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The Meredith Moat

In an era of unprecedented disruption—new mediacos, new models, highly capitalized competitors, and CNN gyrations—none of the big guns are holding a candle to the Times.

During the tenure of the Times’ C.E.O. Meredith Kopit Levien, the success of the company—and, the uniqueness of its success—has become the media story of our time.
During the Times’ C.E.O. Meredith Kopit Levien’s tenure, the success of the company—and, the uniqueness of its success—has become the media story of our time. Photo: Alexander Tamargo/Getty Images for Vox Media
Dylan Byers
March 30, 2023

In the premiere episode of the fourth season of HBO’s Succession, that amusingly precise and insightful roman à clef of the media industry—“I am convinced Jesse Armstrong has the transcripts of Rupert’s rants and inner monologues,” one media executive in a position to know such things recently told me—the hapless Roy siblings are revealed to be toiling away on a new startup, The Hundred, which Kendall describes as “Substack meets MasterClass meets The Economist meets The New Yorker.” This absurd, idea-less name-dropping pitch-deck babble was quickly embraced by journalists and Succession enthusiasts (it’s a heavily-shaded Venn diagram, to be sure), who delighted in a critique of the various behaviors on display: bullshit-laden start-up ideation, born-on-third-base fundraising arrogance, general vanity, and the craven lust for influence.