Ep. 32 - Multimedia Entrepreneurship: Roby Brock’s Reverse Journey

Stability in the media industry is a moving target and most entrepreneurs find out too late that passion doesn't pay the bills. If you aren't willing to listen to the marketplace and pivot your delivery method, you are effectively a hobbyist with an expensive deadline. We are joined by Roby Brock, owner of Talk Business & Politics and Natural State Media, to discuss how he built a durable multimedia empire by working in reverse of traditional journalism norms.

We sit down to discuss the tactical shift from video production to long term advertising contracts and how to scale across radio, digital, and print. The conversation covers specific industry hurdles like the "missing middle" of profitable niche content and the logistical weight of high gloss magazine production. Roby shares his "secret sauce" for survival which involves treating journalism as a business first and an art second, ensuring that the infrastructure exists to support the reporting.

The unglamorous truth is that many journalistic endeavors are break even propositions at best and the mental toll of delegitimization makes the work harder than ever. You will walk away with a clear understanding of why being "just an editor" is a career dead end in the 2020s and why the ability to crawl through raw data is more valuable than ever. Success in this field requires a thick skin and a willingness to kill your darlings when the cost benefit analysis doesn't lean in your favor.

Transcript

Part Two And The Big Pivot

SPEAKER_01 0:07

Welcome back, everybody, to the Radical Moderate Podcast. I am your host, Pat O'Brien, and this is part two of my interview with owner of Arkansas Business, uh talk business and politics, Roby Brock. Welcome back this week. Good to be with you, Pat. So, Roby, last week we we did a pretty deep dive and you gave some insights on Senator Tom Cotton and Governor Sarah Sanders, both who have, I think, national political reputations, who one or both might run for president in 2028. Uh, now this week I want to take our audience in a different direction. You are not just a journalist. You're not just a W-2 employee that has always been paid uh to work for somebody else. You're an entrepreneur. You're somebody who around 20 years ago took a risk and tried, uh, said to yourself, I think there's a business model that I can feed myself, feed my wife and my children uh by trying to be a professional truth teller. Tell it, tell the audience a little bit about that journey. What

From Video Shop To TV Show

SPEAKER_01 1:18

is talk business and politics? And and then we'll lead into some of one of your most uh recent ventures, which I think has just happened in the last couple of months.

SPEAKER_00 1:29

Yeah. So the Cliffs Notes version is I started a video production company in 1999 with the goal of really just doing video projects. It was kind of uh, everything had moved to uh nonlinear editing and digital and some stuff like that. So the the industry was changing. It got to be a lot less expensive. You didn't need million-dollar pieces of equipment to get in. Uh now I think I could put together what I probably spent $75,000 to $100,000 on. I could probably do it for about five grand. So uh with the way technologies change. But I found pretty quickly that um I wasn't a big operation and so couldn't take on a whole lot of clients. And if one or two of them kind of postponed or stalled out or something like that, I'd lose 25, 50% of my revenue every month that I was kind of banking on. So pretty quickly I pivoted. I had a background in politics, I had a background in business. Nobody was really doing anything on TV in those um respects, pretty printed stuff out there, and it was pre-internet. Um, so I just decided to put a TV show together uh that covered business and politics and found a pretty good audience for it. Found uh sponsors and advertisers willing to support it. And that led to like a I could do a monthly billing, so I could count on my revenue being a certain amount, you know, because they were doing 12-month contracts. So it was a lot easier to do that. Um, from that, I I got some interest from some of the public radio stations around the state. They're like, hey, you get good interviews with interesting people, some that we can't get or don't get. Would you be willing to share your audio with us? And so we've developed a I do seven radio programs a week now, and um, there's different formats, but I take a lot of those interviews I use on TV and um and I put them into a radio or a podcast format for people to just listen to. Then the internet came along um and it got to be where you could manage your own content um versus having to hire somebody to run your website for you and post a story on your website was extremely expensive. Uh that price came down and you know, everybody can self-publish basically. So we adapted to that. And um, and then late in the game, I got into print journalism. I'm like, hey, let's do a magazine. And um, and so we did a kind of a high gloss magazine. It was a little bit of a break-even proposition. It didn't lose money, it didn't make money, it was a lot of work. I just decided I I don't think I want to keep doing that necessarily. But we did um we did wind up doing a merger, and my holding company, which is now called Natural State Media, bought the Northwest Arkansas Business Journal, um, and which had a reputation of, you know, almost 20 years when we bought it. And so we kind of got into print with that. We wound up starting a print product over in Northeast Arkansas that replicates what the Northwest Arkansas Business Journal does in that region of the state. And then um lately I've been on an acquisition spree in a separate company that um is buying a bunch of weekly newspapers, and we're up to six now. So I've kind of been a reverse journalist, and I started television, radio,

Going Multimedia And Buying Newspapers

SPEAKER_00 4:35

online print instead of the other way around. So, but all that to say it's just it's multimedia, it's taking interviews that you do. It might be a print interview, but you find a way to put it online, it might be a radio interview, you find a way to podcast it. You can even use it in TV if you just have good audio. And so I just look for ways to kind of how can I get access to a person that I want to interview or need to interview or would be find interesting to interview? And how can I use those interviews in multiple ways to to reach different audiences? And that's pretty much at the core of what I've been doing for you say 27 years.

SPEAKER_01 5:14

Well, is there an equivalent to you in every state of comparable population? Say, I mean, you Nebraska's got maybe a million and a half people, uh, Alabama might have five million people. So I'm not talking about California and Florida, but are there equivalents to you? Or as you look around the landscape, is is have what you've accomplished a bit of a one-offs?

SPEAKER_00 5:38

Um, there are some other folks that do multimedia like I do, like um uh out in Nevada, um, there's a guy out there, um God John's his first name, and I'm drawing a blank on his last name now, my apologies, but he's got a pretty popular following, does has done a TV show, has an online and a newsprint uh kind of deal. I don't know if he does radio or not, but um I I'm I'm certain that it happens in other states. You just kind of the whole landscape of journalism now is you have to be multimedia. So um I our our news, one of our newspapers that we bought down in Pine Bluff, they FaceTime events all the time down there. They report in print now and they also report online. I have them on my TV show to have conversations with me about some things that are going on. So I I'm certain that there's other people that do what I do. I'm not sure if anybody's built it out like I built it out. I'm not aware of that, but um I I kind of come back to a guiding principle for me in business, Pat. I think you are uh of the same mindset. Listen to the marketplace. The marketplace will tell you what's what they want. And so, you know, I tried podcasts several years ago and I got some input for people wanting to do that. Just never took off. This was uh probably pre-COVID. I just think it was a little too early. You know, just wasn't the appetite for it that they're used that there is now. Um, and I think I'm not sure the state of Arkansas is since we just cover state politics, I'm just not sure that that is the um, you know, if there's a big enough audience for that. We we started uh over a year ago, we started doing a congressional newsletter because five of the six elected officials from Arkansas are chairmen of major committees in Congress. Uh, and the one that's not, Steve Womack up in the third, is the head of a very powerful subcommittee. I'm like, I so I started a paid subscription congressional newsletter that came out on the weekends that featured an interview with one of those elected officials on a weekly basis. And um, and so we've been doing that for a little over a year. I'm probably gonna pull the plug on that uh just because it's time for renewal, not get a lot of extra renewal interest in it. It's been a lot more work than I thought it would be. Um used to have to get those guys in a TV studio on Capitol Hill. Now, if I can just get a phone conversation with them, I can record it on my iPhone and it's quality enough for the podcast version of what we do and to use it in a newsletter. I also think, too, Congress is not doing that much right now. But they're at, you know, I mean, they're at this kind of standoff point. But when was the last time some major legislation moved? It's been a while. The president's not proposing a bunch of stuff. And so I'm not saying they're not doing some work. I'm just saying it's not, they're not doing as much as I would have expected at this point in time because there's not a push to get some of the things done. Again, there's things going on, but it's not it's not high visibility like it was last year when the president did the one big beautiful bill, when there was some farm aid relief, and you know there's some things going on. French Hill on the Financial Services Committee was at the center of all of that. Um, you know, some uh banking reform. You had uh John Bozeman on agriculture, Rick Crawford's on the agriculture committee. So I got a lot of farm insight from, you know, farm policy insight from them. Of course, Tom Cotton is interesting when it comes to talking about, you know, uh

Listening To Demand And Cutting Products

SPEAKER_00 9:10

overseas and foreign policy. Um so I I'm just telling I'm listening to the marketplace. The marketplace is telling me there's a small group of people very interested in that paid subscription congressional newsletter, but it's not big enough for me to kind of merit continuing to do it. It's um I got away the cost-benefit analysis of that. So I listen to the marketplace, and that's where our products have adapted, and where I find opportunity to provide more media content for people is finding out where where the where the demand is.

SPEAKER_01 9:45

Well, I think what's interesting about your journey from what I'm hearing is you're really just an entrepreneur at the end of the day. Like you, you know, you know you want to do something. You have a general category of reporting and being a journalist, but you don't know how it's gonna work out. And there's been a lot of trial and error and and some not failure in the sense of like bankruptcy, but failure in the sense of, okay, this is a break-even product with no uh, you know, it makes me happy, but not that happy to to do. And so I gotta my time can be spent better somewhere else. So I I I mean, kudos for for being in the trenches and the front lines for for so long. And I want to move now to, you know, if you could kind of imagine, or maybe you've actually had real conversations with somebody who's uh either like a senior in high school who says, I want to, I've run my student newspaper and I'm gonna be a journalism major, or a senior in college who is a journal and journalism major, or a 27-year-old been in the marketplace for three years, journalist. What would you tell them in terms of your personal story? Would you say, hey, follow my path, or would you say, oh no, don't do my path, do something different. What advice would you would you give to people who aspire to be journalists in the the late 2020s?

SPEAKER_00 11:11

Well, I think anybody that aspires to be a journalist, and I think this is applicable to whatever you want to do in life, find something that you're gonna do that's gonna make you happy. Um, because if you're doing something that makes you miserable, you're really not gonna enjoy a lot of other aspects of your life. I think the other thing, too, for that 20s, you know, teenage and 20-something uh age group that you're referencing, I encourage them to try a lot of different things. I've had um, I I know I've given the advice a lot to people. It's like you're doing this now. What else do you want to do in life? I don't think you have to be pigeonholed at that age into this is my career for the rest of my life, unless you're pretty adamant, I want to be a doctor, so I'm gonna go through medical school and be a doctor. I want to be a lawyer, I want to get through law school and I want to practice law or what whatever. You know, you can be a welder, you be whatever you want to be. If you know pretty passionately what you want to do and what you want to be, do it. If you're just like, I think there's a lot of things that interest me. I think you should go out and explore them while you're young. I can tell you from my own personal experience in my 20s. Um, let's see, I started a restaurant with a friend of mine and learned the whole business side of that, which I had waited tables at restaurants, but had never done the business side of it. I was managing about 25 people at the age of 23. That's that's crazy, you know. But it was a business that we built, a restaurant business. I left and went and worked on a presidential campaign after that for Bill Clinton. And I helped plan the watch night party in downtown Little Rock, which is really more of a special events logistics uh project versus a political project. I met Governor Jim Guy Tucker through that experience and decided to stay in Arkansas and get involved in politics, which is when you and I met. And um, and I worked for him and I did uh media for him, and I also uh wound up being uh kind of a legislative liaison and a travel aide to him. So I took on some policy chops later on in that uh in that um in that career choice, uh ran a state agency that oversaw state elections uh when all that transitioned. And then I went out on my own and opened a PR and a marketing and a political consulting shop. Then I started a video production company, and then I got into journalism after that. So I I didn't, I wouldn't have told you in my early 20s, I'm gonna be a journalist someday, gonna run a media company someday. I wasn't even on my bingo card, man. I didn't even know all that. But I was open to opportunity. I was interested in learning and experimenting and and you know, finding out about other, you know, career paths. And I think that's fine as long as you can kind of sustain yourself and you have that luxury of being able to do that.

Career Advice For Young Journalists

SPEAKER_00 13:55

I I encourage exploring when you're in your 20s because it's the only time you're gonna be able to do it. Once you get a a family and children, you're gonna, your your priorities will shift tremendously to I need to provide for my family. When you're young and you know, if you're if you're single and you're doing all that, you can live on a lot less. And so you can afford to take some of those um jobs that are not necessarily uh the most lucrative for you. So I that's my advice to anyone. But I uh in terms of journalists, I mean, I kind of encourage them to try different things. I've had a couple of interns over the last year. Uh one's at the University of Georgia, a journalism student, uh, the other one's in high school. And I'm like, I've given them assignments that are so different and varied. I've let them sit in on television interviews, I've let them do the radio portion of it, I've let them do the newspaper portion of it. I've sent them out to cover a governor's press conference before, which is pretty exciting if you're 20 years old. You know, I'm covering the governor at a press conference, you know. I want you to write a story for me on that. You know, give me the give me the story. Um, at the same time, I might turn them loose on a feature to go interview somebody that works uh cook in a restaurant just as a good, interesting, human interest community story. I might give them a set of data and say this report came out. I want you to crawl through all this data and tell me what's the most relevant thing and write a story on this new healthcare data that came out. Um I just, you know, kind of encourage journalists, try a lot of stuff and figure out where your voice is in writing or being on camera and find out where your passion is. And then you can kind of fine-tune it a little bit more. But don't pigeonhole yourself. I'll give you a great example. I I got a resume from someone a couple of weeks ago looking for a job. She's graduating college and she just wants to be an editor. That's all she wants to do. Doesn't want to write, doesn't want to produce, doesn't want to manage a business, just wants to edit copy. That's that's pretty, that's gonna limit you, particularly coming out of college. I mean, because right now, if I'm hiring, I need somebody that can do multimedia, I need somebody that can write, I need somebody that can cover crime and sports in some communities. I mean, that's a pretty different, varied skill set, you know, and I'll train them. If they can write decently, I can I can show them the ropes and teach them. And I want to encourage more journalism people to kind of understand the business side of stuff, which is where I'm finding some of my biggest um enjoyment with creativity now is figuring out some of these markets and how we adapt talk business, how we adapt these newspapers. That's been a very interesting business creative challenge for me in a way that doesn't have anything to do with reporting.

SPEAKER_01 16:42

So well, I think it's great advice. And uh if you have follow-up conversation with a person who wants to be an editor, have them go to Chat GPT and type in, will AI replace editors in the next three years? And that might end that that particular pathway. I I want to stay on the topic of journalism, and and I hope I phrased this the

Is There A Market For Truth

SPEAKER_01 17:05

right way. What is ultimately, what is the product of journalism? And and and what I mean by that is we're talking about markets. Is there an actual market for the truth? Because when I look at, you know, the polarization on media, be it let's just say cable TV shows, that sort of thing, I don't I don't see the market for the truth being at least the leading force. I see that as like a a side thing that happens. It looks more like entertainment to me. What are your thoughts on is there do customers, consumers want the truth?

SPEAKER_00 17:46

Have they created a market for it? So I I couldn't give you percentages, but I will tell you this. I I see a bunch of subsets of people that are um news consumers. There are some people that just want partisan news. They just want to hear from people that will tell them what they want to hear, um, whether that's left or right. And um they're just not interested in the other side's perspective. And I think it's hard for them to deal with it. You know, it's hard for somebody that might be um an MS Now, you know, um, you know, regular, that's where they consume all their news, to go watch Fox News for five minutes and go, oh my gosh, I can't deal with that. And I think the vice versa, too. I don't think a Fox News viewer can go watch, you know, MS Now and go, I I can't deal with these people. You know, I mean it's just they just they're not even capable of understanding the different worldviews that are there. Uh, and that's problematic to me, but I do think that there's news consumers that fall into those two parts of the spectrum. I don't know what the percentage is on that. There is definitely a percentage of people that do want the the what I call independent fact-based reporting. Um and sometimes it's people in those groups, they just don't, those fringe groups, they just don't know it. And so you can present some evidence to some of them sometimes that changes their mind. Now it doesn't change their viewer habits or their consumption necessarily, but it's it at least has some sort of breakthrough with them that there might be another perspective out there uh to consider. And then I think there's a lost cause. And again, I don't know how big this percentage is of people that claim they're consuming news, but they're really just in an echo chamber on their Facebook pages and they're drinking whatever Kool-Aid they've set up to consume because they're not interested in anything other than hearing people confirm their own opinion about stuff. And again, they can be left and right too. I I I see it, I follow a lot of people and I do wade in all those different circles I just described because I as a journalist, I need to understand where some people are coming from on some stuff. And so it helps me kind of figure out where um truth should be. How can we, how can we report something fairly that takes into account some of those different uh viewpoints and opinions? I I have to understand all that. So I'm wading into some of that stuff pretty regularly. And, you know, some of it's pretty eye-opening. But I think there is a market for truth out there. Um I think there's a I think there's a market for fact-based reporting, whether you like the facts or not. Uh I just can't tell you how big that percentage is. Uh, but it's a it's a large swath. I don't know if it's a majority, um, but it's pretty big.

SPEAKER_01 20:35

So I think your buckets, I think your analysis is is pretty spot on. And and I've I have not talked in a tremendous amount of minutes in my podcast episode so far about President Trump, but I I think I'll make this observation about him in trying to say that, hey, you may like his policies, you may think that he's dealing with Iran after no one else had the guts to deal with. Like, I I think there's a prism and a viewpoint to say he's a strong president. I really do. And I don't I don't have a big issue with that. That, you know, I et cetera, et cetera, his his policy-based. I think there's a just a legitimate uh per a person can legitimately say, hey, he's he's a good president for these reasons. I think one of the most concerning things that he's done is the his attempts at the delegitimization of the media and kind of painting in these very big broad strokes how you can't trust the media, et cetera. And uh I don't know if you listened or have paid much attention when Bill Maher went and had dinner with the president and he came back and he did a monologue. He said, Look, he's not there, there's two different people. The person you're seeing on TV is not the person who's actually president, it's not the person I had dinner with. So basically saying it's just an act. And I thought this was very interesting because we're typing uh the weekend after the White House court. Correspondence dinner. And uh I'm I can't remember her name off the top of my head, but I know that the president of the Correspondence Association is actually married to an Arkansas native named uh Luther Lowe. And I so I had that kind of connection, and I saw her up there and her composure just in the moment when all that chaos was going on. And then later she did an interview the next morning uh on one of the her the CBS morning show, and she talked about how President Trump took her to the side and said, Hey, come back to the White House with me and my detail and kind of really protected her and treated her with like the utmost respect. I don't have footage, but it better if you went back a year or two, he'd be like, You're the most dishonest

Trump And The Danger Of Delegitimizing Press

SPEAKER_01 22:45

journalist I've ever met. So he can play both sides of that. And and the question I'm leading up to is, you know, what do you think about President Trump's treatment of the press? And do you think that that ends with his presidency, or do you think that becomes just a playbook, maybe for both sides? And a Democrat president just does the opposite with whatever conservative news outlets that that person doesn't like.

SPEAKER_00 23:13

Well, I do think it, I do think it's an act. And I can tell you, um, several of the politicians that I interview on a regular basis, um, they they don't their personal viewpoints don't always uh correlate with their um what they put out there in the uh public sphere. So um I I have some candid off-the-record conversations with some of the folks that I talk to at times uh as well. I think what President Trump's doing is extremely dangerous um uh in terms of the media. I I think there's other areas of concern as well. But as far as the media concern, delegitimizing the media, um, which looks some media deserves to be delegitimized because I don't think they're really truth tellers or interested in facts. You know, there are some pretty skewed um, you know, sites out there. I I'll cite one that's on the conservative side, but you know, give me some time, I'll go find one on the left as well. But remember years ago when uh when Breitbart kind of first came on the scene? Yes. I mean, if you went and looked at Breitbart um on a daily basis and found a hundred stories over the course of uh two weeks, 99 of them would be wrong or inaccurate or not complete or poor journalism, quite frankly. But he got the Anthony Wiener scandal. And I don't know if you remember that, but he broke the Anthony Wiener scandal, the congressman uh from New York who was having some affairs and um uh and basically got publicly humiliated and had to resign. And he was married to a Hillary Clinton uh person, and it was a big high-profile scandal. And everybody's like, see, Breitbart's legitimate. I'm like, Breitbart got one out of a hundred. Okay, that's not legitimate, okay? It's it's a day in and day out legitimate, is what it is what you should lean on for your news. I think the president delegitimizing the media and criticizing the media as much as he does, particularly when it's not even warranted at times, it just gives people the ability to follow his lead on that, you know, and say, and it's just an institution that's gonna get eroded, just like some of the other institutions that we have that we, you know, that have credibility problems as well. It's an easy target. You don't like something, you you complain about it. You could write a thousand-word story and you could get one sentence wrong, and somebody could complain about it, and now your reputation is uh you're not accurate. You know, that that's that's something we deal with all the time. A good news organization, a trustworthy news organization will print a correction. Hey, we got it wrong, and here's the correction. I think that's always kind of a litmus test for a good news organization. Not that they get it right every single time, but that they're willing to admit when they did get it wrong. And um, and I see that from a lot of what I consider credible news sources. Um I think what he's doing is dangerous because I think it's just eroding another institution in this country. And it's just building mistrust at times that it, you know, I get it if you got a legitimate beef about something. I've seen some reporting before that I'm like, that's crazy biased. I've spiked some stuff in our news organization before that I feel is biased. I've gotten a report from, you know, a field reporter before or an editor before, and I'm like, we're not publishing this. There's another side to this story, and we haven't even considered that yet. Why would we put this out there? So um, when he kind of blanket sweeps the whole media into this, you know, genre of lacking in credibility, just does a lot of damage to people's trust and faith, and what they're reading is real. But that is a demagogic tactic. It is you can't trust what anyone else is saying, trust what I am saying, because I am, I need to be your authority and your source for truth and accuracy. Trust me on this. And of course, we've seen with the president, I I I would say this to his face, so I'm not um I'm not trying to sugarcoat anything here, but I mean, he can he can give you a one-sentence answer on something that you don't know what his position is on something. You know, a yes or no question can turn into, well, yes, I support that, but no, not really. And, you know, maybe if given some time, I might have a different position on that, but sort of. And you're like, what, what, what did he say? What is his position on that? I've seen him do that a number of times. I've seen other politicians do it too, but he he's got a special level of being able to do that where you can go back and read it and go, I don't know what his position is on this because he he gave you three or four different positions on it. So, um, but that's when you want to be the credible de facto source of truth and accuracy and facts, you kind of have to be consistent with that. And I don't think that he is, but I think that the attacks on the media are just to undermine the credibility of stuff and give him an excuse or a weapon to be able to delegitimize some story he doesn't really like, he'll he'll be glowing on someone the next week that gives him a good review of something.

SPEAKER_01 28:16

Well, we just got a minute or so left, and I I was gonna I guess I'll put it uh to this way and give you a final word here. Here's what I hope happens. I hope that over the next couple of years, as the Trump second term plays itself out, that maybe that alone, that what I'll call lack of regard and and respect for facts and truth, hopefully people see that for what it is, because I agree with you. I think it's very dangerous. And it creates a market that maybe a resurgence of a market that maybe we had in journalism in the 1950s or something, or maybe we didn't. Maybe there was a bias that we weren't paying attention to. But I think if you give people long enough that and you keep a

A Pendulum Swing And Closing Thoughts

SPEAKER_01 29:05

free society with the First Amendment, et cetera, I think people will figure it out. I think they're ultimately smart enough to figure it out. And hopefully we get a better version of uh leadership and and national media and and and politics, et cetera, et cetera. I'll give you the final word. What are your what are your thoughts on just do you believe that journalism is as strong as ever, weaker than ever, or coming up and and you're optimistic that it's going to be better in the future than it's been in the last say decade?

SPEAKER_00 29:38

I I'd go with the the last thing you said there. I'm optimistic. Um I think there'll be a pendulum swing back towards um respect um after Trump's out of office, mainly because I don't think anybody else can pick up the mantle of what he's done in terms of destroying the credibility of the media as effectively as he had. I mean, and you can see that in other policy moves. You've seen people try to imitate him before. They don't do very well with it, you know. He's kind of a unique politician in that he gets away with a lot of that, you know, um, stuff that's non-traditional that would offend a lot of people, but he he can do it, and it doesn't seem to have the political ramifications for him that it would for someone else. So look at Eric Swalwell, for instance. I mean, consumed in, you know, some accusations of um sexual assault and it didn't keep President Trump from getting re-elected out. Eric Swalwell dropped out of the race for California governor, you know. I mean, so I'm just saying there's just it doesn't, I think he's unique, he's one of a kind. And so I think when he's off the scene, at least in terms of power, I think that he will, I think you'll see that pendulum swing come back towards trusting uh some media. It but it's not gonna the toothpaste out of the tube, it's not gonna get put back in. So I don't think that this thing repairs itself to a healthier place than where it might have been at one point in our nation's history. If you also go back to and look at journalism over the years, journalism used to be partisan. Those early newspapers in colonial times, you were a Republican or a Democrat paper, a Whig paper, you know. I mean, it they were highly partisan at the time. That was the whole purpose of their existence. It was somewhere in the late 1800s, early 1900s when things kind of really shifted to being more um neutral in their position. So I'll say all that to keep from rambling. I I'm optimistic things get better. I'm not optimistic that things become better than they once were for journalism.

SPEAKER_01 31:43

That's fair. And I I think I'm gonna agree with you. I think that I think the market will really sort it out. I think people will figure it out. And maybe even the misinformation that we see on AI, it becomes so overwhelming that people are like, okay, finally, I think I need to understand that not everything I read on the internet is true. Maybe I need to to do some more research. And certainly that's what I'm rooting for is that the truth gains in value in years to come. Ruby, I appreciate it. Uh the la last two episodes. Thank you for coming on the show. And uh to my audience, that is the POV of POBER, yeah.