A Front Row Seat for the Digital News Explosion

Joe Luther  
Welcome to another episode of Friends in wonder, a place where we invite you to explore meaningful topics without judgment or limits,

Vince Kern  
brought to you by two lifelong friends sharing their insights, while wondering, how can this help.

Joe Luther  
I'm Joe Luther. And I'm Vince Kern, and we've got great topics lined up for you each week. So be sure to subscribe, like and even share with your friends.

Vince Kern  
Now let's wander and wander together.

Joe Luther  
Well, Vince, this week we have the opportunity to kind of turn the mic around. Last week, you had the chance to interview me about part of my career arc, and this week, we're going to dive into something that's near and dear to your heart. And that has to do with well, the digital revolution and what that did to the delivery of news. Because you and I were born and lived in a time when that industry changed an awful lot. And you of course, had a front row seat. And we're actually an active participant in what happened in the news industry during the digital revolution. So today, I get to talk to you a little bit about your career. And, you know, I think that's what we need to do first is maybe just give the listener some background, and I think part of that will kind of create the story itself, because it shows how you were part of a very interesting time in the news industry.

Vince Kern  
Indeed. So I get to sit in the guest seat today, I suppose is what you're trying to tell me. And you're gonna pepper me with a bunch of questions. And

Joe Luther  
if I get some opportunity, you might, yeah, that might can pay back

Vince Kern  
pay backs or hell, yeah, no, you know, we we live in. And my dad used to say this all the time, he used to say, Oh, there's the Chinese proverb, may you live in interesting times. And by gosh, we certainly do, Joe. I mean, the information explosion in our lifetime is unbelievable. And I gotta tell you, I was looking at, like, get a shout out to my niece, Eliza, and niece in law, Justin, who just had twins, twin boys, and sent me a picture of their twin boys in knitted peas. So they're peas in a pod. And I thought to myself, I can only imagine how their life is going to be and what kind of change they're going to experience. I mean, these, these, these young twins, Jason, and Jackson, are going to be born in an age where the, you know, the, the volume of digital information and content that's out there is just unbelievable. Whereas, you know, we grew up in a different time. And I call it you know, this sort of transition from analog to digital. So, you know, we grew up in a very analog time. I mean, there were lots of digital things going on, and progressing in in the 60s when we were kids. And, and, as you've we've mentioned, we both had paper routes, and that was really my first experience to the, to the reading the news and the newspaper content.

Joe Luther  
Yeah, I mean, it speaks to the way news was delivered. When we were young, and we were part of that I, I, you know, and really, obviously, some of this stuff is, is self evident. But I think to discuss it in a quick overview of how you went from paperboy to an executive in a major newspaper during the digital revolution. Let's talk about it real quickly. And

Vince Kern  
I guess I gotta give him do a little resume, resume review here. For those who don't know me. And even those who do know me, probably, you know, all these dots get connected in different ways. Actually, I did create a newspaper in fourth grade, I think the headlines were something like, you know, they were very funny. Tigers lose their, you know about something about a catcher's jockstrap who fell off during the game and, and you know, infantile things like that. But I literally drew out a newspaper had pictures of things going on and that sort of thing. Now fast forward to you know, Paperboy and I remember the thing that is weak when we grew up, of course, newspapers were an everyday thing. Mom and dad had them on the breakfast table, or the afternoon table, depending on when your newspaper came out. And that's how everybody pretty much got their news except for that little six o'clock, half hours. slice

Joe Luther  
and write newspapers were were dailies. There was no daily

Vince Kern  
newspapers. Yeah. And a lot of this is, you know, very, very cliche in

Joe Luther  
multiple ones, you know, there was the Detroit News, which was the big one. And then there were neighborhood newspapers as well,

Vince Kern  
right? Local paper you're in, and national papers. Now you had to go to the store to buy the national papers. I didn't have home delivery of New York Times back

Joe Luther  
then a Wall Street Journal, that kind of thing. Right? And there were hard to find. Obviously, you were always drawn to news and delivery of news. And I didn't even know that you created your own newspaper in fourth grade.

Vince Kern  
Well, let's shown it to too many people. So

Joe Luther  
well, no, but that speaks to really what you knew in your heart you wanted to do. And in fact, then you went to college, and you actually studied journalism, didn't you?

Vince Kern  
Yeah, I was I was always fascinated with writing. You know. And, and I think one of the things that having, you know, a newspaper route did was gave me a real appreciation for what was out there. And so by the time I got to college, I really didn't know exactly what I wanted to do. And at first, I thought it was radio, and I thought I had a good radio voice. I certainly had a good radio face. And I took some classes, no argument here. And, and but there was one class that just fascinated me it was with a guy named Glenn Mac now who wrote for the free press. And he taught a print journalism class and ran us through all of the things about being a reporter. And frankly, I was hooked. And that began a career of stringing for local newspapers. I wrote for the Oakland press, the royler. Tribune.

Joe Luther  
So you were doing this as a college student as a college student freelance writing, and then you, you actually became the editor of our college newspaper. I want to say I went to the same university, Wayne State University in Detroit,

Vince Kern  
right, Wayne State University, it was a it's a commuter school. It's a, it was an interesting paper, because it was a 10,000 circulation daily that was distributed not only on campus, but around the whole midtown area. And we're talking about the mid 80s here. So and

Joe Luther  
we're talking about you being 20, some years old, and I gotta tell you, from my vantage point, seeing you become the editor of that newspaper, and it was significant newspaper in Detroit, it was kind of like an offbeat hip newspaper for even non students to read. But when you became when you became editor of that newspaper, I started to take notice, maybe Vince really will do something in this industry.

Vince Kern  
Yeah, well, you know, it's funny, it was quite a rebellious newspaper. And one of the reasons for that is that it was completely student run, there was no faculty telling them what to write. And one of the missions at that time was to bring the newspaper back to a more journalistic endeavor for journalism students and people who really wanted to experience the newspaper, as it is traditionally, as opposed to sort of, you know, rebellious place. And that was a goal. And one of the things that they did at that time was bought a new computer system. And this is really where the story kind of begins, I was tasked with the process of researching and purchasing and implementing a networked computer system, which at the time, there were very few in any newspapers. And this was a PC network system. So I got exposure to technology at a very early age, I had already been a freelance journalist for a number of years. And the two kind of melded together in a very interesting way. And I could go down a lot of rabbit holes with that. But suffice to say, as I got closer to graduation, I applied for some internships at the Detroit News and interesting things happened. One of them was that three freshmen journalists got the internships instead of me. And at the time, there was a great movement. And I was part of that because I worked with this journalism Institute for minorities, to help promote minorities in the newspaper business, frankly, it was an all white, pretty much all male reporting business. And when I was turned down for those internships, a guy called me on the phone and said, Look, I want to give you some advice. If you want to become a journalist and just a reporter. You can do that at any time in your career, but you have technology in your background, and that's where things are going. So,

Joe Luther  
you know, like in the graduate where he said think plastics. Exactly. It was the guy whispering in your ear think technology.

Vince Kern  
I had been offered a job to travel the country putting in these systems all over in newsrooms.

Joe Luther  
So wait a minute, you got offered a job I right around the time you are graduating to work close to graduate. Yeah,

Vince Kern  
yeah. And then I just put in this, this anonymous phone call who said, you know, I know you're frustrated, probably because you're better qualified than any of the interns that are coming in. But here's a here's an idea for you. And then I ran that by a mentor, and he basically confirmed, so I took the job, and I wound up traveling all over the country, putting in systems in newsrooms all over the country.

Joe Luther  
What was the name of that company? I see it was at the C text. Yeah, that

Vince Kern  
was C text. And they were one of the stand for C stands for the language of programming. So it was written in C. And so it was C text and the premises. I mean, if you think about it today, these were very low powered PCs network together, and it was all text, there was really no graphics, it was about

Joe Luther  
well, you mean low powered in today's terms, but back then it was cutting edge?

Vince Kern  
Well, back then, you know, a floppy disk, for instance, you know, was maybe a couple of Meg you could store on it at the most and, and it was the size it was, you know, five and a quarter inches and or three and a half inches wide. And, you know, all okay.

Joe Luther  
All right, we can.

Vince Kern  
So I wound up traveling all over the country. And that's where I really learned newsroom operations. I already had a journalism background. Now I'm picking up the process, the production, the business, the whole nine yards.

Joe Luther  
So this seat tax was basically bringing technology to all of the analog printing operations around the country, and you were in the front lines and bring that all of these newspapers,

Vince Kern  
right. You know, there was no Macintosh was Mac's were not prevalent in newsrooms. At the time. There was no Internet, there were no mobile phones. It was still,

Joe Luther  
I mean, many newspapers were still doing the old typeface of putting things together manually. Exactly.

Vince Kern  
Right. And so in that, that's an interesting segue, because that was the New York Post hired me because they wanted to start a Sunday edition. And so we, they hired me away from C Tex. And I moved to New York and lived in Brooklyn and commuted to Manhattan every day, and managed their computer systems, which were across the board. And that was may still mainframe systems and all kinds of other things. But again, this point of, of merging the journalism experience with the tech knowledge experience, and then the very significant thing happened, a paper that I had put a system in and east of San Diego wanted a sort of a technology slash journalist person to literally run their newsroom. So at the ripe old age of 29, I became the top person in the newsroom at the Daily Californian, which was a 50,000 circulation daily. And

Joe Luther  
I remember when that happened, that was quite an opportunity for a young man. And I will tell you again, you know, Vince and I were have been best friends ever since we were seven years old. And I watched him go from New York, and then to California, following these, these paths that I really was I just, I was a homebody, I stayed in Metro Detroit my whole life. And I was amazed at your willingness to go take on these challenges in places where you had no contacts. In the daily California, you really got thrown into a big opportunity. Yeah, it was pretty

Vince Kern  
cool. It was a pretty cool time. And when I got to California, there was a lot of interesting things that happened there. And those that's, you know, I think will down the road be talking about a lot of the interesting stories that that came about. But but in a sense, you know, one of them was all of a sudden, I was running the newspaper 29 years old, and I had to pinch myself because it was like, how did I get here? How did I achieve this career goal that I had, you know, just eight or nine years ago, and in some senses, I was well equipped in other senses. I wasn't because experience of of leading a newsroom is something that no matter how much you have, it's experiential.

Joe Luther  
But yeah, that's a that's probably a topic for another episode. But yeah, important thing is to describe the way that you, you were involved in the news, creation, you were involved in the news, delivery and production and all of that, at a time when the industry was changing dramatically.

Vince Kern  
Yeah, now we're talking about the early low from the late 80s to the early 90s. And that's when the internet hit And that's when things really, really started changing. And, you know, to bring this back to our topic about how news, distribution and consumption started changing. The Internet came about and some newspapers were dabbling in websites. But at that point, I was really more involved with helping them improve their processes through streamlining technology. But shortly thereafter, in 95, I left in came back to Detroit to work for the Detroit News and free press. And that was, when things really started happening.

Joe Luther  
Yeah, you came back to really the newspaper that you delivered as a boy. And that was our icon in Detroit. And we had two daily newspapers in Detroit, the free press in the news, but I think at that time, or maybe during when you were there, they they kind of merged in, they

Vince Kern  
merged before I was there. And there were a lot of things you got,

Joe Luther  
but you got to be part of this, this big, giant monolith. And in you were doing at a time when, when the industry was changing,

Vince Kern  
the industry was changing big time. There were a lot of things by the time I came to Detroit, that were already eating away at newspapers, ability to sustain the kind of journalism that it always had in the past in terms of resources, you know, the information explosion started, you really think about cable TV, and eBay. All of these things were eating away at the advertising ability, advertising revenues for newspapers, and readership was already declining from from, you know, cable news and, and other things that had begun to disseminate information in a in a, you know, more of a 24 hour news cycle. And the internet certainly was a big part of that. But still, you had two platforms for newspapers at the time you had, either the website that were people were still developing and trying to figure out how to make revenues off of, you know, an online product where people could literally get it for free. As opposed to the printed product, and how people's prefer to consume information. The tactile feeling of newspaper versus so did yeah.

Joe Luther  
How did you navigate the Detroit News? Because I know, just because I know you that you are involved in an awful lot of think tanking within the executive boardrooms at the Detroit News on how to manage this, this transition from, from analog newspapers to the digital world. And obviously, there's revenues that spoke to that. Because at the time during that, that transition, people are getting things for free. And the newspaper business model is you got to pay for my newspaper and people saying, What do I need that thing for I can go on the internet and get access to it for free. So you are in the middle of all of that. And that's really what we want to talk about today. Apart from your involvement in this is what does that mean to the consumers today of of how we get our newspaper. But I guess before we get there, tell me a little bit more, tell us a little bit more about what it was like to be a part of this giant monolith that was staring at the headlights or the train oncoming train of the digital world.

Vince Kern  
Yeah, you know, it's interesting that you, you bring that out, because Detroit really was a breeding ground for innovation for getting that which I owned. The newspapers that the Detroit News was on separately by a different company, but But basically, it was getting that running the show. And at the time, they were the largest media newspaper company in the country. And so Detroit became this, this sort of breeding ground for innovation. And frankly, I gotta tell you by about 2008 or so, I had transitioned into more of an r&d role with the newspapers. And there was some of the greatest innovative minds that I've ever worked with. They're the publishers, the editorial people, I could name, you know, dozens of people that really were innovators and and Canet sort of used us as, as as a as a breeding ground. One of the things that happened around 2009 Was that the delivery model just basically became unsustainable. And you know, delivery trucks are driving 300,000 miles a night, the cost of gas, the cost of newsprint, the downward trend and circulation. I mean, things were going down 5% Every six months in terms of printed circulation. Yeah.

Joe Luther  
And like you said, the eBays and all these other ways of selling things, what classifieds were such a big part of the revenues of newspapers and, and that was disappearing.

Vince Kern  
Right. But what was appearing were smartphones, and e readers and Kindles and all kinds of electronic devices were a lot of concepts that were burgeoning in the industry on how to gain efficiencies in production, but also how to navigate the digital world, were became tasks. For Detroit, it was really interesting time, there had been sort of a patriotic, patriotic, patriotic leadership, patriotic,

Joe Luther  
archaic, who knows dance, but I love, I love what I'm saying here to create words, events.

Vince Kern  
And a lot of women who had been working in Detroit, became the top leaders. And I have to tell you, it was really refreshing because the the level of innovation and in different types of thinking, were really refreshing. And they were leading the path with a great publisher, called David named David hunky, who decided to make a drastic change in the distribution model. And, and, and, by 2009, we're going to cut home delivery to three days, which would be a Thursday, Friday, and Sunday. And we partnered with a burgeoning e reader company, to deliver the newspaper via this e reader. And we're going to subsidize this ereader for people who could read it at home, and design it be the use of PDFs and send this out. Now, at the same time, the iPad was it was in its development. And long story short, the point of this is that newspapers are trying to decide how to format their content on all of these new evolving platforms, smartphones, the iPad was going to be coming out, we were doing it to a black and white e reader. So we were taking PDFs and creating touch points. So if you can imagine that, and, and we were just about to pull the trigger on that when the iPad came out, and it changed everything. The iPad literally changed the way everything was going to happen. Because they not only took control over the digital content delivery in the form of apps, which really hadn't been developed yet. But but were coming. But they also started to to eat into the subscription model. So originally, Apple was going to take 30% of any paid subscription to a newspaper. So the dilemma for newspapers was, do we offer it for free and count on advertising revenue from other sources? How does this all work out? That's a whole nother episode. And that's a lot of insight hardball. But suffice to say that it was a really critical point for the newspaper industry, because nobody really knew what was going to happen.

Joe Luther  
Yeah, there was a lot of pivoting going on at those at that time. And just so I understand, what you're saying is the innovators in Detroit and even this female leadership group that you were a part of, were kind of like a template or, or a testing ground for what gun that wanted to do, internationally or across the nation with other newspapers. So you were really involved in a lot of the, I guess, transition in the business model of how to deliver news.

Vince Kern  
Yeah, my role at the time was to help redesign the content for this for this E Ink reader. And I remember when we went to CES, which is the Consumer Electronics Show, in Las Vegas. This this product was unveiled there were there were three newspapers that were on this platform. It was the Detroit News. And the Detroit Free Press was actually two newspapers, the Wall Street Journal, and USA Today, which was also a Kinect kind of, there were only three and there was a lot of hubbub about it. And it was, it was very exciting. That was in too early 2010. And I believe it was March when the iPad came out. And all of that went by the wayside. The big reason was that this ereader was that we were working with was going to cost about $700. And the iPad came out at about $399 to

Joe Luther  
Oh, so the idea was people are going to buy this kind of like Kindle and they were going to get their newspapers that way. But when the iPad came out Not everybody had to pretty much change and play hardball play ball with Apple,

Vince Kern  
right. And the thing that that moves us forward into more of a today's type of scenario is that you had Google and Yahoo, and all of these internet search providers, and out there now by this time, who were, you know, able to curate links from newspapers and newspaper articles and display them for free. And you there were there were platforms out there that were literally curate news articles that you could, that you could build. So you know, that content was being given away for free. And so the business model for newspapers was really in trouble. And that's when it started to shift from more of a subscription service to clicks. And this is, you know, part of the conversation is of how does this help? Is is what happened to the actual content itself. Going forward? Where you are marketing now to advertisers based on clicks and based on Yeah,

Joe Luther  
the whole concept of what, what is journalism anymore, right. I mean, journalism, when you were a paperboy was very clear. You were delivering a newspaper that journalists had written, obviously, there was different forms of journalism within a newspaper. But then when it went to the digital age, it became more about clickbait. Right.

Vince Kern  
Well, in a lot of sense. Yeah. I mean, I can tell you a story about I think it was around 2014. Ben Affleck was in Detroit recording a movie. And he took his dog for a walk and across the street was Channel Four, WD IV, and his dog defecated on the lawn. And someone had a picture of that. And it was posted on the I think it was the free press. And I remember the all the hubbub about Ben Aflac and having him in the news. And they had this system where they would promote stories based on click, you had this big huge screen in the newsroom. And it could tell you in real time, and this thing just exploded to the top. And I remember thinking, Oh, my God, this is this is where consumers are today. You know, the, it's more about now pictures. I mean, if you think about it, Facebook became public in 2006. Instagram became public in 2009. And, and the statistics are, are just amazing of how people moved into, into those platforms for I won't call it news, but But talk about competing for time in news consumption.

Joe Luther  
Yeah. And it almost became, instead of journalism, it became tabloid ism. And of course, that all got sorted out eventually, because people want journalism. It's just that when we went from that transition of analog to digital, things became very murky in you again, we're right there in the middle of it all. So tell me, how did it think back to your last few years at the Detroit News? And you know, what, what would you say sticks out for you the most? During that time when it went from analog to digital?

Vince Kern  
Yeah, the thing that sticks out to me the most is that, and perhaps rightfully so, newspapers had sort of, were the, you know, the only only game in town situation for for for hundreds of years, they were the only game in town, and to pivot from that business model to a new one where everything was so nascent. And nobody knew in any business, frankly, nobody knew how smartphones and tablets were going to change, change any any business. But the information explosion in itself, there's a chart that I have seen, and it basically talks about the information explosion. And, you know, you talk about the earliest written record in 3000 BC, and you go to the printing press, in 1450. That's a huge explosion of information into our culture. So I mean, speaking anthropologically here, in in 1900, the London library had, you know, 500,000 books and that's pretty much you know, I think the number of books that existed, you know, in the in the world, and then the internet explosion happened and this this arc of, of data that's out there, literally went on a 90 degree angle upward and this per ticular

Joe Luther  
when you say the arc of data, you're saying the excess of consumer accessibility to data or

Vince Kern  
what? Yeah, exactly, it could be any kind of accessibility to any kind of digital, you know, data volume that's out there. By 2002, only 1% of all of that was stored on paper. So that gives you an idea how all of this just transition to a digital world. And in 2010, the amount of information and data that we have created and put out there equals two stacks of books running from earth to Pluto. Now, now, the fact that somebody can even figure that out in five to 10 minutes, is pretty amazing, because it would have taken a mathematician probably days to do that back in the, you know, the BC days. But gets back to this thing about living in interesting times. So the thing that sticks out to me the most about that time is going around statewide doing research on people's news habits. And we're talking 2011 2012 interviewing people across the state. And I remember one interview in particular was with a 65 year old woman at the time, who was one of the few people who had an app on her smartphone for news in her age group. And she just was telling me that everybody was just astounded by it. And now, you know, 65 year olds, pretty much everybody's got a smartphone. You know, I mean, that sticks out to me the answers to the questions of what was going on? Back then,

Joe Luther  
you know, what I wanted to ask, though, Vince is because we're talking about how the delivery of news has changed. And one of the things that I guess, has disappeared, for the most part, and correct me if I'm wrong, is the idea of a news editor. And that editor was kind of like the police officer of true journalism, and what would what would be considered newsworthy and improperly written, or fairly or balanced? Or whatever it is, in now, really, two editors like that even exist, it's it's more direct, there's no middleman, there's really no police man of what is news anymore? Is that what would you say? That's fair?

Vince Kern  
I'd say that's fair. To a certain extent, I think there are still editors in newsrooms, and they, they edit to a certain degree, but I think there's a lot fewer, certainly a lot fewer editors in the newsrooms, journalists now are expected to not only write their own article, but take their own pictures and provide all kinds of other types of things with their submission. And as it's done in real time, you know, it's, it's not always a smooth, clean process, I think, the editing thing gets into a discussion of self publishing. And what began to happen with Twitter and with Facebook, and certainly, to some degree with Instagram, is that now you've got this smartphone in your hand, and you can publish anything from anywhere, to various social platforms, which really, were evolving at the time of, of all the things I'm talking about happened. And it was this this unknown human behavior trend, I was on the forefront of Facebook, and Instagram and Twitter, as part of my job. And I was probably one of the first, you know, subscribers to all of those platforms within, you know, a very early age, I shouldn't say first, but a very early age, or you were one of the first and I remember thinking, Oh, these are great, you know, we're going to be able to put out all kinds of, you know, information for people, and it's going to all be beneficial and everything else. Well, you know, as humans, we don't always take the tools that we develop and use them in the best way possible. And, you know, you can you can put that editing conversation into the question of what is news? And how is it consumed? I give you an example of, you know, to answer the question, what is news is news. News is, you know, if it's a meaningful contribution to someone's life, you know, that's a very general definition. So, if I'm on next door, and I see somebody post a question of, Hey, there's this new building going up at the end of the street there next to the shopping center. What is it? And someone can answer that question. Oh, that's a new Kentucky Fried Chicken. Well, that's news. But I didn't get it from the newspaper. I didn't get it from the website of the newspaper. And I probably didn't get it from the smartphone. I got it from an app that's called next door that, you know, is a whole new thing.

Joe Luther  
So your idea of news which maybe I mean Isn't is an interesting question is that it's information, information that people need or want to know,

Vince Kern  
news or what need or want to know. Now the question in today's world, and this is obviously where we're at today is whether that news is accurate, whether it's misinformation, and this whole ability of having the choice of reading on multiple platforms like substack, or, or Twitter, or

Joe Luther  
there's so much out there and and on the one hand, that's great, because in the old days, when I read The Detroit News in analog form, I was only getting what the editor in chief of the Detroit News deemed I was going to get in today, I can go to any electronic device and get news from all across the world wherever I desire. And remind standpoint, that's an improvement, having access to all this other information that wouldn't otherwise be available in the analog form. But of course, there's the flip side to it. Right? If, if you've got so much access to this, how do you sift through it? And how do you know, like, I asked about the editor, how do you know what's accurate? How do you know? You know, what is manipulative? Or, or propaganda? And, and that's really, I guess, the interesting thing, and that's why I thought it would be great to talk about your career today, which is really the delivery of news, you've been involved in delivering news, your whole career, really. And in today, that is such an interesting topic, what is news? And how was it delivered? And how do we sift through it all?

Vince Kern  
Yeah, to sum up all of the pre ambling about my career, I was there at a very, very fascinating time. I mean, I almost feel like I was, you know, part of the control room, people in NASA launching rockets, you know, and watching what was going on, I can tell you a quick story about, you know, where things were back, then I remember I was asked to give a presentation on Twitter and what it was, and, you know, it was it was evolving, and just coming out and, and Twitter had this thing called hashtags. So I was telling the executive board some day, and in the not too near future, every tweet is going to have hashtags. And you're going to have people tweeting about TV shows. So when they're when they're watching or baseball game, for instance. So this, this audience of content consumers, has now evolved from, you know, a newspaper giving a game summary of a story to somebody using a hashtag called Tiger baseball, and posting about it as they watch it on television. Or it could be your favorite, you know, Series Drama Series, or whatever it is. And I remember the looks on the faces of all of the some of the news editors, and some of the people sitting around the boardroom, they were scoffing,

Joe Luther  
they were, they were saying that they're never going to replace the horse is that

Vince Kern  
it'll never happen. It'll never happen. It'll never happen. And I sort of got laughed out of that, that presentation. And you know, those are the kinds of things I remember. But again, it gets back to the self publishing thing today. And this conversation about the how does it help? And how does it? How does it not up, I go back to the twins in the two peas in the pod, and Jason and Jackson. And I think about the world they're growing up in. And this gets back to living in interesting times. I mean, think about what our grandparents experienced in their lifetime. Think about what our parents experienced in their lifetime. Think about the things that we've experienced in our lifetime. And now think about a baby born in 2023, where, you know, they're at this point of real inflection. And I think the inflection point is going to be how do we as humans handle this information explosion? Yeah, I mean, think about it. It's only been 2020 30 years or so.

Joe Luther  
I don't think we've figured it out yet. That's for sure. And I think that's really what today's episode was, kind of meant to draw a light on is that you were part of this change and describing your history with how it has evolved over the last, I don't know, 40 years is and the way as you say, with your nieces, your grand nieces is going to continue to evolve really does call attention to maybe taking a moment and thinking about this whole digital transformation and what it means to us as humans,

Vince Kern  
humans, you know, I'm the great news is is that I know Justin and Eliza are great parents and so so you know things evolve and as As we heard in our some of our interviews in that previous podcast about the generations, people pass things down from generation to generation. And I really, you know, got to a point where it was really depressing, watching what happened to the news media. And certainly you can look at, you know, CNN, Fox, MSNBC, any of the major news distributors on television right now, and look at the partisanship and the clickbait stuff, and the focus on, you know, all kinds of things that we could say, there could be better focus on other things. But I, again, you know, think about the fact that this is so new to us as a culture and, and I sometimes wish that, you know, I will have the opportunity in 100 years to see how it all turns out. But I did go through a period where I was really, really disheartened. And I think the end of that, after a lot of deep thought and critical thinking and years of being removed from it is that you have to have hope that humans will adapt to this in the best way possible.

Joe Luther  
I think your grand nieces or grand nephews will do a very good job of adapting to the new world, just like you know, like you said, in our generational discussions, those episodes, Generation Z, I think, is going to surprise a lot of people. And so the generations after them, because they are equipped. As our adaptive human DNA continues to display, they're equipped to handle this change. It's just going to be a matter of how we process at all and how we sift through this transitional time that we're in. Well, Vince, you had the front row view of the digital age transforming the delivery of news. And certainly you are right there in the weeds with it all as it was happening. But let me just ask this one last question. What do you think the lesson has to be learned from it all?

Vince Kern  
That's a great question. I think, you know, there's lessons both for us as individuals and as a culture, you know, culturally, there's a couple of things that are at play here as well, this information explosion happens so fast, that people couldn't get their arms around it. And by that, I mean, politicians, regulatory committees, all kinds of things that are not becoming sort of in the forefront, where you have major tech companies now being scrutinized for things like, you know, bias, or preference or misinformation, and that type of thing. I think we're just starting to get our arms around some of that I, you know, politicians have certainly learned how to use, you know, all of the platforms for propaganda. Consumers, however, I think are becoming more hip to propaganda when they hear it because it's become so pervasive. And so I think we're at a real inflection point for the future.

Joe Luther  
I agree with you and I agree with your point that today's youth are very savvy very discerning. And and because they're humans are very able to adapt to this new wave of data and information bombardment. And I think it's nothing but good. I agree.

Vince Kern  
Well, thanks for having me as a guest Joe, and I hope my chair wasn't too squeaky and I have a question am I going to get a friend's and wonder Yeti mug for being a guest on the show? Bench