The 24 Seven: Out with the scold
On timeless trends, branding trust and one F of a year
Programming: The 24sight livestream returns after the New Year, hope everyone’s holidays are going well. Same for regular columns here at 24sight and new episodes of The Ground Game Pod. (If you haven’t yet, catch some of the shorts over at YouTube highlighting recent episodes with top guests including,
, , , Julie Mason and more. And make sure to subscribe!)I’ve also started a section for guest posts from friends and contributors I find interesting, who I think mesh well with 24sight’s mission of clarity, import and balance. Head over to “The Vox Populi” to find recent guest posts, including the most recent dispatch from
who covers the Fentanyl crisis.You can also find the recently launched, “The Booboisie” — etymology here, from former longtime CPAC spokesman and Washington musician
, which was featured in POLITICO Playbook last week. And the longtime pollster ‘s column “The Level”, a sound, even-handed look at politics and polling with guidance on how we all could improve our understanding of this raucous environment. (He’s not *that* Michael Cohen, though he is very much *The* Michael Cohen, Ph.D.)(Find all 24sight News columns and more at the top of the homepage under the “Newsletters” tab. You can also adjust your settings clicking the “account settings” link on the Newsletters page.)
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1. The new orthodoxy
Former longtime Indiana senator and foreign policy whiz Dick Lugar used to advise his staff to subscribe to “People” magazine, as a way of grounding themselves and remembering their constituents in salt-of-the-earth Indiana even as they worked on heady international issues like keeping nuclear weapons from falling into the hands of terrorists and American adversaries after the fall of the Soviet Union.
I thought of this recently while sitting in line at the grocery store. The news stand, which is really a tabloid stand, is always stocked with popular favorites ranging from how to lose weight and where to dine this month to the life and history of Jesus and travels to where Jesus tread. (I’m more in the MAD Magazine camp myself, because at heart I never graduated middle school and I appreciate clever writing.)
I initially thought of this dynamic when I saw Luigi Mangione (the Baltimore prep school valedictorian and Ivy Leaguer charged with murdering United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson) on the cover of “People” last week, and haven’t been able to stop thinking about it as I’ve been researching algorithms, media siloes and stars of new mainstream media.
Review that picture of the popular magazine fronts and it’s not that different from digitally curated Insta and TikTok feeds or the variety show of guests on the top podcasts (though, arguably, the digital world includes a heck of a lot more Art Bell content than the glossies and late shows ever have.)
The lesson I’ve taken from this, as someone who has spent decades in the trenches writing extensively on serious and heavy-duty issues at all levels of government and society, is to pay a little more attention to the gossip rags, glossies, even the trashy tabloids I used to dismiss out of hand. Not for their accuracy or revelations, but as a measure of popular sentiment.
2. Crunch Crunch
Since healthy eating and a renewed interest in ecology and the environment permeates the world of news influencers and content creators, I figured I’d flag a classic of the genre: The Moosewood Cookbook. It’s widely known among cooks, chefs and old school health food types and a great add to any kitchen. It’s a vegetarian cookbook, but has plenty of good ideas even for the crunchy-adjacent.
3. Louder with time
The new 119th Congress gets underway Friday with the same dilemma which stalled start of the 118th Congress, the vote for speaker. Then-Rep. Kevin McCarthy struggled mightily to secure the votes two years ago — keeping House members locked in votes even through the second anniversary of the January 6th insurrection — only to be deposed by a handful of House Republicans and House Democrats 10 months later.
His replacement, House Speaker Mike Johnson, looks to be in for a tough battle himself on Friday, even with the formal endorsement of President-elect Donald Trump. A handful of hard right House members, including Texas Rep. Chip Roy (who Trump has threatened to run a candidate against) are withholding their support. This latest House showdown comes on the heels of the modest government spending extension approved just before Christmas (which saw the definitive rise of Elon Musk as not only a megadonor, world’s richest man and incoming White House adviser, but also unchecked lobbying powerhouse wielding the power of X.com) and signals the persistent trouble Johnson or any House speaker would have holding together a House Republican conference which famously does not operate in lockstep with its leadership.
Musk and former presidential candidate and pharmaceutical executive turned White House super adviser Vivek Ramaswamy previewed one of the key wedges during the Christmas and Hanukkah break berating hard right nationalists as anti-immigrant and devoid of culture for not supporting the H1B immigrant visa program, popular with high-skilled industries like the world of Big Tech.
Pyrotechnics aside (because there will always be lots of pyrotechnics in the return of a Trump White House) the policy debate is interesting and has long been a wedge issue immigration debates in Washington, of which there have been many over the years the last two decades (ask a staffer sometime which bipartisan “Gang of Eight” they’re referring to regarding failed reform efforts.)
4. Media Moves
The election revealed just how tough the environment has been for legacy media — newsrooms which spend money on reporters who bring back the stories. But the newly dominant creator and influencer media has shown that traditional reporting is always needed, even if only so they can rip it for videos on YouTube, Instagram and TikTok.
ProPublica founder
wrote earlier this year of the famously Hoosier news culture which gave the Wall Street Journal’s pages a detached and measured tone for decades until it was bought out by Australian tabloid media titan Rupert Murdoch. It’s a great read, and I appreciated Tofel’s cutline halfway through noting that Steve McQueen proved Indiana is cool. He also links to an interesting look at a Harvard program which seems aimed at professionalizing the world of influencers and content creators.Axios reported last week that Kara Swisher, the long-running tech journalist (whose “Burn Book”, I think, does a better job at explaining modern politics than any formally “political” book I’ve read) is assembling investors to make an offer to buy The Washington Post from Amazon owner and top government contractor Jeff Bezos.
The capital’s hometown paper has struggled mightily recently under British publisher Will Lewis, who was brought in by Bezos to turn around flagging sales — and notably saw a quarter million subscribers flee in the heat of the election after Bezos killed the editorial board’s plans to endorse Vice President Kamala Harris.
Related, former longtime Associated Press newsman
is now on Substack as is veteran newscaster .5. Writing Music
The Blue Giant Momentum jazz playlist on Spotify is very good, and it’s updated every month or so.
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7. Happy New Year
If you work in the news industry, write about politics, work in politics and government, care about these things or are generally invested in public life and civil society, 2024 was a heck of a year.
So, welcome 2025.
I hope you and yours close out the year well and ring in the New Year invigorated. I’ll see you next year.
Cheers,
Tom LoBianco
Editor and co-founder, 24sight News
Good catch on the checkout line pubs as a great way to see how 'murica gets ejjicated. Spend some time in waiting rooms with television. 'Idiot box' doesn’t begin....