Completely disagree. And I think Joe Rogan's podcast is the perfect example of how the market is suggesting exactly what you replied to.
"Normal Americans" don't read the NYT anymore, or WSJ, or the Post, they listen to Joe Rogan on Spotify and Youtube. There's virtually no limit to who Joe will have on his show, and while he's not a remarkable interviewer, he brings the often vital opinions of his guests on all sides of many issues, and he asks sincere questions for hours on end.
Joe Rogan is pretty much Oprah for dudes. Sure he is extremely popular but I'm not sure there's a relationship between what 'normal Americans' think of journalism and the success of his podcast, other than that people for some reason keep asserting it because he on occasion has public intellectuals on his show, but so have talk show hosts for eons.
The New York times these days has 6 million digital subscribers, that's about six times more than they had in print circulation during their heyday. They've also consistently grown in revenue and are in way better financial situation than they were during the slump a few years ago. So just going by your market story this narrative just doesn't check out. Rogan is doing well, but so is the times. And so is WaPo and the WSJ.
I think it's noteworthy to point out that all the major newspapers have shifted their revenue model towards subscriptions, away from ads. That means there's been a real increase in engagement with readers who pay for content.
The OP you're responding to is correct that his popularity is MUCH higher than your response suggests:
"In January 2015, the podcast was listened to by more than 11 million people. By October 2015, it had grown to acquire 16 million downloads a month. By April 2019, the podcast had 190 million downloads a month."
That's a lot higher a number than your NYT 6 million subscribers (-1 as I just canceled in early June after it became clear how far along it is in its transformation into naked narrative-driven agitprop).
I did say that he was popular in my post? That's not really the point of the debate. Of course the NYT is a niche market in the sense that only a minority of people actually pay for news. Fox and talk radio probably have 20 times as many viewers/listeners, that's always been the case.
But that doesn't say anything about what the NYT has become. They have a larger audience now than they had in the past, and their status isn't just a function of size of viewership.
Pewdiepie has a hundred million subscribers or whatever, does he dwarf the New York times in terms of influence in social or political life? No. The fact that there's a new entertainment personality in mass media doesn't say anything about the state of journalism.
This reads like someone who discovered it because Elon Musk showed up along with a bunch of other celebrities in the last 2 years.
Give it some more time and you'll get over this savant view of Rogan. If anything I'd recommend going back to watching some episodes when it was filmed in his living room, not his millionaire's playground shop
I'm not actually a listener, I might watch a clip from a guest I'm interested in once in a great while. But I've never listened to an entire episode. I don't like the lack of structure in his interviews, and I don't have 2-4 hours to listen to unstructured rambling, with the occasional useful tangent.
I think you mistook my comment as saying "Joe Rogan podcast is great and everyone should listen." I was only saying that it is a source of "opinions that are vital, and debate that is sincere," and that he has obtained a remarkable amount of working class listeners.
Weird to see Joe Rogan here, he literally just parrots whatever his guest is saying. Used to love watching until I realized he just repeats whatever sentiment his guest is saying.
He had Stefan Molyneux and Gavin McInees on, and never once challenged them on their white supremacist views.
Are these the views of a white supremacist? Perhaps he's a secret one for all I know. If so it would be nice if we stopped using gross simplistic labels for people and simply attacked his views head on (if we wish) quoting their actual words and not attributing views to them that they don't appear to hold.
“I don’t view humanity as a single species...”
—Podcast FDR2768, “Collective Guilt for Fun and Profit”, Saturday call-in show, August 9, 2014
“The whole breeding arena of the species needs to be cleaned the fuck up!”
—Podcast FDR2740, “Conformity and the Cult of ‘Friendship’,” Wednesday call-in show July 2, 2014
"Screaming 'racism' at people because blacks are collectively less intelligent...is insane."
—YouTube video, The Death of Europe | European Migrant Crisis, October 4, 2015
“You cannot run a high IQ [white] society with low IQ [non-white] people…these [non-white] immigrants are going to fail...and they're not just going to fail a little, they are going to fail hard…they're not staying on welfare because they’re lazy...they’re doing what is economically the best option for them...you are importing a gene set that is incompatible with success in a free-market economy.”
—YouTube video, The Death of Europe | European Migrant Crisis, October 4, 2015
“...white people will bend over backwards to accommodate you, but when they finally get that they’re just being taken advantage of...you will see a backlash, and that backlash will be quick, decisive, and brutal.”
—YouTube video, The Death of Germany | European Migrant Crisis, September 16, 2015
It's not a simplistic label, I used to watch hours and hours of his stuff. Hell, I even used to believe his stuff about race and IQ. I was fortunate to have a friend that recognized I was turning down a bad road and helped deprogram me.
That's the issue with all of this, people like Molyneux put on a smile and a suit, covering up with vague statements and dog whistles.
And for that there are still people that try to paint him as alt right. (Because he has had some alt right people interviewed on there)
He's still going because he has had an independent publishing platform and he's not dependent on a media network to survive. If someone else were to do the same thing.. they couldn't survive.
>Because he has had some alt right people interviewed on there
People paint him that way not because he has them on there, but because he almost always lets them spew their nonsense without any push back because he isn't an actually good interviewer.
He just entered into a multi year deal with Spotify for 100 million dollars. For his little podcast where he has casual conversations with random people.
"Normal Americans" don't read the NYT anymore, or WSJ, or the Post, they listen to Joe Rogan on Spotify and Youtube. There's virtually no limit to who Joe will have on his show, and while he's not a remarkable interviewer, he brings the often vital opinions of his guests on all sides of many issues, and he asks sincere questions for hours on end.