100th Episode! Axios CEO Jim VandeHei on Beltway Bubble and Narrative-Driven Journalism

This interview marks the 100th episode of Policy Punchline. We’re truly grateful for all the support you’ve given us over the last two years and sincerely hope that we may continue to explore more exciting ideas on our journey forward!

Jim VandeHei is the co-founder and CEO of Axios and the former executive editor and co-founder of Politico. In this interview, Jim and Tiger discuss the struggles and issues of independent and legacy media platforms, the danger of ideological bubbles within journalist circles, the intellectual opportunity cost of over-analyzing Trump, the deviation from truths and facts in today’s social discourse, and a variety of urgent issues in politics and beyond.

Axios, founded in 2016, has the mission is to deliver the clearest, smartest, most efficient and trustworthy experience for the audience and advertisers alike. It is on the forefront of today’s shift toward more bit-sized media with an emphasis on facts, not editorialization or the journalist’s own opinions.

How does Axios strike the balance between short-form, concise coverage and the full nuance and complexity of the subjects they are covering? How does Axios select the best set of facts and truths when there are often “multiple sides of truths” to a story?

Podcast host Eric Weinstein said “Supply creates its own demand. Optics create its own substance.” It seems that we’re in an era where there is an increasingly diverse and complex set of narratives that can no longer be controlled by the larger institutions. While there is now more high-quality information available than ever before, it has also become easier to spread and consume misinformation and misrepresenting “facts.” Who caused the media slant? The consumer or the supplier? How can consumers realistically make better decisions in their daily media consumption? 

Is there anything wrong with traditional mainstream media outlets like New York Times, CNN, Fox News, and the like? Is it fair to criticize them as narrative-driven journalism that hides behind the veil of neutrality and rationality, while in fact seeking to push for a certain set of narratives with cherry-picked facts and pandering to their base? Are any of these criticisms fair?

What can the “beltway” media learn from the 2020 elections, when there was no “Blue Wave” as widely reported before the election? Jim has previously discussed the phenomena of the “Trump Bump” – the media covers Trump so much because otherwise they’d see a drop in ratings. How have the Trump presidency and Trump’s relationship with media coverage challenged media norms? Did the media world waste four years of precious time over-analyzing Trump when there was a plethora of more urgent issues left undiscussed – incurring a huge intellectual opportunity cost to our social discourse? 


On the day before our interview, BuzzFeed announced its acquisition of Huffington Post in an all-stock deal. Is it a merger out of necessity? How hard has it been for independent media platforms even before Covid-19 hit? Why are Axios and Politico two of the very few successful media companies founded over the last two decades?

This is one of the most insightful conversations we’ve had on the media landscape and political discourse – we hope it is a meaningful representation of how far we’ve come for our 100th episode!

(Special thanks to Ryan Vuono for helping connect us with Mr. Vandehei to make this interview happen!)

Visit https://www.axios.com/newsletters and https://smartbrevity.com for more information.

Jim VandeHei