There Are No Girls on the Internet - Elizabeth Holmes works the press like a pro

Episode Date: July 19, 2023

The disgraced CEO of Theranos, the scam blood testing company, built her career with savvy press moves. Now she’s headed to prison, but not before doing a flashy New York Times Magazine profile on the way in. Bridget talks with legendary media OG Lea Goldman, deputy editorial director of G/O Media and founder of the social first media newsletter Hazmat Hotel about what it means, what it tells us about women’s media, celebrity profiles, and why it matters.    FOLLOW HAZMAT HOTEL! I ALWAYS LEARN SOMETHING FROM LEAH’S MEDIA MUSINGS:  https://www.instagram.com/leajgoldman/   Liz Holmes Wants You to Forget About Elizabeth: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/07/business/elizabeth-holmes-theranos-interview.html   The New York Times’ Elizabeth Holmes Profile Is Causing Drama in the Newsroom: “What the Hell Happened Here?”: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2023/05/elizabeth-holmes-new-york-times She’s left the Firm behind. Harry’s found a polo team in Santa Barbara. The kids are doing great. Now she’s ready for her next act: https://www.thecut.com/article/meghan-markle-profile-interview.html   .Donahue Show Gay Marriage 1991 https://youtu.be/cfXwwzg_Ntc   Want to support the show? Get ad free content on our Patreon: Patreon.com/Tangoti   See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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She checked a lot of boxes in that regard, and she knew it, and she worked it. And she worked it all the way to the slammer. There Are No Girls on the Internet as a production of IHeart Radio and Unbossed Creative. I'm Bridget Todd, and this is There Are No Girls on the Internet. You probably know the story of Elizabeth Holes, the scrappy, deep-voiced Stanford Dropout, who used her college money to start Theranos, a company that promised to disrupt blood testing with the use of a device capable of screening for everything from cancer to AIDS with a single drop of blood. She even had a pithy little story about how she was inspired.

fired to start Theranos because she was afraid of needles and couldn't stand to let a little prick to draw her blood be stronger than she was. Honestly, it's kind of a great story, and it worked. In 2014, Forbes named Elizabeth Holmes the world's youngest self-made female billionaire. And by that time, Theranos had raised over $400 million in venture capital and was estimated to be worth billions. But it was, of course, all a scam. Theranos's devices could never test blood.

Elizabeth Holmes and her former partner, C.O. Sunny Balwani, played everyone. Wealthy investors and board members, including Rupert Murdoch, former Secretary of Education Bessie DeVos, and former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, the retail pharmacies meant to house the devices, and most importantly, the patients. Like the mother with a history of miscarriages, who Theranos' devices wrongly told that she would never be able to have a baby. Someone given a false HIV diagnosis, who then had to wait months until they could afford a follow-up test, and someone given a false cancer diagnosis. Elizabeth Holmes hurt real people. But that fact did not stop her from doing a fluffy profile

in the New York Times magazine back in May. Right as her sentencing for fraud was in the headlines, called Liz Holmes wants you to forget about Elizabeth. I'm sure she does. Where she soft launches her new nickname, Liz, not Elizabeth, and gives us the I'm just like you treatment, complete with glossy photographs of her cradling her newborn infant in her arms la Madonna and child, if Madonna had been facing jail time. Now, the piece was pretty universally reviled, and with the recent news from last week that Elizabeth Holmes' sentence is being quietly shortened by two years, the profile seemed like a perfect bookend, because Elizabeth Holmes rose to the moment. Because Elizabeth Holmes rose to prominence with the help of slick media profiles.

And it left me wondering about the role that those exact profiles had on her rise and ultimate fall from grace. And the business of how those slick media profiles come to be. So I turned to an expert. Hi, my name is Leah Goldman. I am the deputy editorial director of GeoMedia. I also run a newsletter, a social first newsletter called Hasmat Hotel, which is media analysis and criticism, unfiltered, uncensored. Whenever I'm looking for like an insidery media hot take, I go straight to your feed.

You know, you've always got something interesting to say. How did you get here? I've been in media, yeah, since the dawn of time, I feels like. I started out in Forbes magazine. I was a business reporter. I knew nothing about business, but those were the good old days where you could learn on the job. You didn't need advanced degree or even a J-school degree.

And I was there for 10 years, and I learned how to write and edit and report from some of the smartest people in the game. Those were the days where you could get fired for a fact-checking error. So we were just a very buttoned-up group. And after that, I went over to Marie Claire. I wanted to try a more general interest magazine. And I was very fortunate because it was the, you know, media had started to coalesce around women's media.

There really wasn't a formal women's media outside of Jezebel, really, at that point. So I was there. It was just pre-lean-in. So I was there at a very formative time, which was kind of exciting and also strange because suddenly women were hot and in like a business sense, right? And it was exciting. There was a lot of interest on the advertising side, which was unusual. So that was cool. I got to do very cool things there. Then I went over to run Refinery 29's newsroom before I got recruited to work in television at A&E, which was really the, I would say, the seminal moment in my career because I got to see how the other half lives. If you're in media, you know, you sort of look over that fence with envy, with lust, with your nose pressed against the wall and your tongue hanging out. I want to work in everybody, whether they'll admit it or not, wants the story that gets optioned for a movie that becomes Argo. And so I got to work where those things get made and I got to see how, see what that was really like, which blew my mind, taught me a lot. I call it my business school.

I just actually used that phrasing this morning. It was my business school in a lot of ways. And then decided after that, I'm going to write. I'm a writer. And I am a writer. And after I left A&E, I was working under Nancy Dubuque. Nancy went over to vice. So I had to write out my contract.

I was writing. I was writing full time. And then COVID came and ended up working at GEO, which has been its own crazy trip. But that's how I got here. As a pioneer of women's media especially, how have you seen that field evolve? Well, I'm always like a little leery of that, of being tagged with that because in fact, there were like real pioneers in women's media. I just got lucky to be at an establishment kind of media outlet that happened to be in fashion and beauty. So it was flush, right?

It had resources, which a lot of the other, like Jezbole didn't have that. So they, you know, they all credit where it's due and it's not Marie Claire where it's due. But I will say this. The one thing I do feel like I can crow about, I'm proud of it, is that when I was at Mary Claire, I created the very first dedicated section in a women's magazine devoted to career, right? So historically, women's magazines would cover it through the lens of money. And like the big cliche was that credit card stuck in a block of ice. That's how we talked to women about their careers.

It was through like how you spend your money and how to be frugal, you know? So here was the first time. We weren't talking about getting to the top. We were talking about what it was like at the top. And I think that was very new. And so the idea was to focus less on the burdens, though there were certainly burdens, and less on the challenges, though there were absolutely challenges of getting to the top, but more like, this is the view from the top.

And this is how you can change things once you get there. And this is why it's important that you get there. And so when it feels like you're ready to quit or you feel like you don't have a shot or you feel, you know, discouraged, just remember, This is the view from the top. To really understand Elizabeth Holmes, you need to understand the era where she rose to prominence. The 2010s were just a different time.

You kind of had to be there. It was a different time for media, a different time for women. In 2013, Facebook's then-C-O-O-Sherl Sandberg released her book, Lean In, which was kind of pushed as a manifesto for a certain kind of working white lady. A year later in 2014, Sophia Amoroso, founder of the retailer Nastygal releases Girl Boss,

which is kind of the same thing as Lean In, but with an alty punk rock DIY ethos. That same year, Elizabeth Holmes' media attention explodes. Fortune, Forbes, T, The New York Times Style Magazine, Inc. She's not just in these magazines. She's on the cover. Writing about women and work and money and success just felt hot. It's an era that Leah remembers very well.

It was an exciting time to be alive. It felt like we were on the cusp of something, and then lo and behold, we were on the cusp of something. What was it like to be doing this work through so many different eras? Like the lean-in era, the girl boss era, whatever era we're in now, I don't even know what the era era is that we're telling women through media. Like, what has it been like to see all of these different changes? You know, it's hard to relive the rah-rah era. It definitely felt, it definitely felt like we were in the hot place. Like we were in a hot zone.

There were exciting. There were conferences. Oh, my God. It was all about the conferences. It was always about the fucking conferences. And it was always the same people. You'd see both on the panels and in the audiences. That's what I remember.

It was like, oh, she's here again. Oh, she's here. Like there were just, you know, people who denizens of these things. So it was like a club, right? And coming out of Forbes, I never felt like I belonged to a club because Forbes really did not subscribe to this idea that there was like a media community. It always was standoffish about being part of a club. And so when I got to Hearst, which owned Mary Claire, I wasn't terribly well connected because I didn't, you know, it wasn't part of my upbringing, so to speak. And so now I was part of a club. And people started knocking on my door. And suddenly I'm editing Sophia Maruso. And suddenly I'm in a off-the-record conversation with Cheryl Sandberg. And it was like, oh, my God, like, it was cool, you know, and it was fun. And it came with all sorts of crazy perks. The downside, obviously, is like now in retrospect, we can see how, you know, how much of a herd mentality it was. In fact, I was like, you know, looking through, I always, I have all my stuff from that period, all my

spreadsheets, all my contacts, my roll-it-acts. I have like, you know, Elizabeth Holmes from there And like, it was, we were, we were not, I, let me talk for myself. I could have done a better job of being more circumspect and asking more questions and holding people accountable instead of buying into this very heady era for women. And it was heady. Like it was, it was like things, you know, it was like the era where Hillary Clinton was going to be present. I'm like, things were changing.

Things were afoot. So obviously we all are living. with the fallout from that, you know, that tunnel vision. And I was part of that. Like, I have to own that. I was part of that tunnel vision. Part of Elizabeth Holmes' success is how she worked media. A young, blonde, Stanford dropout in a black Steve Jobs turtleneck who was going to revolutionize blood testing.

It was just too perfect to pass up. Not just for women's media, but for media in general. I think Elizabeth Holmes checked a lot of boxes. For starters, like, she got it. She got that for media, not just women's media, but especially women's media, which could help drive a train. Like the dirty secret about media, even now, right, even after all the reckonings and the closures, is that we all look at each other. And we're all like, oh, how they got the exclusive or who's on their list? And it's not that we're lazy, but we're just like always looking over at the other persons, like, who did they get?

And why did they get that person? I need to invite that person to my event. So, you know, when you made, like, if you could get into a women's book, if you could get into a women's magazine, other, we started to notice that other people would put these women who we had discovered or we had, you know, and I'm not talking about there, no, Elizabeth specifically, but just generally, you know, they would start to appear on other lists. So we felt like we were part of the game. And I think she understood that innately that she could be a very, she was a very good shorthand for a certain type of woman that, fit a very accessible profile. I mean, the most obvious, the most obvious billboard for that is her wardrobe, right? Like, I'm the female Steve Jobs. Like, you can't get, you can't get a shorter shorthand than that, right? Like, how easy to digest is that? So she instantly got how to navigate media, which I find fascinating because generally speaking, I think tech, people in tech and other industries outside media still don't get media, but she got it. So she got it. So she

got the look, she got the speak, she got the way to distill your story and what your company does in a way that made sense for like an article that was only three, you know, a little caption that was only three sentences or a full on profile. So she understood how to, you know, she understood how to make it sing for a media person. Like when we go into, I think, you know, it's helpful for people to understand how it worked in the magazine business. And though it's changed considerably since then, it'll give you a sense of why. why people ended up occupying the spaces in, you know, in the culture that they did. When we would go in to pitch someone for a magazine page, it wasn't a done deal. I couldn't just go in

and be like, oh, I'm going to put so-and-so on a page. I had to get approval. I had to get my editor's approval, the editor-and-chance-approval. So you would always walk in with, you know, your pitch. And, you want to, of course, you want your pitch to get approval. You want your pitch to win and a picture. Pitch in a picture. And, you know, and so they're looking at it like, Oh, is it diverse enough? Is it glossy enough? Is it, you know, is it going to work? Like, I'm not going to bullshit you and pretend that it was very well-meaning because there were pieces of it that weren't well-meaning. There were pieces of it that were like, is this going to look good on a page? And I hate that that's what it was, but it was. So she checked a lot of boxes in that regard.

And she knew it. And she worked it. And she worked it all the way to the slimmer. Let's take a quick break. Another podcast from some SNL, late-night comedy guide. Not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends. Me and hilarious guests from Jim Gaffigan to Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman, help make you funnier. This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer Streeter Seidel,

help an a cappella band with their between songs banter. The worst singer in the group. The worst? Yeah. Me. Is there anything to the idea that because you're from Harvard, you only got in because your parents made a huge donation. The yard birds, right?

That's the name. The Harvard Yardt, but they're open. Do you have a name suggestion? We're open. Since you guys are middle-aged, one erection. Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and Friends on the I-Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. You love me. I need some jokes.

make me seem funny. Run a business and not thinking about podcasting, think again. More Americans listen to podcasts than ads supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora. And as the number one podcaster, IHearts twice as large as the next two combined. So whatever your customers listen to, they'll hear your message. Plus, only IHeart can extend your message to audiences across broadcast radio. Think podcasting can help your business. Think IHeart.

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So listen to Point Game on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. Everyone's heard of Fake It Till You Make It, and it's especially a thing in tech and media. Uber famously has never turned a profit. But when does Fake It Till You Make It cross over from an ethos to an actual crime?

Just ask the folks at Aussie Media, whose CEO Carlos Watson was arrested earlier this year for fraud for allegedly overvaluing his media company's audience in an attempt to defraud investors. According to journalist Ben Smith at the New York Times, the company's COO and co-founder Samir Rao even went so far as disguising his voice to impersonate a YouTube executive on a conference call with Goldman Sachs in an attempt to secure a $40 million investment. Stories like this one, and Theranos makes clear how much of the shiny, flashy success can just

be a grift, one that is buttressed by tech press. failing to peek behind the curtain and ask the right questions. Questions like, what's going on here? How are you making money? Is this whole thing legit? Do you think that there are ways that there are tech people who are kind of playing that game today where you kind of, I don't want to use the word trick, but you know how to play the game and you know that journalists and media folks might also have deadlines,

might also want their piece to look a certain way? So they're just like, we're not going to ask too many critical questions. we're just going to run with this. And if it turns out to be a scam, well, so be it. 100%. This is like when we talk about my, so I have a nose for this. Like, it's in my DNA. As much as I, you know, often entertain the idea of going into another industry, like, I can't. It just keeps pulling me back in. But these, this is why. Because I often have these conversations, like, I don't understand this. Like, I don't understand the they're there. I get the optics of it. I get why it works and why they're getting the press, but I don't get the there there.

And I'm going to tell you that Aussie media, I was talking about Aussie media in my, for what it's worth. I mean, I have no evidence of this and credit words due to Ben Smith. But like, I was talking about Aussie media forever because I remember those three years when Ozzy Fest was trying. And they could never do an actual Ozzy Fest. But I remember seeing ads on the subway and the tickets were expensive. And I was like, who's going to these things?

And also like more pressingly, how did they get that talent? because having tried to book events at Hearst and Forbes, I know that it's hard to get even one person to agree, let alone all those people to agree without paying them. So, like, are they getting paid? And if so, where's the money coming from? Like, I had very, like, basic questions about how this all worked. And so it wasn't surprising to me when it was all smoking mirrors. But I have those conversations all the time. There are some women and men, but some women in the space that I often, like, I have this parlor game I play with some friends. Like, how does, how, what's, it's like, how does this person get by?

That's the game I play. How does this person get by? Because I see, I see this like world of success and a business, but I don't see that business in the wild, right? Like, I don't see people using the company, the product. I don't see the copy, the content. I don't understand how it works. And maybe I'm just not that smart.

or maybe I don't understand the business, but like I sometimes ask myself, how is that a thing? And then I'm like, oh, they're playing a media game. That has to be the only answer. Well, that really goes back to Elizabeth Holmes where like there is so much fake it till you make it. I have that same thing where I look at people. It's a lot of men, but not all men, who are building media products, right? And it's like, part of me is like, I don't understand how they have this much funding, how they have this many people on their, their masthead, but it doesn't seem like people are reading this. Like, are people subscribed that I just don't know?

Like, how is the math-mapping on this? And I do think there's this, there is this dynamic of people faking it till they make it, and you're not supposed to really peek behind the curtain, because if you did, you might see that it's a house of cards or it's a little bit of a grift. Yeah, absolutely. And now that I'm a little older, a little wiser, a little more bruised from certain people or things that I myself pushed in those, you know, rah-rah days, I, this is partly what I do with Hasmat Hotel as I ask those questions. Like, is this really someone we should

be covering with this much breathless, you know, like eyes wide, saucer eyes, kind of bullishness? Or is this something we should be a little more skeptical about? And so like the Elizabeth Holmes thing, that story that ran recently, the one, you know, after she'd been convicted and it was like the Madonna and Child picture now like a notorious picture that they ran in the business section, if I recall. Like to me, that was scandalous. Like I actually, I think it's a testament to how how fractured media is that it wasn't a bigger scandal because that it managed to pass all those checkpoints and get not just the coverage, but the length. Do you know how expensive it is to commission a photographer for a shoot like that?

There were wardrobe changes in that shoot. There was probably a stylist on that shoot. Now, did Elizabeth Holmes pay for it? I don't know. But, like, we're talking, this was like a resource intensive shoot for a newspaper, you know, over, I think it was like three jumps, front page and then two, and then a spread. So, like, that's, that's an investment of a story. And so that, that response afterwards that, like, oh, it's winking, you know, like, this. there's a winking aspect to the story. You just don't get the joke. Like, no, no, no, no, no. We don't do that at the

times. Like, you're not GQ. You don't get, you know, like, no. And also, like, don't talk down to me that you, and, p.S, I love the New York Times. I love and hate the New York Times. It's like, it's my Bette Noir. I'm, like, obsessed with the Times. But I just felt like that response did not wash with me. And I was insulted by that response because I felt like you, of all people should not go around pretending you're smarter than your audience. Like, that's not cool. That's not the deal we have with each other. That, oh, you didn't get the joke.

It was a winking story. No, no, no. That bothered me. What do you make of that response? Because I read the Vanity Fair piece about how the profile came to be. And they were like, oh, it wasn't a PR piece. Like, it was pitched to us.

And it was all above board. It certainly didn't sound that way. I agree with you. But I read another take that was like, maybe it's a piece about how easy, it is for you to get conned and the reporter also got scammed by Elizabeth and it sort of meant to be like a warning piece about how easy it is to fall for a grifter. What do you take of that, of that, or what do you make of that response? Well, this is exactly what I mean when I say,

you know, the winking aspect of it and why I didn't wash with me. For starters, like, look, we're in an era now where you have a nanosecond. Even the Times maybe has two nanoseconds with its audience, like it gets the benefit of the doubt. But broadly speaking, like, we're in an era where the competition for your attention is ruthless. So as I tell, you know, my colleagues at GO and beyond, you don't get the benefit of sitting on the reader's shoulder and whispering in their ear. It's tongue and cheek. The idea that you have that is ludicrous. It's laughable. And it's ridiculous. Like, it's on its face, it's ridiculous. And in the business section, no less, not the style. All of it just didn't, was like irritated me that that's what we're going to go out with.

That that's the, that's the narrative we're going to go out with this. It was a total, come on, it was a total PR thing. Listen, if I got a call that said you can have the pre-jail Elizabeth Holmes for a Q&A, hell yeah, I would take it. But that's not the issue. The issue is not that they took an interview with her. It's how it was packaged and how it was and how it was. delivered to us. At this moment in time, her crime, maybe not as worse as, you know,

the WeWork guy, but like, according to who, right? Like, her crime, she hurt people. She defrauded people. So not only is the issue this, like, you know, this notion that we, we didn't get the nature of the story, but also you're giving three pages of real estate to a woman who's had plenty of ink, by the way, and has been convicted of very serious crimes. Like, I just, that bothers me. For every story you do, there's a story you're not doing. We're in the age of limited resources for media, like notoriously. These resources are scarce, even at a company like the Times. So if every story you're doing, there's a story you're not doing. And that's what I spent a lot of time thinking about. Why did this story pass muster? So like, for example, what caught my eye

just recently was, you know, I can't remember if it was Twitter or threads, but the Washington Post, was pushing a newsletter about Barbie, which blew my fucking mind because it's the Washington Post, a newsletter, which is a separate product that requires resources. It requires some engineering support. It requires product support. It requires editorial support. So lots of different stakeholders, resource intensive. It has to be populated with content. Has to have a calendar. Like these are all things that go into something like that about Barbie. So that tells me Barbie's doing phenomenal numbers for the Washington Post. otherwise, why would they do it? Which is interesting, given their audience and their birth, right? Their remit. That's caught my eye, and I just thought, I need to hear more about that.

Like, I need to understand how that came to be. How do you sniff it out? Because no one is sniffing out these, like, these questions that need to be asked in stories like you. What gets your alarm bells ringing? When you see something, you're like, I don't know about this. Like, I saw your story about Amazon Prime Day and the way that that was getting coverage. which I never thought about it before, how all of these different publications are like, here are the best deals for Amazon Prime Day. Even publications that every other day are critical of Amazon and their business practices. How do you sniff it out when something just doesn't seem right to you? I just am obsessed with media.

Like, I'm a media junkie. I sound so stupid when you hear yourself say it, but I just love media. I love it and I hate it. I'm both tortured by it and obsessed with it. And I, you know, it's like, it's just how I'm wired at this point. So how do I sniff it out? I don't know. Like, I read a lot and I ask a lot of questions. It's why I got into the business. I'm a curious cat. And I also love to talk to people. I love to talk to people and find out like what's hurting their business, what they're thinking about, who's up and coming in their business, who they're afraid of. And if they'll talk to me, I will absolutely talk to them. So there's just a lot, you know, I guess I'm just interested. more after a quick break. Another podcast from some SNL late-night comedy guide.

Not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends. Me and hilarious guests from Jim Gaffigan to Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman, help make you funnier. This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer Streeter Seidel, help an a cappella band with their between songs banter. There's the worst singer in the group. The worst?

Yeah. Me. Is there anything to the idea that because you're from Harvard, you only got in because your parents made a huge donation. The yard birds, right? That's the name. The Harvard Yardt Yard's, but they're open. Do you have a name suggestion? We're open. Since you guys are middle-aged, one erection.

Listen to Humor Me with Robert Smigel and Friends on the I-Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Humor me. I need some jokes to make me seem funny. Run a business and not thinking about podcasting, think again. More Americans listen to podcasts than ads supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora. And as the number one podcaster, IHearts twice as large as the next two combined. So whatever your customers listen to, they'll hear your message. Plus, only IHeart can extend your message to audiences across broadcast radio.

Think podcasting can help your business. Think IHeart. Streaming, radio, and podcast. Casting. Call 844-844-I-Hart to get started. That's 844-8-4-8-4-I-Hart. What's up, fam? It's Isaiah Thomas. And I'm C.J. Toledano, and our podcast's Point Game is about defining the odds. Like LeBron heading into the playoffs without Luca and Austin Reed. And finding ways to win no matter what. He's the smartest player to ever play the game. His IQ is at a level that we've never seen before. And he knows. Without Luca and Austin

Reeves, I got to manipulate the game. We get a player's perspective on the challenges of the playoffs. I think Joker's going to be exhausted this series because when they don't have Rudy in the lineup, he has to really guard guys like Nas Reed. He has to guard Julius Randall. And then he has to give us everything he gives us on the night-to-night basis on offense. And when IT's friends stop by, like Quentin Richardson, we dive into some playoff history too. Steve Nash would get that thing.

That man, hell get the flying. He running up the court, licking his fingers while he got the ball. Like, you go through a training camp with that, Isaiah. you figure it out real quick. Get your ass up and down the court, and you're going to get the ball. So listen to Point Game on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Let's get right back into it. Today, part of Leah's work is sniffing it out when media stories just don't seem right.

And more times that I'm proud of, Leah's work has challenged me to think outside of my own preconceived frameworks. For instance, back in May, I came across a viral TikTok purporting to show, boxes and boxes of books being removed from a school library in Florida. Naturally, I instantly contextualized this story within the larger context of book bands happening in Florida and across the country. Now, this is obviously a real thing that is happening in Florida, but that particular 30-second TikTok might not have actually been showing the full story. I mean this as a compliment.

It might not sound like it. You often are saying, it's often like not what you might think, right? So like, your coverage really challenges me to look beyond my own biases or my own understanding of how I think stories come together in media. And it doesn't always align with my conventional wisdoms or, you know, biases or whatever I might be thinking. Like, and you do such a good job of pulling back the layers to what's actually going on. I'm thinking in particular of that viral TikTok where it was like a school library and they had all these boxes and boxes of books. And presumably these are books that are being. removed from the school library because they're inappropriate, really feeds into the conversation

we're all having about things like book bans and, you know, books being challenged in libraries. You called the school or called the library to actually ask what's going on? And there was actually more to that story than like that 30-second TikTok would have you believe, no? Yes, I remember that. It feels like a century ago, but I think it might have been a month or two ago. Yeah, so there was that viral TikTok of like two bins filled with books. So there was the, I guess the knee-jerk reaction is what usually catches my attention. And then I'm like, huh, you know, in that case, I also like to test myself, right? I like to see if I can find a source who's going to give me the scoop quickly.

So I'm always like, if I see that in the morning, I'll buy, my goal is to get it done by the end of the day because I want to be able to tell a reporter, despite whatever deadlines you have, you can usually get a response by the end of the day. So part of it is just me staying on my toes in that way. It was pretty easy because I think it was Broward County and there's like a Department of Ed there and they put me in touch with their comps person. So I did get an answer by the end of the day. Now then the inevitable follow-up I should have done to that was do we believe the Department of Ed, right? Like they said, if I recall correctly, they said that they are, oh, yes, there was a settlement. So that was the interesting piece of this. I learned from calling the comms person at the Department of Ed, at the Board of Ed, whatever it is, that there was a law. lawsuit several years ago from black and brown students, the parents of them, because their schools did not have books that were as recent, as new as in good quality and like the breadth of books in their school libraries that the more affluent white schools have. So I'm pretty sure it was Browah County passed this. There was a lawsuit in the settlement. They agreed that every 10 years or so

that they were going to upgrade the libraries. They had to by law. And so this was part of that settlement. We are required to upgrade these books, and these are the books that no longer meet our standards because they're old and they're dated and whatever. And so that's kind of fascinating because that turns the whole narrative on its head, right? Actually, they're complying with a lawsuit that's supposed to provide equity for students who might otherwise not get it. And that's like, that's an important thing we should be talking about. Now, that's not to say the book bannings are not important.

They 100% are. But we have a big problem in this country of misinformation and people believing that there's bias in media. And I do see it sometimes. And I think that's an example of it where, and it's not coming from a venal place. It's not coming from a malicious place. It's coming from a, like it's easy to believe that. It makes sense that that, of course, we're looking at them throwing away books that might be, you know, about subjects that we want them to learn about. but we have to do our job.

Leah critiques journalism because she has so much respect for the field. Journalists like Evan Gerskiewicz, the first American journalist to be imprisoned in Russia since the Cold War, face imprisonment and worse just for doing their jobs and reporting. So journalism is something to be respected and protected. You've opened the door to my big spiel. My big spiel is that journalists want to be seen as a noble profession. And there is a nobility to it. But to be afforded the rights and privileges that reporters get in the courts, in people's minds, in culture, you have to live up to standards that are a tradition, an honor bound tradition of the profession.

And that is reporting and doing your due diligence. That's like fundamentally, the basics of it. You need to do your homework and you need to make the calls. And so, and it has real life repercussions because. we're seeing courts claw back rights and privileges for reporters all the time. We're seeing, you know, reporters not be able to maintain confidentiality with sources in certain cases. They have to turn over their notes. They're being imprisoned for maintaining confidentiality. Court case after court case, this is very worrisome. I know this because I work with a First Amendment lawyer who's,

like, the top of the game. One of the privileges of my job is I get to work with this, like, well-known First Amendment lawyer, Kai Falkenberg. So I hear about these cases all the time. And so they're having real-life impact on journalists around the country. So we damn well better do our part and not buy into narratives because they make for cheap stories. Have I written my share of them? You bet I have.

And I am embarrassed by them. I am regretful of them. And I hope I never repeat them. But like these are the lessons we have to look at. from the last decade. And it pains me to no end to see, you know, reporters like just, like, I think that's something we need to champion as a group. We have this, you know, this poor Wall Street Journal reporter stuck in a Russian jail for doing exactly what he should be doing for reporting, you know, for reporting. And he, you know, he's missing his family. He's he's probably suffering.

Lord knows what. We can't take for granted that there are repercussions to what we do. I think it's very serious our jobs. And it is a noble profession. But then we have to do our part to live up to what makes it noble. We have to report. We have to like make the calls. It's that simple. That's how I see it.

I briefly worked in a newsroom. And I could see myself just seeing that TikTok, for instance, and just writing it up. Like this gave me a big emotional reaction that aligned with my preconceived biases or my understanding of the world and not picking up the phone and making that call, not doing the work of actually getting that there's more to the story than what I just saw on this TikTok. I'm really grateful that you're modeling how to not just fall right into that, like, easy story, easy write up and tell a fuller story because it really matters. Well, I appreciate hearing that.

I've certainly, you know, endured my sure blowback for having that opinion. because I think it's often confused or conflated with conservatism. And I absolutely do not identify as a conservative. I think I'm pretty upfront with my politics, which is also odd for a journalist. But I will tell you this. Like one of the most memorable conversations I've had was during COVID. I started this podcast because I was like, you know, home like everybody else was and I wanted to stay sharp. So I taught myself had a podcast.

And part of it was just like figuring out who to talk to. I need to talk to smart people who have thoughts on what's happening. And one of the first conversations I had was with Errol Lewis. And Errol Lewis is New York famous. Like he's New York One reporter like old school. Like this guy is it, right? But he also appears on, I forget what network, but he appears on cable all the time. He's just, he just knows his shit. Errol Lewis is the guy. And I had a nice conversation, like I really memorable, I remember like listening to it again and again after because what he said was so, it was profound. Like, I'd never thought about it like that. We talked about objectivity, which is the hot

button issue for journalists right now. And he was like, look, I have opinions. I don't shy away from sharing my opinions, but they're informed. Like, nobody knows this town better than I do. When I show up to a meeting and I'm covering it, I know exactly what happened at the 10 meetings before. I know who the players are. And I know why they're saying what they're saying. So I come to it with this breath and with this experience that is not challenged, by the way. You will never hear anyone challenge Errol Lewis for bias. Why? Because he did the work. He did the work. And so I thought, that's so interesting. Like, yes, of course, of course you're a human being. Like, you're not 100% objective. You have feelings about this issue. You believe in right and wrong. You have,

you believe some issues fall on certain sides. And you're, you know, and he doesn't necessarily write it like down the line, but it's informed. And he brings that expertise to the fore. And I think that's that for me was like, that. That's become my North Star, whether he realizes or not, but he had a real impact on me that conversation. That girl boss, Lean In era that allowed Elizabeth Holmes to rise up in the ranks, has kind of come and gone. And after all that, all that flash and promise around women in the 2010s, today, it's kind of hard to not feel like we're in a bit of a rougher place. But one truth is that with all its flaws, women's media has always been there, telling our stories and speaking to us, even when other types of people. It's a super fraught conversation. When I was at Marie-Clair, there were some things that were

inviolable, right? Women's abortion, women's reproductive rights, gay rights, LGBTQ rights. There were certain values that the women's magazine was not negotiable on. This, certainly this one. And I think that's true across women's media writ large. Like there are certain things, if you're going to be, and we don't speak of them. We just live them. We say that because for decades, women's magazines, this like afterthought in media, this look down upon category occupied a very, I won't even say protected, but like a special place. We were in nail salons. We were in hair salons, places that men weren't. And so we could have conversations with you that you couldn't have at home, because your husband would beat the shit out of you if you talked to him about it, right? We could talk about

how like, oh, I got a terrible sonogram back and I'm not sure I can keep this baby or oh, my husband's beating me or oh, I, you know, I'm not satisfied sexually. Like these were stories that women's media was telling and we can hold our nose up at them and say, oh, women in peril and, you know, they, they codified certain stereotypes of women and there's, sure, like we can have that discussion, but we also need to talk about how this sneered at form of media was. was the one place where you could talk to a woman like she was in the bathroom at a restaurant and asked for a tampon. Like you couldn't do that in Us Weekly or USA Today or People magazine. And so I just want to like acknowledge you couldn't do that because we allowed for women that

freedom. And that's part of the DNA of this repro rights thing. You know, it just it just is. We take for granted that it is because it was early on. It was like this secret private forum. We could have discussions where we didn't judge women. Maybe we judge them about their weight. We definitely did that. We judge them about their skin and their age. We 100% did that. But we also talk to them about, you know, like nothing is as black and white as like good, bad. It was a very nuanced thing. And so strange, but it's hard to have nuanced conversations about media with media people. Do you ever worry that like, I don't even know how to phrase this. That I'm going to get canceled.

Yeah. Do you, is this something that you, because you say what's on your mind and you tell it like it is, I don't always agree. Like, I'm always, sometimes I'll read things and I'm like, ah, that hits me, that hits me weird. But it's not, not true. Do you worry about being too outspoken or saying the wrong thing? Sure. I mean, my husband hates it, you know?

He's just like, you know, what are you doing? It's not, it's not that it's like, I don't know. I guess I'm a middle-aged person who's been in media for 25 years. They've seen the best of our business. I've seen the worst of our business. But I've also seen like the very thing that I love about this business, like the wanting to talk about things and talk to people and hear what they have to say, whether you like it or not.

Like I just don't like that we're becoming resistant to it. And I get it. Like I get it. I get why. I don't have a trans child who, rights are up for grabs. I'm not raising a kid who, you know, I'm not looking for, you know, like I don't have as much on the line as a lot of other people do. And so I get that maybe I don't appreciate the stakes, but there's something about not being able to talk about it. Not like,

I don't like that I'm the only person or like that comes with risks. Like, I don't like that we're not supposed to talk about things. Like, what's wrong with talking about things? I'm not, I'm not like trying to shove policy down your throat. I'm just trying to have a conversation. I'm trying to understand the world a little better. Trying to understand. Like, we should be able to talk. You know who I've been spending a lot of time with?

I've been spending a lot of time watching Phil Donahue. Oh, my God. My mom would, if my mom were here, she would be so down for a conversation about Donahue. I saw your tweet about wanting, like, we need a documentary, like a look back. Yes. And it makes me feel very old that you reference your mother. But maybe I'm as old as your mother. No, no, not yet.

No, she just happens to love Donahue. I love Donahue. He was on after school when I got home. And I remember it was the first time I'd seen anyone with AIDS. I can still remember that episode with Ryan White and Jeannie White. It was the first time I'd seen, you know, gay men talk about, you know, being gay. But I just remember, like, there wasn't the chair throwing that came afterwards, right? Like, it's not new to this era.

We saw that shortly after. but he had a way about him that felt like, I don't know if it was the error or him or maybe a bit of both, but he had a way about him that opened the floor to people to talk about how they really felt and what they could learn from someone who didn't feel that way. And there was something like non-judgmental about it. And he also pushed.

Like if you watch some of those episodes, he would push them. So, but why do you, you know, like he was pushy? And I just, like, it was special. It was like a special thing to watch because he did not shy from hot button issues. We could never, there could never be a show like that right now. Never, ever, ever, ever. And why not? It was like, why can't we just talk to each other?

Anyway, I sound corny, but that's how I feel. No, it doesn't, it doesn't sound corny at all. I can't wait to, if younger listeners are like, who? I can't wait to spark a Donahue. The Donahue Renaissance. Yeah, Renéns. We're for a Donahue Renaissance. The New York Times Magazine's profile of Elizabeth Holmes and the collective groaned.

and inspired from readers, makes me wonder if we've just moved past the shine of the big, important public figure profile piece in general. Take that now infamous Megan Markle profile in the cut, for instance. What probably would have been a standard profile about her thoughts on parenthood and her morning routine included one small detail that gave readers a quick glance beyond the polished PR talking points and pre-approved subjects that were used to in these kinds of profiles. The profile says that Megan sometimes sounds like she has a tiny bachelor producer in her brain, directing what she says. At one point in our conversation, the piece reads, instead of answering a question, she will suggest how I might transcribe the noise she's making.

She's making these gullural sounds, and I can't quite articulate what it is she's feeling in the moment, because she has no word for it. She's just moaning. Now, that little detail about the noise that Megan makes before answering a question seemingly confirmed what we all know. that a famous person's public persona is actually carefully manufactured, and it proved just too good to resist. But in this day and age, what exactly is the celebrity profile? Like, what is it, and who is it for? At best, they feed the lie that celebrities are just like us,

when we all know that, of course, they're not. And at worst, they help scammers like Elizabeth Holmes rise to power. I wanted to talk to you about the Elizabeth Holmes profile and sort of how that was a thing. you made a really interesting point about this profile of Megan Markle, I think in the cut, where, you know, it's this long profile about her life, blah, blah, blah. And there's one little bit where she gives the author, like, suggestions of how she might be able to describe a specific little noise that she made.

And that tiny little throwaway thing became the thing, right? So there's a whole profile. That was the thing that people zeroed in on. Do you think that we're, I don't know, kind of kind of. of beyond the usefulness of the public profile? Like, what are your thoughts on how that is evolving as a media product? I find them mostly boring. A lot of magazines do them because it's part of the trade-off with the entertainment industry.

It's a business decision to cover or to write a certain profile. You know, you'll see them in all kinds of media, whether it's a CEO or what have you, but it's a trade-off, like make no mistake about it. But occasionally you'll get a story like that where something is revealed, right? And it's not often that something is revealed about someone who we think we know everything about. And that's interesting to me. So in the case of Elizabeth Holmes, it revealed something about the paper and not Elizabeth, which I thought was interesting, but like a process that you didn't know could happen there.

But in the case of Megan Markle, like what I found astonishing about it was that it was contrarian, because at the time here in the U.S., there was this, especially on the coasts, there was this, like, we must protect her, this kind of vibe, right? Like, she deserves our protection. She's, you know, she's being vilified for her race. It's racist. And in fact, that might be true. But there was like something that went against that narrative in that piece, and it was brave. because doing so opened up the reporter to, you know, all the kinds of attacks that we see on social media now and we don't like what someone says.

But it revealed something pretty amazing. And it confirmed this kind of, you know, other narrative about her that it's all contrived, that it's all manufactured. I mean, it literally confirmed that. Like you couldn't pick a better, which is partly why it was so juicy and delicious and tasty because she's literally confirming that this whole thing is art. not that I think it is, but that it actually is. And I thought that was just really an incredible detail for the writer to put in, but how could she not? Right. Like, wow, what a thing to have happen in an interview with celebrity. I've done a few celebrity profiles. They're always negotiated to the nth degree, which is partly why I find them so boring, because publicists are so

wrapped up in them. It's very rare to get a piece with someone where a publicist is not negotiating everything from where it's at. Oh, no, she doesn't want to go to a restaurant because she doesn't want to be seen or, you know, you can't talk about the marriage. She doesn't want to talk about the marriage. And, you know, oh, she, you know, don't ask her about anything political because we're not talking about that. Like, everything is so, you know, it's just like so massaged that I already know, having seen the sausage get made, that so much of it is bullshit. So I rarely find them interesting. and I would love to see data that shows if people actually get through these pieces because I don't think they don't.

I don't think they do. I'm trying to think of the last profile I read. I can't remember. But they're just like as an art form. They're like they're just, they are for an era when we didn't have as much access to celebrities as we do now. So they are a very dated art form in my mind. I remember being part of a team that worked on one with a famous woman. and I don't want to say who it is, but people can probably guess.

She had just been married to a high profile political, a high profile political family, but the list of things that we were not supposed to talk about, we could not even allude to this wedding, this recent wedding. And so basically it was like, what the hell are we going to talk about? Like, this is, this is like, what do you think people want to talk about? Right. It's like, if you're reading this profile, you're going to want to talk about this recent marriage, right?

Like, what else would you want to read about? And it was like, oh, no, not even, you can't even, even allude to it in the most oblique of ways. So it was like, well, then how is this going to be an interesting piece that anybody wants to read? This is the one thing that people have on their mind when it comes to this person. Well, so this goes back to, I don't want to make it a larger point, but it is part of a larger point in that it's partly, it contributes to this overall awakening that people are having about media, that they're wise to the game and they resent it.

So that game is because we need the celebrity. We need the, we need the, we need the, we need the access to the other celebrities in that publicist roster. We need the studio not to be mad at us because then they'll invite us to important events and also maybe advertise with us, you know, or the beauty brand that that person is an ambassador for, we need their advertising. We don't want to piss them off. And like, there's a whole like business behind those decisions. And people are wise to it. One of the most frequent questions I got asked when I was at Marie Claire and even after was, you know, oh, tell me what mascara use or tell, like a makeup question, or, oh, I saw that in the magazine. And I would always be like, you don't really believe that they're,

they like that, right? Because it was obvious to me that it was all part of this like game about, you know, and I learned actually, I learned, you know, there are a certain number of credits that credits being appearances in the magazine that a brand is either formally or informally allowed. like, oh, we owe them credits. I used to hear that all the time. Like, we have to put this on your page. We're doing a career Q&A with so-and-so, but I need to put this shoe on the page.

So we're going to do a sidebar of things you should wear to your work when you're going out afterwards. Because we owe this brand credits. Like, they're not, you know, it's a business behind those decisions. It's sad but true. And I think people are wise to it. So I don't consider myself to be like a media insider, but for just your average consumer of magazines media,

How important do you think it is to be sort of aware of how the sausage is made, the business decisions that go into what we're reading and the media that we're consuming? I think it's very important. In magazines is already such an anachronistic term. So whatever content you're consuming wherever you're consuming it, right? You should 100% be aware of, you know, of what metabolic processes led to that moment. Now, that doesn't mean you have to sit with it. And I also don't think it's your responsibility. Like, you know, there is something to be said for being an informed reader, but there's also

somebody to be said for being a responsible journalist. And I just want, I guess I just want people to be aware of why we make the choices we do as a business as a, you know, as a profession. So like the whole, you know, when a movie comes out, there's a premiere. You're going to see that celebrity do a round robin of interviews. all those outlets are going to try to get the celebrity to say something off the cuff. It never happens. Sometimes it happens.

Like it's all just such canned garbage. And it's like we have to be a little better now, I think, because the audiences are wiser. And what's the net result of that? They're going to TikTok. And they're going elsewhere where they can get a little more authenticity from anywhere, from people who, you know, it's like we've seen the diminished value of celebrity culture, which I don't have an opinion on. It's just fascinating that people.

People are turning to forums where they are getting authenticity and less makeup and less bullshit. They're getting, they want the real real. And I get it. I get why, because we're feeding them canned shit and telling them, look how awesome this is. And they now know what awesome really tastes like. Got a story about an interesting thing in tech or just want to say hi? You can reach us at hello at tangoati.com. You can also find transcripts for today's episode at tangoody.com.

There are No Girls on the Internet was created by me, Bridget Todd. It's a production of IHeart Radio and unbossed creative. Jonathan Strickland is our executive producer. Tari Harrison is our producer and sound engineer. Michael Amato is our contributing producer. I'm your host, Bridget Todd. If you want to help us grow,

rate and review us on Apple Podcasts. For more podcasts from IHeartRadio, check out the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Another podcast from some SNL, Late Night Comedy Guy, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and Friends. me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier.

This week, my guest, S&L's Mikey Day and head writer, Streeter Seidel, help an a cappella band with their between songs banter. Where does your group perform? We do some retirement homes. Those people are starving for banter. Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and friends on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What's up, fam, it's Isaiah Thomas.

And I'm CJ Toledano. It's our favorite time of the year on our podcast Point Game. playoffs. We're digging into the biggest surprises of the season. And I'm looking back on some of my greatest playoff moments. If we didn't talk ever again, I was fine. You just understood. That's how personal it got. Wow. Then after that game seven, Mark keep coming to, he's like, you know I love you, dog. You know, it's all love. This was just playoffs. This was just basketball. So listen to Point Game on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. There are times when the mind becomes a difficult place to live. This is David Eagleman with the

Inner Cosmos podcast, and for Mental Health Awareness Month, we'll talk with singer-songwriter Jewel about anxiety. I started living in my car, and then my car got stolen. I was having panic attacks. I was agoraphobic. This is a month of deeply personal and honest conversations about what happens when the brain goes off course. Listen to Inner Cosmos on the IHart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHart podcast. Guaranteed Human. in.