Newspapers Worse Than Dead, But Print Is A Rent Strike (A Tale of Today, Episode #15)
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Episode opens with journalism’s “race to the bottom,” described by a journalist who lived it, followed by what “The Facebook Files” revealed about social media’s relationship to news [8:00], the tactics of parallel journalism [27:00}, the difference between fake news and fake journalism [38:00], the fate worse than death for periodicals, but not books [48:00], what the acquisition of Twitter taught us about technofeudalism [65:00], and a call to return to institutional media [82:00].
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Cast (in order of appearance):
Samuel G. Freedman is Professor at the Columbia Journalism School and the author of Into The Bright Sunshine: Young Hubert Humphrey & The Fight For Civil Rights (Oxford UP, 2023).
Jeff Horwitz is a technology reporter for the Wall Street Journal and, who was the lead investigator on “The Facebook Files.” That experience combined with new reporting became Broken Code: Inside Facebook & The Fight to Expose Its Harmful Secrets (Doubleday, 2023)
Gil Duran is a freelance journalist who has written extensively about tech fascism for The New Republic, among others. He also has a newsletter and a new podcast: The Nerd Reich.
Andie Tucher is the H. Gordon Garbedian Professor of Journalism at Columbia Journalism School and the author of Not Exactly Lying: Fake News & Fake Journalism In American History (Columbia UP, 2022).
Jeff Jarvis is Visiting Professor at the Stony Brook University School of Communication and Journalism and the author of The Gutenberg Parenthesis: The Age of Print & Its Lessons For The Age of The Internet (Bloomsbury, 2023).
Yanis Varoufakis is a heterodox economist, most recently at University of Athens, the former Minister of Finance in Greece, and the author of Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism (Melville House, 2023).
Tressie McMillan Cottom is an Associate Professor of Information & Library Science at University of North Carolina, as well as Senior Faculty Researcher at the Center For Information, Technology, & Public Life. She is the author of Lower Ed: The Troubling Rise of For-Profit Colleges in The New Economy (New Press, 2017) and a New York Times opinion columnist.
Matt Seybold is Associate Professor of American Literature & Mark Twain Studies at Elmira College, as well as resident scholar at the Center For Mark Twain Studies and executive producer of The American Vandal Podcast.
Soundtrack:
All music for this season of The American Vandal Podcast comes from the Tennessee-based roots ensemble DownRiver Collective. Most of the tracks come from their most recent EP, Off The Shelf. You can purchase it direct from the band here. It’s also available on Spotify and Apple Music.
Tracks featured in this episode include “Dead To Me,” “Wasted Time,” “As It Was,” “Steam Whistle,” and “Days Don’t Stop.”
Narration:
Excerpts from Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner’s The Gilded Age come from the audiobook edition produced by SNR Audio and narrated by Nathan Osgood. Available at Audible, as well as other audiobook retailers. SNR has an extensive catalog of professionally-narrated adaptations of 19th-century Anglophone fiction, including The Complete Mark Twain Collection.
Nathan Osgood is an actor and voice artist who has being appearing in films, scripted television, video games, podcasts, and audiobooks since the mid-’90s. In 2018, he played Mark Twain in the Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly vehicle, Holmes and Watson.
Episode Bibliography:
Billy Bambrough, “‘Get Ready’ – Coinbase CEO Reveals Mind-Blowing AI Update That Could Be A Bitcoin & Crypto Price Game-Changer” Forbes (August 31, 2024)
Tressie McMillan Cottom, Lower Ed: The Troubling Rise of For-Profit Colleges In The New Economy (New Press, 2017)
Jodi Dean, Capital’s Grave: Neofeudalism & The New Class Struggle (Verso, 2025)
Gil Duran, “Where J.D. Vance Gets His Weird, Terrifying Techno-Authoritarians Idea” The New Republic (July 22, 2024)
Gil Duran, “The Tech Baron Seeking To Purge San Francisco of ‘Blues'” The New Republic (April 26, 2024)
Gil Duran, “The People of Solano County Versus The Next Tech-Billionaire Dystopia” The New Republic (January 4, 2024)
Gil Duran, “The Most Powerful Crypto Bro in Washington Has Very Weird Beliefs” The New Republic (October 1, 2024)
Gil Duran, “The Tech Plutocrats Dreaming of A Right-Wing San Francisco” The New Republic (February 12, 2024)
Cedric Durand, How Silicon Valley Unleashed Techno-Feudalism (Verso, 2020) [French Edition, 2020]
Elizabeth L. Eisenstein, The Printing Press As An Agent of Change (Cambridge UP, 1980)
Samuel G. Freedman, Into The Bright Sunshine: Young Hubert Humphrey & The Fight For Civil Rights (Oxford UP, 2023)
Bryant Morey French, Mark Twain & The Gilded Age: The Book That Named An Era (Southern Methodist UP, 1965)
Titus Gebel, “Parallel Structures Are The Only Way To Freedom” Mises Institute (October 28, 2022)
Jeff Horwitz, The Broken Code: Inside Facebook & The Fight to Expose Its Harmful Secrets (Doubleday, 2023)
Jeff Horwitz et al, “The Facebook Files” Wall Street Journal (2021) [“The Facebook Files, A Podcast Series” The Journal (2021)]
Jeff Horwitz & Katherine Blunt, “Meta Is Struggling To Boot Pedophiles Off Facebook & Instagram” Wall Street Journal (December 1, 2023)
Jeff Horwitz & Katherine Blunt, “Meta Staff Found Instagram Tool Enabled Child Exploitation. The Company Pressed Ahead Anyway.” Wall Street Journal (February 22, 2024)
Jeff Horwitz & Katherine Blunt, “Instagram Connects Vast Pedophile Network” Wall Street Journal (June 7, 2023)
Jeff Horwitz & Katherine Blunt, “Instagram’s Algorithm Delivers Toxic Mix to Adults Who Follow Children” Wall Street Journal (November 27, 2023)
Jeff Jarvis, The Gutenberg Parenthesis: The Age of Print & Its Lessons For The Age of The Internet (Bloomsbury, 2023)
Jeff Jarvis, The Web We Weave: Why We Must Reclaim The Internet From Moguls, Misanthropes, & Moral Panic (Basic Books, 2024)
Jeff Jarvis, Magazine (Bloomsbury, 2023)
Jay Caspian King, “The Fantasy World of Political Polling” New Yorker (September 27, 2024)
James Livingston, “Bannon Talks Techno-Feudalism” Politics, Letters, Persons (January 25, 2025)
Javier Paz, “Why Bitcoin’s Biggest Banker Is Making A Risky Move” Forbes (September 30, 2024)
Thomas Pettitt, “The Gutenberg Parenthesis: Oral Tradition & Digital Technologies” MIT Media Studies (April 1, 2010)
Matt Seybold, “Authoritarianism Is The Bailout” The American Vandal (February 21, 2025)
Matt Seybold et al, “The Facebook Files & The Gutenberg Parenthesis” The American Vandal (
Matt Seybold et al, “The Gilded Network” (March 20, 2025)
Matt Seybold et al, “Half Castle ‘Gainst The Scott Walkers” The American Vandal Podcast (December 17, 2024)
Matt Seybold et al, “The Education Gospel, Enshittify.edu, & The Expansion of Lower Ed” The American Vandal Podcast (November 25, 2024)
Matt Seybold et al, “Ponzi Austerity in The Age of Cultural Abundance” The American Vandal Podcast (August 21, 2023)
Quinn Slobodian, Crack-Up Capitalism: Market Radicals & The Dream of A World Without Democracy (Metropolitan, 2023)
Matt Taibbi, The Twitter Files (2023-2024)
Andie Tucher, Not Exactly Lying: Fake News & Fake Journalism in American History (Columbia UP, 2022)
Andie Tucher, Froth & Scum: Truth, Beauty, Goodness, & the Ax Murder in America’s First Mass Medium (UNC Press, 1994)
Mark Twain, Correspondence With Henry Huttleston Rogers, 1893-1909 (U. California, 1969)
Mark Twain & Charles Dudley Warner, The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today (1873) [2006 Modern Library Edition]
Mark Twain, “How I Edited An Agricultural Paper” The Galaxy (1870)
Mark Twain, “Whittier Dinner Birthday Speech” (1877) [Commentary by Stephen Railton]
Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism (Melville House, 2024)
Yanis Varoufakis, Adults In The Room (Farrar Straus & Giroux, 2018)
Charles Dudley Warner, “American Newspapers” (1880)
McKenzie Wark, Capital Is Dead: Is This Something Worse? (Verso, 2019)