I’m Darren Samuelsohn, and this is a bonus track of The love, journalism Show.
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Neetzan Zimmerman stayed on camera for another 30 minutes after we wrapped the main episode — and said something a lot of people in journalism know but won’t say out loud: “People like to read low as much as they like to read high. The answer is to have both.”
The former editor of the internet argues the media industry didn’t fail because audiences wanted trash. It failed because the people who took over stopped believing in the high entirely. “We’ve done away with the high completely, because the people who have taken over are only interested in the low. And that’s where we ended up.”
He also reflects on what it means now to traffic in paperbacks, vinyl, and VHS at The Newsagent’s after years of engineering virality online.
“Spending time with something means developing a relationship with it, developing feelings towards it,” he said. “I think we are losing something when we can’t spend the time to really appreciate the culture we’re consuming these days.”
The paid section of our chat is where it gets personal — what it meant to be genuinely great at a job that eventually breaks you, and what he said when I asked if journalism loved him back.
The first 15 minutes are free. The rest is for paid subscribers. It’s worth it.
Neetzan Zimmerman — for paid subscribers
What it cost him, and what he said when I asked if journalism loved him back
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