In this issue: 2023’s awful digital media year / Tucker Carlson Network / Inside Spotify Wrapped 2023 design / Zombie cable networks / Hacking Cameo to make disinformation vids + more!
Welcome to Context Collapse, the world’s best comms newsletter. I’m Neal Ungerleider. I run Ungerleider Works and used to work as a reporter for Fast Company, write op-eds for the LA Times, and work as a senior copywriter for R/GA. This newsletter helps readers navigate the weird new world of media and gleefully ignores all the conventional wisdom about journalism, public relations, marketing, and advertising.
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“As of October, the industry had lost over 20,000 jobs this year alone. Extrapolating from this report compiled by Axios, I think it is accurate to say that this has been the worst year in the history of digital media — worse even than when the pandemic struck.”
”Tucker Carlson Network, whose logo resembles a red pill, costs $9 a month—or $72 for a year—and will initially be solely available through Carlson’s website. Some of the content is available without a subscription and will be ad-supported, while some interviews and monologues will be available exclusively to subscribers, who will have access to that content without ads.”
”No grid, no rules”: How the Spotify design team created the identity for this year’s Wrapped”
”In 2015, the USA cable network was a force in original programming. Dramas like “Suits,” “Mr. Robot” and “Royal Pains” either won awards or attracted big audiences.
What a difference a few years make.
Viewership is way down, and USA’s stand-alone original programming department is gone.”
”Internet propagandists aligned with Russia have duped at least seven Western celebrities, including Elijah Wood and Priscilla Presley, into recording short videos to support its online information war against Ukraine, according to new security research by Microsoft.
The celebrities look like they were asked to offer words of encouragement—apparently via the Cameo app—to someone named “Vladimir” who appears to be struggling with substance abuse, Microsoft said. Instead, these messages were edited, sometimes dressed up with emojis, links and the logos of media outlets and then shared online by the Russia-aligned trolls, the company said.”
”I got a raise at 3 PM, at 4 I was laid off. Exactly two months before our twins were due and my wife and I would become parents for the first time. It was just another Thursday afternoon, at 3 PM I spoke to my manager who told me that I got a small raise. At 4, we were both jobless. This paints a perfect picture of how the layoffs were organised in complete secrecy despite “transparency” being one of the main company values. My laptop was remotely shut down just minutes after I learned the news, and that was it. After five years, I was no longer a senior product designer at the company where I had helped build the design department.”
”20 years ago, I got in a (friendly) public spat with Chris Anderson, who was then the editor in chief of Wired. I'd publicly noted my disappointment with glowing Wired reviews of DRM-encumbered digital devices, prompting Anderson to call me unrealistic for expecting the magazine to condemn gadgets for their DRM.
I replied in public, telling him that he'd misunderstood. This wasn't an issue of ideological purity – it was about good reviewing practice. Wired was telling readers to buy a product because it had features x, y and z, but at any time in the future, without warning, without recourse, the vendor could switch off any of those features.”
”Look at the hirings:
CNN needs a new boss so it hires someone from The New York Times.
The Wall Street Journal needs a new editor-in-chief, so it hires somebody from The Sunday Times.
Gannett needs a new editor-in-chief, so it hires somebody from NPR.
News Corp needs a new boss, so it hires the owner’s son.
Disney needs a new CEO, so it just hires the old CEO for another stint.
This is sheer idiocy. It’s Einstein’s definition of insanity.”
”ChatGPT is full of sensitive private information and spits out verbatim text from CNN, Goodreads, WordPress blogs, fandom wikis, Terms of Service agreements, Stack Overflow source code, Wikipedia pages, news blogs, random internet comments, and much more.”
”An image of Pope Francis in a chic white puffer coat went viral on Twitter in March because, hey, the guy looked pretty good in that kind of drip. The photo, along with several others that showed the Pope in various other states of higher fashion, was revealed to be a fake created in AI image-generator Midjourney by Chicagoan Pablo Xavier while he was high on shrooms.”
”Verizon Communications has hired Peloton Interactive marketing head Leslie Berland as its new chief marketing officer.
Berland, 45 years old, joined fitness equipment maker Peloton in January following her exit from Twitter shortly after Elon Musk acquired the tech company in 2022.”
Pat Flynn’s tips for starting a YouTube channel in 2024.
Retirement leaderboard!