Welcome to The Lost Debate, a show for Politically Ecclectics.

I'm Robbie Gupta, and today I talk to Helen Lewis, who is a British journalist who works as a staff writer at The Atlantic based in London.

She's a regular on the Private Eye podcast, Page 94, and is the co-host of Strong Message Here with Armando Ionucci on BBC Radio 4.

We talk about the changing landscape of media.

What is mainstream media?

Is that even a concept that makes sense anymore?

What is this whole world of podcasters, YouTubers, influencers, only fans?

Like, what is this doing to our society, the conversations we're having, what does it

mean for the powerful? Are they more accountable, less accountable? We really talk through it all.

This is a, I think, a particularly helpful conversation as we end the year because the environment

that Helen describes is really the reality that we've been living in the past year and certainly

is going to be even more dominant in the past year and certainly is going

to be even more dominant in the years ahead. Let's jump right in.

Well, Helen, welcome to the podcast. Thank you very much for having me. Well, Helen, you wrote

this piece in the Atlantic recently all about the rise of a new

kind of media and the decline of so-called mainstream media, if I have that right. I often hear

from people in my world, you know, I'm a former political operative, a lot of complaining,

especially from the right about this thing called the mainstream media and all the power that it has.

I want to unpack that set of grievances.

But before we get there, what is this thing called the mainstream media?

Traditionally, the mainstream media was what I guess you call legacy institutions, so TV stations, newspapers, and a mass market places really,

but also big institutions. By definition, we were talking about institutions. The classic examples

...