupid kid's average artwork and gushes about how complex it is,

you spend five minutes examining it for traces of actual talent, of which there are clearly none. And so Facebook understands that you delight in hating those pictures, which is why Facebook is constantly showing them to you. So the algorithm then gives all that stuff a relevancy rating, and it starts presenting it to you accordingly.

Now, up until 2011, Facebook's algorithm was called Edgerank. But there are always changes being made. After a change in 2012, suddenly the reach of brands dropped 38%. This Forbes contributor writes about the experience of having posts reach 48% of his audience in August and then only 3% of his audience a couple months later. That change was billed as a way to reduce spam from certain brands, but had the added effect of making room for more ads on Facebook. Now in 2013, they retired EdgeRank

and went totally to machine learning. In 2014, they gave a big boost to video. Also in 2014, apparently a major downturn in organic reach, Facebook warned pages against posting overly promotional updates, saying that such posts would be shown to fewer people. In 2015, they warned pages that they would see lower traffic because Facebook was favoring friends updates.

In 2018, again, Facebook announced that they would prioritize posts from friends and family over public content. The algorithm is constantly evolving, and their priority is keeping users on the platform and making money. And if the way to do that is to disfavor posts from brands, unless they're paying for it, then they will. So clicking out of Facebook to go to your news site when you're not even paying for

it, what's in it for Facebook? Nothing. So with that in mind, it seems crazy to rely on Facebook's algorithm, or probably the algorithm of any social media company, for the success of your business, because they can just take it away from you. There's only so much you can do about it,

and that's not new information. But it appears that even with all of that volatility, that algorithm was what Buzzfeed was banking on. Because Ben Smith, who I mentioned helped launch the news division in 2011, wrote that they had immersed themselves in an optimistic web culture that imagined a reader who cared about which Disney princess she was, and also the worst of how the American justice system treated abused women, who wanted to argue about the color of the, and also the worst of how the American justice system treated abused women, who wanted to argue about the color of the dress and also understand the science behind it.

That was back when all of it was mixed up in your Facebook feed and it felt novel. So this is issue number one. BuzzFeed's growth was thanks to their content spreading around on Facebook or other social media. That is clearly not reliable and you come to be at the mercy of the algorithm and you're just waiting for numbers out of your control to start dropping off as was recently pointed out. Buzzfeed leadership has called out a sharp decrease in Facebook referral traffic during the past few earnings calls. And as Ross Barkin points out, a lot of millennials have aged out of Buzzfeed, and for Gen Z, TikTok probably fills that need for addictive, pointless content much better than Buzzfeed ever could.

So a huge source of traffic was dwindling, and that is bad for advertising. Now Buzzfeed News always operated at a loss. In 2018, they had approximately 250 employees, but didn't generate anything close to the revenue needed to cover costs. The idea was that it was subsidized by the rest of BuzzFeed. Nothing wrong with that. Funding is obviously a perennial problem in the news business. Peretti had the admirable goal of wanting to keep the news free. But how to do that? In 2018, they tried to get bought by a billionaire, which is one way to get news outlets funded.

That's how, for example, The Intercept got off the ground. But having your news outlet in the hands of just a single wealthy person is obviously not ideal. So The Intercept put themselves on a path to get away from that. Buzzfeed would never even get that opportunity because they weren't able to sell to that billionaire. But here's another thing.

Buzzfeed has done a lot of good, serious work. You go to their website under the Investigations tab and you have four, five, 6,000 word pieces on deadly terror networks, and drug cartels use huge banks to finance their crimes, how Amazon escapes blame when one of their delivery trucks runs someone over, insurance companies paying cops

to investigate their own customers. But I wonder if they would have been able to inspire people to pay them or to donate to the degree that they would need to move toward independence, truly. Because to inspire someone to donate or pay for paywalled content, they have to see a lot of value in your work and they have to see the urgency of their contributions and who sees urgency in a contribution to a for-profit company. So that might be a tough sell. That's one problem. But this kind of brings us to the branding issue. And I hate the word branding, but the idea that people would delight in the intermingling of substantive journalism and mindless entertainment seems to have been a huge miscalculation. In 2014, Pew Research asked Americans what news outlets they trust, and BuzzFeed came

in last, out of 36. In 2016, Columbia Journalism Review gave participants a long-form article. Some people thought it was from the New Yorker, some thought it was from BuzzFeed, and they found there was a trust gap, and people viewed the New Yorker as more credible. Not a huge surprise, but the point is that it appears they never were able to overcome this branding issue. Now, this might be why BuzzFeed News went to its own website in 2018. Now, interestingly, according to Digiday, BuzzFeed News' editor-in-chief actually said that they were poised to make this newsroom financially sustainable over the course of 2023.

Now, clearly they didn't get the chance to explore that. I don't know what their plan was. But when it comes to funding of news, I don't know what their plan was. But when it comes to funding of news, I think there are a couple things we really just need to accept. Serious journalism can be expensive, and if news outlets are investment vehicles, journalism is almost always going to suffer. Half the newspapers in this country are owned by hedge funds, which is why newspapers are constantly being gutted and closed.

Advertising classifieds used to pay for small and mid-range papers to operate, and that's mostly dried up. Large papers like the Post and the New York Times are institutions that people can't escape paying for, and they have in-house ad agencies creating branded content, including for fossil fuel companies. Cable News has cable carriage fees and huge advertising. They are also institutions that can't be escaped. And even still, why does Cable News employ so many pundits? Because it's cheap.

For independent media, though, I think it's pretty clear that premium subscribers and partial paywalls are a good way for organizations to do good work and survive. And if your income is coming from subscribers who believe in what you do, you're not beholden to advertisers or investors. As was the case here where several large shareholders urged BuzzFeed to shut down the entire news operation, shutting down the newsroom could add up to 300 million dollars of market capitalization to the struggling stock. Oh good. But where even that breaks down is on the local level, where investigative journalism is still expensive,

but you have fewer potential readers to rely on, and a solve for that is more serious public funding for journalism, because journalism has to be regarded as a public good. There are just certain things that need to be emancipated from a profit directive. And that will do it for me. If you found this video interesting or helpful,

make sure you are subscribed to Breaking Points. You can also check out my YouTube channel where I talk all about media and politics and other things. Link in the description. Liking and sharing always helps. Thank you to Breaking Points. Thank you so much for watching, and I will see you in the next one.

DNA test proves he is not the father. Now I'm taking the inheritance. Wait a minute, John, who's not the father? Well,. DNA test proves he is not the father. Now I'm taking the inheritance. Wait a minute, John. Who's not the father? Well, Sam, luckily, it's your not the father week on the OK Storytime podcast. So we'll find out soon. This author writes, my father-in-law is trying to steal the family fortune worth millions from my son, even though it was promised to us. He's trying to give it to his irresponsible son.

But I have DNA proof that could get the money back. Hold up. They could lose their family and millions of dollars. Yup. Find out how it ends by listening to the okay. Storytime podcast on the I heart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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