Michael J. Shapiro

The editorial independence point in the TBPN / OpenAI deal that people are talking about is kind of beside the point. That’s not actually what this audience is here for. A large gap opened up around ~2016, at the peak of mainstream media’s antagonism toward tech. Out of that came a Cambrian explosion of new formats built around the idea that there is appetite for in-depth conversations about tech, the business of it, the culture of it, and how decisions actually get made, from people who are native to the ecosystem and seen as credible by it. Fred Wilson understood this way back when with AVC, just explaining venture plainly to people who wanted to understand how it actually works. There is a place for scoops, accountability, and traditional reporting. But this is a different product serving a different and growing demand. Everyone watching basically gets it. No one thinks these platforms are objective journalism. People have perspectives, incentives, and allegiances. People have their bags and their tribes which is totally part of the fun. To be fair to TBPN, they fully will invite Anthropic execs on the show because that just makes it all the more interesting and grows the audience which benefits OpenAI. The growth of this category is exactly why major tech companies increasingly participate directly, rather than leaving the narrative to traditional media, similar to how Google and Apple built developer conferences (became media events) instead of relying on bloggers to interpret everything for them and reach that audience.