͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏

Forwarded this email? Subscribe here for more

By Kate Lindsay

Will gossip save digital media?

Plus: Substack Summit scuttlebutt, why AI logos look like buttholes, and the death of ‘house style.’

kate lindsay

May 29

∙

Preview

READ IN APP

Welcome to media_gossip, Embedded’s special weekly edition of … media gossip, sent every Friday. You’re getting this because you subscribe to Embedded, but you can opt out here.

Please settle a media-centric, Seinfeldian debate I’m having with Nick: When an editor or hiring manager takes you out for coffee/lunch/drinks, should you do “the reach” even though you’re pretty sure you won’t be paying?

POLL

Should you do "the reach"?

Yes

—Kate

The Substack Media Summit. Bottom left: Menu for a dinner hosted by Jasmine Sun and Pangram.

Not pictured:

The “surprise musical guest” (a James Brown impersonator, because, as one rumor had it, they could not land a certain singer-songwriter).
Nick spilling his entire iced Cortado all over the floor (embarrassing) while waiting in the cookie line (humiliating) directly in view of Jerusalem Demsas (career-ending?).
The indoor swimming pool they told me I couldn’t get in before I even said anything and so even though I didn’t want to get into it initially the fact that they told me I couldn’t meant I suddenly did (apparently you had to pay extra).
Eugene Wei, Joseph Weisenthal, Caiwei Chen, The Etymology Nerd, Jordan Schneider, Jackson Dahl, and Randa Sakallah at a pre-summit dinner at Demo hosted by Jasmine Sun and Serena Moy of Pangram talking about the AI non-apocalypse, the bonkers editing process for freelancers at The New York Times (and why “house style” is dead), and the reason AI company logos all look like buttholes (because they are accidental metaphors for the diarrhea of discourse unleashed by the internet, if we heard the argument correctly).

The Future Is Gossip

Google Zero is almost here which, is the final_finalrevised_finalFORREAL_V4 nail in the coffin of digital media, the hammering of which has followed me my entire career. With Google’s latest announcement about AI search, it’s unlikely it will continue to deliver even the already dwindling traffic it currently does, let alone the kind that, for a period in the 2010s, powered entire websites.

This is bad. But there is cause for maybe not optimism, but something other than utter despair. Websites powered by search engines had to cater to search engines. This often meant writing not about what was new or interesting, but answers to what people were most likely to be Googling. Unfortunately, people don’t often Google things that have particularly profound answers, which is why the monthly Refinery29 report of trending search queries contained things like “Peppa Pig height.”

As Jasmine Sun said in her presentation at the Substack new media event yesterday, there is no longer an incentive to write any kind of SEO explainers or “summary” content. These are being totally eclipsed by by Google’s hastening shift to AI, not to mention the chatbots that pushed Google to make this change in the first place. It is a waste of time to try to compete. Genie, you’re free.

This means it’s worth considering what digital media outlets can provide that AI can’t, and Jasmine had a prediction for this, too...