Nicholas Thompson

There's still many, many advantages of traditional media.

But yes, the social underpinning.

Again, back to the Medium example.

I remember when Medium did that.

And they started creating like an internal recirculation mechanism.

I thought it was brilliant.

I don't know why it didn't work there and then why it's ended up working at Substack.

I mean, that's a really complicated one.

And your distinction between East Coast and West Coast is an important one.

You know, I'm still more on the East Coast side of that debate.

I mean, I do think disclosure is important.

I do think it's really important for, you know, we at The Atlantic are trying to figure out how we can make partnerships, equity partnerships, like, and disclose them in proper ways.

There are ways that you can go off the rails.

And I think that we're, you know, some of the West Coast model, you can see that, right?

So my favorite example is I had a reporter, maybe my previous job, I was the editor of Wired.

I had a reporter who was recruited by a venture capital firm.

And they said, hey, come work for us.

And she said, well, what will I be doing?

And they said, well, mostly you'll be freelancing and you'll just be yourself.

But maybe like,