Jim VandeHei: The Transformation of our Media Landscape and Its Political Implications

Conversations with Bill Kristol

News, Society & Culture, Government, Politics

4.7 • 1.7K Ratings

🗓️ 19 September 2019

⏱️ 78 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

How have the transformations in our media environment—particularly the rise of digital and social media—affected American society and politics? Is the current volatility in our politics and media likely to persist? In this Conversation, Jim VandeHei the CEO and co-founder of Axios and, before that, Politico, shares his perspective on our tumultuous media and political environment. Though he highlights some positive consequences of the proliferation of digital and social media, VandeHei argues that they have also facilitated greater polarization, extremism, new vulnerabilities to political and ideological manipulation, and, in general, more turbulent politics. According to VandeHei, as a society we have a responsibility to think more seriously about the tradeoffs of the digital age—and to do that in a sufficiently reflective way which would allow us to benefit from the opportunities afforded by new media and technology while managing the risks they pose.

Transcript

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0:00.0	And the Hi, I'm Bill Crystal. Welcome to Conversations. I'm pleased today to be joined by Jim
0:19.1	Vantahai, the founder and CEO of Axios very successful online publication before that
0:25.2	founder and CEO of political another very successful publication must
0:29.6	treat and before that when we first met a reporter, a lowly reporter,
0:34.1	and an old-fashioned print newspapers like
0:37.6	I think we met first about you were at the Washington Post maybe.
0:39.7	Washington Post and Wall Street Journal.
0:42.0	I really think I think of no one better to discuss media, the transformation of media, where
0:47.3	we're going, where we might be dangers and opportunities and so forth.
0:51.0	So what should we think? Where we are we is it really not
0:55.6	change as much as people say and you know people are exaggerating it of course
0:58.9	there's the internet but at the end of the day it's you know it's not it's not, it's still media, it's still
1:05.0	print, it's still people reporting and so forth, or have we really in the middle
1:08.9	of pretty fundamental transformation, do you think?
1:11.5	Pretty fundamental transformation.
1:13.7	If you mean, think about, I think about it a lot through like the lens of my own career in that I was
1:19.0	a traditional reporter.
1:20.5	I worked my way up at a relatively young age to cover the presidency and
1:23.8	cover covered for the post and in the Wall Street Journal and then media
1:28.8	really started to change in the mid 2000s like 2005 2006 we launched political in 2007 and I think most people
1:37.8	realize that most of that change was spurred by the internet right and the ability for people to get a lot of information for free.
1:47.0	And at that point, maybe one of the biggest tactical blunders in the history of industry,
	...

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