In this week’s edition, I’m telling a story about partisan journalism and political polarization. It’s a story about social media and funding mechanisms and targeted ads. And to tell this story, I’m going to start with Playboy magazine. But before I tell that story, here are some quick updates.
1): In the next print edition of Forma Journal, I’ll have an author interview with Nick Ripatrazone, on his new book Longing for an Absent God: Faith and Doubt in Great American Fiction. I recently read an advanced reader copy of the book, and I highly recommend it. Ripatrazone has fascinating analysis of writers ranging from Walker Percy to Toni Morrison, and his main theme is on the ways that these authors are shaped by Catholicism, whether practicing, fully lapsed, or somewhere in between.
2): Nikki Haley wrote a godawful article for the Wall Street Journal arguing that basically all public policy is “socialism” - whether tax credits for working families or wage subsidies or incentive packages. Wells King, the new right-hand man for Oren Cass, has a great Twitter thread detailing all the “socialism” that Haley implemented as governor of South Carolina - with his key points being that it isn’t socialism, it’s just good public policy:
3): Y’all remember that crazy Christian CEO who five years ago decided everyone on staff would be paid a minimum $70k salary? Well, the BBC reports that his business is thriving. And listen to this:
“Before the $70,000 minimum wage, we were having between zero and two babies born per year amongst the team," he says. "And since the announcement - and it's been only about four-and-a-half years - we've had more than 40 babies."
We absolutely stan this pro-natalism.
4): this tweet wins the internet this week:
What Playboy Can Teach Us About Polarization and Partisanship
In October 2015, Playboy magazine announced that it would no longer publish full-frontal nudity. This was quite the development for a magazine that’s infamous introduction into American Life was the 1953 centerspr…centerfold of a (naked) Marilyn Monroe. For 62 years, Playboy published its nudes. And at the height of its circulation power, 25% of American college men were either subscribing or buying the magazine (for the prize-winning cartoons, of course.) So why would it stop? A new found conscience? Public backlash? An inability to hire affordable models?
The CEO at the time, Scott Flanders, was pretty clear about the reason. “You're now one click away from every sex act imaginable for free. And so it's just passé at this juncture"
We don’t know who framed Roger Rabbit, but we do know that the Internet killed the Playboy bunny.
Okay, I’m overstating it a little bit. As it happens Playbook still has a large market for its print product overseas, and it has all sorts of licensing revenue for logos and such, and there’s apparently pay-walled premium content online. So Playbook isn’t exactly dead, but its print magazine is an aging cow with an increasingly dried up teat. Playboy magazine brought back nudes in 2017, but it has shifted from monthly to bi-monthly, to now quarterly, and the print paper is increasingly losing money, at least in the US.
Let’s think about what happened to Playboy. Once upon a time, there was one magazine for all your adult (male) needs. Due to threat of censorship and perhaps also an initially bashful public, the sexual content was fairly tame. And in addition to the obvious reason why one would buy the magazine, there was also the fact that it published high-quality fiction, like Fahrenheit 451 which first appeared serially in its pages. (I first learned about the literary history of Playboy when a frequent female writer for First Things magazine with whom I was corresponding recommended that I ̶l̶o̶o̶k̶ ̶a̶t̶ consider Playboy as a potential outlet for a short story I had written.)
Playboy was a mainstream institution, with gatekeepers: sophisticated editors, talented writers and photographers, a professional team of designers, and marketers, and all the rest. And sure, other magazines like Penthouse popped up to add competition, in part by pushing the envelope with slightly more extreme content, but the field was largely still concentrated, and still funded in the same old way: subscriptions, retail sales (from gas stations, etc.), and print advertising.
The Internet had two major effects on the Playboy business model: first, it created a proliferation of sources, with a wider array of available kinds of content, and second, it shifted revenue from subscriptions and retail to advertising rates based on clicks and views. Let’s look at both in turn.
1: Proliferation of sources and content:
When there are only a few market-suppliers, those suppliers get to determine quality, quantity and the rest. If Playboy wanted Americans to only be able to access demure and slightly scandalous pictures alongside New Yorker quality fiction, they were able to secure that outcome. The Internet destroys that gate-keeping power. Now, consumers can get whatever they want, from wherever they want it.
Two major consequences of this proliferation are that available pornographic content represents more novel tastes (why stick with whatever model is in the centerfold when you can search for videos based on hair color or specific sex act) and also becomes almost instantly more extreme (no editors working as curators and gatekeepers.)
And of course, desire is not static, but is shaped by supply. When all that was offered was Playboy, the magazine shaped desire, which shaped demand, which shaped supply, in a tightly controlled feedback loop. But the Internet means that this wide array of content can shape desire in ways that nobody really controls. And this is true down to the very website design mechanisms: suggested videos or pop-up ads, for example, that pull the user in different, novel directions, creating an appetite for kinds of content not previously desired: content curation by algorithm not editor. (Also relevant here is the research on the law of diminishing returns: the drug addict who biologically and psychologically needs both more frequent hits and more potency: you can extrapolate…) And the main point again is that there are no overseers to this process, no media moguls with total decision-making power. It’s an unstoppable structural forces, responding to both complex market incentives and also to algorithms that nobody (including the coders) can fully control, predict, or even understand.
2: Funding Mechanisms
In the old model, the monetary structure was also fully controlled. Consumers either subscribed or bought the magazine, and based on those numbers, the magazine charged advertisers market-rates for print ads. The Internet eviscerates this model. First, it’s much harder to entice people to subscribe or buy when so much content (even if perhaps of slightly less quality) is available freely. Second, if your subscription rates are falling, you can’t use those numbers to entice advertisers, and so you have to shift to things like “impressions” (number of views of a webpage or clicks on a link.)
It is perhaps not surprising that the more extreme content gets more attention, and is thus more profitable. Why settle for a picture when you can have a video? Why settle for a video of a striptease when you can have a video of…well, all sorts of things. And because the profit-structure is responding directly to clicks and views, there are no mediating gatekeepers who can shape supply. The supply is directly tracking with demand in ways that lead to extremism.
And all this leads us to…
The Story of Journalism:
Everything I just said about Playboy is true of journalism across the board. The story of how the Internet affects Playboy is also the story of why local newspapers are dying, why the New York Times is feeling pinched, why the Washington Post only survives because it’s being bankrolled by Jeff Bezos.
For a short period in American history in the 50s, there was one Playboy, and like three TV news channels. Now we are in an age of proliferated sources, for porn and for news.
To recap: the two primary factors here: 1): proliferation of news sources, made possible because the cost of production and distribution is much lower, and leading to a loss of cultural gatekeepers as well as a structural whirlwind toward more extreme content (amateur bloggers and amateur porn). 2): a new funding mechanism that cuts out the middle-man, where the market responds directly to demand, and creates revenue based on views and clicks of increasingly extreme content (viral, in every sense.)
And to be clear, I am arguing both that extreme porn is bad for us (all porn, probably, but Playboy less than Pornhub) and also that extremely partisan journalism is bad for us - for reasons unique to each, but also for a lot of overlapping reasons (reinforcing our biases/tastes/preferences, creating a taste for violence and cruelty, exposing us to potent misogyny and racism, etc..)
A helpful way to think about this whole situation is that you have supply, demand, supply. Greater supply changes the nature of our demands, which changes the nature of the supply, which reinforces the demands. And so now we have a context in which I can seek out whatever news source I wish, tailored to my specific desires, desires which are increasingly pulled toward more extreme drug hits. Why read National Review when I can read Daily Caller or Brietbart? Why watch CNN reporting segments when I can watch one specific talk-show host on the network or be even more thoroughly entertained with the latest John Oliver segment?
And my major point here is that no one is really at fault for the growing polarization and partisanship, on both the supply (media) and demand (consumer) side. This isn’t a story about left-wing coastal elites or right-wing klansmen (though they can factor in, for sure.) I think it’s more apt to say that we are all suffering as victims of structural forces that we are only now beginning to grasp, and which lie outside our individual power to confront. Sure, there are individual bad actors, and we as consumers have agency in choosing what to watch, buy, read. But the collective problem is one that transcends the particular political controversies facing us. This isn’t a story about abortion or gay marriage or climate change. This is a story about a technological revolution akin to the industrial revolution that has reverberated throughout our society and our world.
Conclusion: How Do We Solve This Problem
Extreme porn is probably the easier of the two problems to solve. Conservative lawyer David French has a great new argument that you can draw from physical zoning laws to model a way of “zoning the Internet” to keep children from exposure without violating First Amendment law. The reason that adult stores are on the interstate and not on the neighborhood corner is because the Court has allowed us to zone porn out of residential zones. Let’s try to do something like this with the Internet. (I can make the empirical argument for why porn is bad for kids, but my god, do I really have to at this point?)
You can’t “zone out” shoddy journalism. You really, really can’t. Not only would efforts to try be blatantly unconstitutional, they would also pave the way to state-controlled journalism (read: propaganda.) And while we survived the market consolidation of the 50s where viewers had three TV channels, there’s no way we could go back to that, unless we want a centrally-planned economy (read: socialism and communism.) Besides, it isn’t the case that this proliferation of news sources means only shoddy work is being published. On the contrary, we have some of the best journalism available today, the problem is just that it often doesn’t rise to the top of our Facebook feeds because of the structural forces outlined above.
I think the answer to how to save good journalism is that we are going to have to pay for it. There’s just no way around it. This means that individual consumers (myself included) are going to have to get serious about resisting what is free: actually choosing to buy subscriptions and pay for the high-quality we need. This also means bigger donors who can step up and give to support good journalism (donors who, at the same time, do not seek to unduly control the content of that journalism.) It might also mean things like government subsidies to established local papers. And it means a lot of experimentation in the free market to create better incentives that encourage healthy feedback loops not vicious cycles.
The main takeaway though is that we need to be thoughtful about our consumption. We can’t just allow ourselves to be swept up in structural forces that are eroding our mental health, poisoning our civic discourse, and undermining our democracy. We need to be discerning, and we need to be selective. And that means identifying our vulnerabilities: what kinds of viruses am I susceptible to? And it means taking radical steps to periodically shake up our reading habits: 3 months of not reading x paper or watching x channel, or asking friends of opposing viewpoints to share articles to read (and discuss!) I think the stakes are high: the Early Republic years after America’s founding also had a proliferation of news pamphlets that were way more partisan than our news media, and the levels of polarization continued to rise, and then we fought each other in a Civil War. I don’t actually think our polarization is that high yet, but we must remain vigilant.
What I Am Reading Elsewhere:
In Institute for Family Studies, David Brooks speaking fire: "Since at least the dawn of suburbia, we’ve let the detached nuclear family become the answer to those questions. The nest family. A small group of people surrounded by physical and relational open space....The essence of my argument is that “How can we shore up the family?” is the wrong question to ask and inside the home is the wrong place to focus attention. The essence of my argument is that the crucial ground is the ecology around the family." (see also my article: The Neglected Ecology of Adoption)
In Philadelphia Inquirer: FTC sues to block Jefferson University’s acquisition of Einstein Health - context: if the merger went through, the parties would control at least 70% of the inpatient acute rehabilitation services market in the Philadelphia area. Totally anti-competitive market consolidation. (And meanwhile, big healthcare insurers are now running their own health clinics. Single-payer healthcare, but it’s just corporate monopoly power.)
In The New Republic: ““He was killed by the high price of insulin.” - absolutely devastating read on the human consequences of Big Pharma’s collusion-based price-gauging.
And since we’re talking about monopoly power, Morgan Stanely is acquiring E-Trade. It’s like we don’t even have antitrust laws anymore.
In The Atlantic, an interesting essay on modern dating that is part intellectual-history and part cultural criticism: “"What dating does is it takes that process out of the home, out of noncommercial spaces, to movie theaters and dance halls.' Modern dating has always situated the process of finding love within the realm of commerce—making it possible for economic concepts to seep in."
Notre Dame University announces that Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew will deliver the 2020 Commencement address: “Patriarch Bartholomew has been a champion for understanding and encounter among the world’s religions, as well as for environmental initiatives, religious freedom and human rights,” said Rev. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C., Notre Dame’s president. “We are honored that on his visit to the United States in May, the Patriarch will take time to offer his reflections to our graduates and their families.”
In City Journal, an analysis on progressives vs. organized labor in PA: “In Pennsylvania, a clash is taking place between progressives, who want a carbon-free future, and organized labor, which sees fossil-fuel jobs as essential for many communities. This opposition could fracture the Democratic party statewide.”
In the Boston Review, Martha Nussbaum: "Aeschylus’s moral is that a political community must abandon the obsessive pursuit of revenge and adopt an idea of justice that is both law-governed and welfare-oriented, focusing not on hunting one’s prey but on deterring bad behavior and producing prosperity. For Euripides, however, moral trauma can cause the collapse of trust and the other-regarding virtues, producing a revenge-obsessed parody of real justice.”