New media is getting stuck looking at itself

A new crop of media companies is wrestling with a quiet problem: they're becoming too good at reflecting their own tastes back to themselves. The result is content that feels smart but doesn't always land with the people outside the room.

The piece — written for TLDR Product — calls this "the trouble with mirrors." It's the same instinct that makes a creator's newsletter read like a diary and a podcast's audience sound like a single tribe. When media companies build around what they love rather than what their audience needs, they end up talking to each other. The audience becomes secondary to the mirror.

Why this matters for us: when the people who set cultural taste only look at themselves, the stories that matter to Brown and Black communities get pushed to the edges — and we end up building our own mirrors instead.