Karol Markowicz Show: The Evolution of Blogging and Media with Ed Morrissey

Hi, and welcome back to the Carol Marco which show on iHeartRadio.

My guest today is Ed Morrissey.

He is the managing editor of Hot Air and the author of Going Red.

Hi.

Ed's so nice to have.

You on, Carol.

It's great to talk to you again.

We've known each other a million years, like really a million in internet in the internet world, way before there was a Twitter or an ex We got to know each other in.

The blog world.

And there's been one or two changes since then, would you say that, couple?

There have been a few changes over the years. Yeah, you know.

It.

You know it's been. It's been one heck of a ride. Actually, you know it's I wouldn't have traded it for anything else. This is it's been a great experience.

You've always been very positive and I always enjoyed that about you.

You've been in Hot Air how long now.

Well, I've been at hot Air now it would be seventeen years, and say.

Seventeen years and internet land is like one hundred years.

I'm ancient, Carol. I have reached the old man shaking fist at cloud stage of my life and I am fully willing to come on here and say get off my damn lawn and turn down your radios.

And but you don't say that very often.

I feel like, again, I think I see you as very like positive, optimistic.

Just you know, a friend to all. Would would that be accurate?

I certainly hope. So that would be a lovely way to actually have come across in life, so that it's encouraging. So yes, I mean that's my aim. I don't know how well I pulled that off.

Yeah, So how did you get your start in writing or in media?

Well, I've always wanted to do writing, and it's just a question of what kind of writing that you want to do, right, And so I thought I'd be a short story guy, and that didn't work out. Number of a number of rejections from all of the leading magazines from that era, Yeah, told me that that wasn't going to be my path. And then I was trying to novels and I wrote three of them, and you know, Garth Brooks has this song it says thank God for

That and here did you start?

Late two thousand and three and.

What was your Your blog was called Captain.

Captain's Quarters, Captain's Right Up, and it was it was. It was an ongoing thing from two thousand and three to two thousand and eight. When I came aboard hot Air, you know, they required me to shut down the old blog and redirect the traffic to hot air. But it's still out there. I think right now there's some difficulty in accessing the archives, but I do pay to have the archives maintains interesting.

Wow, so I don't have my blog was called Alarming News. I don't have it anymore.

I let my domain name lap.

Somebody snapped up that domain name and I don't have archives of any of it. And I feel mixed about that, because like I would like to go back sometimes and look at what I maybe wrote in the past. On the other hand, I find a lot of the just the way I used to speak very embarrassing. Or when I see like old Facebook, you know, status messages from fifteen years ago, I'm like, oh.

God, that was awful. I talk like that.

I don't understand why you feel that way, because I loved Alarming News, and I thought you did a great job there.

But but you know that when you when you read the past, you the way like just the way I would turn a phrase or yes, I don't.

Know very yah.

Yeah, I go through the same thing looking at my old stuf too, But but I mean, Alarming News was great. I loved the Alarming News and it was great domain name, which is the reason why I got snapped up. I don't think anybody's going to snap up Captain's quartersblog dot com.

But you know, you never know.

I use it for some email purposes, to personal email purposes, so I just keep the I keep the site running, and I think I need to alert them that it's not coming up. You know, it was like a few months ago I realized that there was some issues with it. It's a high priority for me that I still haven't filed AATA, of course, but eventually I will because I do like to go back and look at it from time to time.

So what do you see as like the major change from those days.

Well, I think, you know, it's more professional, right. I think substack has a little bit of what the blog Yes, right, substack is kind of what the old blog is beer was like. But I got professional and the reason was because we all got better at what we do. You got professional. I got professional, and it's because we we learned. And you know, those of us who survived that era exactly so, because you know, we we were able to

Yeah they had data, Yeah, no lives. That was life. But I remember that.

Era of when bloggers started going professional and they just they like the major you know what we call the mainstream news outlets started MSM started hiring bloggers and that was the end of it, really, and it was for me. It was actually w n y C Public Radio in New York. They needed like a token conservative and they hired me and the Post hired me from there, and it was, you know, kind of the end of that for me. But yeah, it was the people that were

I'm just saying that's that's.

Kind of how it was really good because you were really good.

Thank you.

But Hot Air has been so instrumental for so long and so in the mix of the conversation.

Is that hard to maintain? Just just the sheer length of time that you guys have been around is impressive.

Well, thank you. First off, I appreciate that. It's it's you know, it takes an effort, right, and from time to time we fall back a little bit. From time to time we catch up a little bit. And I think that you know, we were brought up by again, we were brought up by Salem fifteen years ago, just a little over fifteen years ago, and which is great. I love Salem. I was working with Salem prior to that and local radio, and then now I work for

Right, I'm going to say timely, But that wasn't quite the I knew what you were looking for.

Yeah, that we could jump on emerging stories with you know, some basis of already acquired knowledge and comments on it intelligently immediately.

Right.

Sometimes we forget that and we get a little bit too lost in our think pieces.

Sure, right, there.

Is something about that immediacy that we've we've lost. I mean, I guess we have it on X now, but then it's not quite the same as as the blog post of the of that era and what.

Hot air does.

It's like I'll see something that I want to write about, I'll write it, and then four days later it comes out you know in some some outlets.

That's that's a lag.

You know, that's not the immediacy of getting it up on your site and having people react right away exactly.

And sometimes we have to sometimes internally we have to remind ourselves of that is that the thing pieces are great, but stuff that could run today tomorrow or that are you know later in the week generally aren't what is driving eyeballs to the site right now. And so I mean you have to have a mix because I think that those thing pieces are incredibly important, so that we can to a certain extent philosophies about what our approach is going to be when breaking news stories actually come up.

Well, yes, that's like a mile a minute.

Israel is still under attack. Missile fire has resumed from Huti's has Bulah and Hamas enemies teeking Israel's destruction. Here in America, we cannot imagine living under a constant threat of terrorism and rocket attacks. This is the reality in Israel. Parents taking their children to school, falling to the ground to lay on top of their small children, trying to comfort them as sirens blair. The next attack against Israel is happening now with little time to prepare, So we

At eight eight eight four eight eight IFCJ that's eight eight eight four eight eight four three two five, or online at SUPPORTIFCJ dot org to give one word support IFCJ dot org.

What do you consider your be You know, for me, I consider myself a generalist, right. I try to write about lots of different things because lots of different things interest me. But I think, you know, hot era. I mean, I think the beat is really the breaking news cycle, right, and that's again we have to kind of attune ourselves to that. But I like to write about the economy. I like to write about you know, policy, Policy is really what matters most to me. I'm not big on

Not because films are bad.

Now, well, it's kind of fun to write reviews for bad films, I have to admit, but.

Not the watching of the bad film I watched that.

My movie watching has like plummeted to zero, just because every movie I watch is so bad.

And then I and.

It's always like the critically acclaimed movies that I watch, and they're just terrible, and I can't do it anymore.

Don't even get me started on the Shape of Water. It was so bad when I when I got back to my house and wrote the review, which I did the night I watched.

That, like giggling as you wrote it.

I was more grinding my teeth as I wrote it. And I wrote in there, this is so bad. I predict it's going to win a lot of awards this coming season. Of course, one's Best Oscar, Best Picture Oscar, and I actually pulled that forward after it won just to say I told you so. But it's kind of fun too. It's kind of fun to be that critical to feel the release of being that critical. Sometimes when you really love a movie, you're kind of defending it to a certain extent. Yeah, So, I mean that's a trap.

You know, I love this movie, the act on stuff that you.

Don't like and this, oh you know, just skip the fact that this film I really love doesn't have an act two and half of it. Act three is missing as well.

I overlooked it. Why can't your actly? Yeah, what do you worry about?

You don't worry about being wrong, you know. To me, it's I mean, everybody's wrong. Everybody makes mistakes. I'm not so much worried about making a factual mistake, although that's always embarrassing when you have to go correction. I'll tell you what I did just recently was kind of fun.

Right, So you're such a good guy, like I just you're too.

Good for all of this, honestly, you know, it's it's those kind of human moments that sort of make it fun, you know, And then you have the people who are pills who you just decide that I'm just not going to I'm just not going to engage people that are miserable and and I don't want to. I don't want to talk about those examples because it's you know, that person should be those people should be on this podcast if we're going to have that conversation. So I'll just

So have you been wrong a lot in your career?

Well, I don't know about a lot. I hope not a lot, right, I mean I've been wrong. I mean I've gotten some things wrong. We're've had to go back. I guess the big the biggest example was the you know polling analysis in twenty twelve, which enraged when when when Obama ended up winning that year, our readership was furious with us and a lot of them left them didn't come back. Yeah. Well, and I I said, we blew it. You know, we were doing that whole unskewed

You're sort of like, it's a it's a tough spot to find yourself.

Sometimes the poles really are skewed well.

And they have been right, they were before, they've been since. But I've learned not to assert data that I don't actually have. And you know, we were re manipulating the data, assuming that had been manipulated in the first place, and we were just flat out wrong, right, So I wrote at least two, you know, apologies to readers for that, and I end up writing a book about that sort of tangentially right, and you know, that was an enjoyable experience too. But yeah, that would be one of the

Very fair though, I mean, again, I think that so long ago, and I you know, there's been again opportunities for the polls to be and skewed since then. But it's very noble of you to take that blame responsibility, however you want to say it.

You know how noble it is when it's really patently obvious to everybody and you're just owning up.

You can let people forget it. Nobody will ever, you know, Well, yeah.

Yeah, I guess, yeah, I mean, but I mean you asked, And so that's a pretty good example of it. I've gotten factually thinking things factually incorrect that on a couple of occasions, I negated the entire point of a post that I wrote from which point you just put, you know, update, I got this wrong. Everything below here is no sense you know you got that?

Yeah, yeah, And so the beauty of blogging versus publishing in a newspaper right there.

Though, right right, you know. And honestly, I've gotten columns early on. I think I got one really wrong for The New York Sun, and I I actually just quit writing the column. I was so embarrassed by it. And this is early in my blogging career. Yeah, they didn't ask me to stop. They were kind of unhappy with the fact that I'd gotten something pretty significantly wrong. It colored the conclusion of the whole point of my column, and I wrote back, and I, you know, it was

Down the road, so too good.

What advice would you give your fifteen year old self for sixteen year old self.

Oh, my goodness, you know, I have a joke answer for that, which is to stay, which is to say, either be a left handed relief pitcher or a police kicker for football, because you can. You can. You can spend twenty years doing that in your uniform will never get dirty.

But I feel like you like getting your uniform dirty.

I know I do kind of even back in those days. I kind of like getting the uniform dirty, you know, you know. And then the obvious answer is finished college, which I didn't do.

Wow.

I don't think I would have listened to that, though, because that was the same advice that my dad was giving me constantly during that same period. I was and I've written about that a couple times. I think at hot air, and I think that if I was, you know, to seriously address this question, what I would say is one, connect to your faith, because God is going to be very important to you, and the sooner you connect to that,

And the moment it's everything.

It's everything, and that's part of just growing up to you just learn that. And I don't think I don't think you can hear that advice, and sure anybody actually pay attention to it, even if it's coming from your older self. But I mean, those are the things I think that I would actually say to myself back then.

Got it or youth in general.

Right, It's like yeah, youth in general.

Yeah, what would have.

Been your like plan B had this not worked out, had you started writing and it didn't happen.

I think it just stayed with the call center job. I actually liked the company I was working for it.

I'm so creative, like I feel like, I guess I imagine you would have done something else creative.

Well, I mean, I guess I was thinking in terms of career. But yeah, you know, if the blogging thing hadn't worked out, you know, I'm I would never have gotten a chance to write the book I did. Maybe I would have improved myself to the point where I could actually write a book that would actually get published. But I don't know that that's the case. I think that if the blogging thing hadn't worked out, it might have been sort of a well, you know, the writing

Right, do you ever think about like the people getting into writing now or like trying to do what we do without the blogging world.

I don't know what to suggest to them a lot of the time. I mean, I say, be on X, you know, engage, be interesting.

But the blogging world really did provide the path in a way that it just doesn't exist anymore.

Well, I think it's a ground floor situation. It's an emergency emerging industry. I mean, we didn't think about this all that much in that YO time.

We were thinking about how do we make this profitable? But we weren't thinking like how do we become professional writers?

As I wasn't right and exactly and you know, honestly, I thought the path would be more to radio, which I still do, you know, but I don't do it on a regular base this right, I.

Guess it came late to all this, the starting podcasts and well, I don't know as of spades. And I had a podcast in yeah, two thousand and five, two thousand and five, so twenty years ago, Hoist the Black Flag.

But you know it was an internet radio show.

Well, and I had one back in two thousand and seven, and we've been doing it ever since at hot Air, Right. But I think that the problem is is that it became an industry and so the barrier to entry is higher than it was when you and I were doing this twenty one. Yeah, and that's the reason why I mentioned substack. I think subtech is a really good platform.

I remember back then somebody would leave a comment on my blood, you know, on a post I wrote, and I would go look at their blog and look at what they're writing.

And that's how you know you found new writers. You don't really have that anymore.

I mean, I guess now if somebody like tweets at you or whatever it's called now, but and maybe says something interesting, then you go to their page and you look at it.

But even that I click over a lot less often.

Yeah, I don't think so. I think I just look at their at their at their Twitter string, right, I don't know that I click over sometimes.

I no, I mean that their Twitter stream. I don't even click over to their Twitter stream anymore. Like I think maybe like once in a while, if the if their tweet at me really grabs me, then okay, I'll go look at their profile page.

But you know, Rare, I think you're right.

I think it's it's not the same type of thing because I think back in those days again, less of an industry, more as a collegial collection of hobbyists.

Yeah, that's what we are getting together at like seapack can neither.

Seapack or you know, the sidelines or anything. Really.

The RNC convention in New York two thousand and four was a big one. Yeah, well, I miss seeing you around, you know. I think we need to get that these going again where we run into each other at different events, and I've loved the opportunity to talk to you today because you know, I think you're just fantastic.

We're going to take a quick break and be right back on the Carol Marcowitch Show and us here with your best tip for my listeners on how they can improve their lives.

How they can improve their lives. I feel very I don't feel qualified to tell them, but I will. I will say this, which is that you have to be true to yourself. And by that, I don't mean that you have to be selfish, but I think you have to know who you are in order to be truly good to others. And I think only by being truly good to others are you going to improve your life. Because the more you're focused on yourself, the worse your life is going to get over the long period of time.

I love it.

Here is Ed Morriscy check him out on hot air dot com. You are just fantastic, So nice to see you.

Thank you, Carol, I really appreciate it.

Thanks so much for joining us on The Carol Marcowich Show. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.