The Media Game Has Changed

The New Rules of Media

• Old media had restricted channels and formats with companies as brands; new media has unlimited formats and channels, and the brand is now the person (Elon, Alex Karp, Palmer Luckey).
• Old media is defense-oriented; new media is offense.
• The one rule of old media was "don't be interesting" — the worst thing you could do. New media requires being interesting or you get drowned out.

Authenticity

• Marc's media trainer Les Elden, a former 60 Minutes producer, told him to say in public what he would say at lunch with a friend.
• If you don't know a topic inside out, you shouldn't be talking about it. If you do, you should be able to talk about it viscerally and interestingly.
• The "pivot": answer your own questions instead of the interviewer's bad ones.
• Classic media training made CEOs into "plastic people" who measured success by minimum controversy.

Why Legacy Media Stopped Working

• The press had two missions: objective journalism and speaking truth to power. The second devolved into "power to truth" — intimidation — and swamped the first, especially after 2017.
• Marc's advice to founders: there is no way to get a story you'll like through traditional media anymore.
• The new approach has two parts: go direct (tell your own story through your own channels) and new voices in new media.
• Even Washington insiders now read the Mark Halperin newsletter, not just legacy outlets.

Why the Brand Is the Person

• Before the 1930s, companies were named after people (Ford Motor Company, Edison Electric). Centralized media (three TV networks, a few big papers) forced messages through a narrow straw, creating abstract corporate brands.
• As centralized media collapses, person-as-brand returns. After 2024, presidential candidates must be able to do three hours on Joe Rogan.
• The brand person must be permanent — not a VP of marketing on a three-year run.

Fighting Back

• Don't respond to anonymous accounts with 50 followers — you're amplifying people with no audience.
• A real attack that lands is an opportunity; Ben's Instagram response to The New York Times was his biggest post at the time.
• You want people to love you AND hate you. Being lukewarm means you're uninteresting. When you get big, people hate you — that means you made a mark.

Building the Team

• People trained in old media live in "opposite world" and rarely transition successfully.
• Hire people who have actually built an audience and can tell a story end-to-end. Storytelling is the elite skill.
• The team must be invested in the message, not just distribution.

Founder Mistakes and Outside-In Thinking

• Don't over-index on distribution before getting the message right — distribution is a multiplier on the message.
• Start with the outcome you want (which customer, which hire), then work backwards to the message.
• Think outside in: find the most interesting thing happening in the world and relate it to your company. Alex Karp never talks about Palantir; Ryan Peterson talked about the global supply chain collapsing during COVID, not freight.
• This is a learnable skill — even Alex Karp's and Donald Trump's old interviews were very different from their current style.