Can you make evergreen content during a Trump presidency?

Hello friends!

Today, every Monday newsletter (Sunday, if you’re a paid subscriber!), I peel the curtain back a bit on my personal life and the day-the-day problem-solving that comes with co-owning a small - but thriving! - media business. A big issue of late: how do you make content about anything but politics in today’s climate? Should you? Should I? Who am I? I’ll cover that at the end of the newsletter.

Before I do, how are you liking this new format? What do you want to hear about more? Send me your musings at [email protected].

👀 What I’m watching: Scrubs and Survivor 50

🎮 What I’m playing: Fortnite

💡 What I’m installing: Lights!

🧁 Where I’m eating: Billie’s Grocery

👨🏼‍💻 What I’m working on: Evergreen content in volatile times

It’s a big week for this millennial. What may be the two most influential shows of my childhood are coming back in a big way. Survivor’s 50th season airs this week. I’ve seen every season as it happened since its premiere in 2000. I’ve come heartbreakingly close to being cast on the show for both season 23 and season 47.

With Survivor 50’s arrival, I’m feeling a sense of closure. I’m not saying I won’t watch after 50, but it feels like a clean cut-off to me. The Survivor podcast I’ve done with my brother-in-law and friend since season 27 is likely ending after this season (subscribe here for Survivor Top Ten recaps after every episode!). It’s been a ton of fun and a ton of work, but my focus is increasingly on LNI.

Meanwhile, nearly being cast multiple times has pushed me away from the show, to some extent. Casting has a history of ghosting finalists in the casting process - including potential returning players. I, too, am part of that history. I care a little too much to go on that roller coaster again.

And finally, I worry that the show has become a little too stale. The host, executive producer, and possible vampire, Jeff Probst, has admitted multiple times that they are making the show with 9-year-olds in mind. I think that’s become quite clear in the new era. Extremely good, exciting and diverse casts are wasted on a recycled format on the exact same beaches in Fiji.

So, it’s a bittersweet moment for me as I prepare for potential Survivor retirement going into the season. I hope it delivers.

While Survivor was the the most important reality show of my childhood, Scrubs was easily the most important and impactful scripted show. One commenter correctly pointed out in a pandemic TikTok that many of my videos felt like JD daydreams from Scrubs. The reboot airs the same night as Survivor. I’m nervous and excited to see if they’re able to successfully retcon season 9 and return the show to its former glory.

In case you missed it, I managed to not completely embarrass myself while playing Fortnite in a stream sponsored by the good people of MediaWise, an organization that works to reduce the spread of misinformation and elevate facts. We were joined by actual professional gamers, Danny Peña and Riana Manuel-Peña, who are also MediaWise ambassadors.

Myself and Alex Mahadevan (Doc Brown and Chappelle Roan, respectively) even managed to find a DeLorean and drive around while talking about misinformation.

I first joined MediaWise back in 2020 and am thrilled to continue working with them now through LNI. You’ll be seeing more of them in this newsletter and other collaborations in the near future.

I sometimes wonder if the previous owners of my house are aware of my job, what it entails, and how it has affected their home. Do they know I pretended to be Jeff Bezos, former Post CEO Will Lewis, and Post editor-in-chief Matt Murray in the basement, dressed in Traitors cloaks? Have they seen the video about Social Security insolvency, which was also a slight parody of Cabin in the Woods? And most importantly, do they know I’ve turned one of their old bedrooms into a full-fledged studio?

They probably don’t know. And they probably aren’t aware I’m about to mount a third heavy duty wall-mounted light stand into that aforementioned bedroom. It’ll give me much needed space for the green screen, when I shoot on that wall. And when I have time, I’ll install my new wall-mounted green screen curtain as well.

You should be able to spot the new wall mount just behind the TV in upcoming videos. If you see it, comment with a lightbulb emoji (💡), so I know you’re a LNI newsletter subscriber. I’ll reply with a cryptic message of my own.

I’ve seen a few local Reddit and Instagram posts that call ‘Billie’s Grocery’ in Kansas City overrated. I disagree! You just have to know what to order (the steak and eggs, or peanut lime chicken, for example). And best of all, they have gluten free cupcakes that rival Georgetown Cupcakes regular-old gluten-y cupcakes.

“Evergreen videos,” if you don’t know, refers to content that will always be relevant to audiences. And importantly, it includes information that likely won’t change. Non-evergreen content, for example, would be the weather today, or what percentage of tariffs Trump has ascribed to any given country at any given hour of the day.

Last week, I was excited to finally drop an evergreen video about credit scores Friday morning. We learned last year that many of our followers like this type of content, specifically anything that affects your wallet and how you make (or don’t make) money.

The video was well-received and I’m looking forward to making more.

Of course, that very same day, the Supreme Court, including two justices that Trump appointed, ruled Trump’s tariffs unlawful. Trump crashed out at breakfast, said he was imposing a 10% global tariff, then raised it to 15%, all with 24 hours.

This raises a few problems for anyone working in news and producing videos on third-party platforms, no matter if you’re independent or with a legacy organization. If you posted a video to social media around noon, saying the tariffs were unlawful, you wouldn’t have included Trump’s attempt to dance around that ruling with a never-before-used section of a 1974 law. If you made the video later that evening, you’d have the 10 percent tariffs, but that video would be “incorrect” by Saturday morning, when the tariffs had risen to 15 percent.

The accused-pedophile-in-office is volatile, surrounded by yes-men, and making increasingly dangerous decisions. Attempting to post breaking news videos about the White House is nearly impossible. It’s why at LNI, for the most part, we try to wait a day before covering any given news topic. We want to wade through the misinformation (sometimes, with help from our friends at MediaWise!), make sure the dust has settled, and correct the record on any confusion surrounding the topic. Often, the president’s blitz of information and back-and-forth decision-making is by design. We are here to clear it up and keep you as informed as possibly. Hopefully you laugh too.

This newsletter headline asked, can you make evergreen content during a Trump presidency? In other words, with so much happening, can we even cover other topics? Remember the climate? How about the Olympics? I yearn for the days where I got to make fun of Biden once a week, then talk about something completely apolitical, like Frito-Lay:

Sometimes you can’t cover the other stuff. Fascism and the human rights abuses happening right here, right now are too important. But I think you should try as hard as you can to cover other topics. I like the idea of providing topics that maybe weren’t covered in high school. And generally, it’s nice to get a break from the absolute chaos coming out of Washington.