How can the culture of the current news cycle—never-ending and never positive—be tempered?

Jonathan Grella, the founder of JAG Public Affairs and Daily Malarkey, has some ideas.

“We really think that there is a place in the market for ‘snark brevity,’ as we call it. Like Axios coined the phrase ‘smart brevity,’ and we do ‘snark brevity,'” Grella said.

“There’s a lot of competition for people’s attention nowadays. So, you’ve got to be quick and to the point and in order to get and keep people’s attention, you have to be creative and clever. So, we bring those couple of things together.”

“It’s not terribly difficult to come up with inspirations for our daily email blast because there’s just a deluge of malarkey out there that we can opine on and poke fun at,” Grella adds.

We also cover these stories:

  • The New York Supreme Court has suspended the law license of former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, saying he made “demonstrably false and misleading statements” when he was representing former President Donald Trump in his efforts to contest the 2020 presidential election. 
  • House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced Thursday that House Democrats will soon create a special congressional committee to investigate the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. 
  • A judge in Florida is halting a $4 billion relief program from the Biden administration for farmers that leaves out farmers who are white. 

“The Daily Signal Podcast” is available on Ricochet, Apple Podcasts, Pippa, Google Play, and Stitcher. All of our podcasts can be found at DailySignal.com/podcasts. If you like what you hear, please leave a review. You also can write to us at letters@dailysignal.com.

Rachel del Guidice: I’m joined today on The Daily Signal by Jonathan Grella. He’s the founder of JAG Public Affairs. Jonathan, it’s great to have you with us on The Daily Signal.

Jonathan Grella: It’s great to be here in Texas.

Del Guidice: Well, it’s great to be with you. Thanks for making time to join us. So, can you just start off, Jonathan, by telling us about yourself and where was your start in conservative media? How did that happen?

Grella: Yeah, sure. I came down to D.C. after undergrad to pursue my master’s degree and started working on Capitol Hill, specifically at the National Republican Senatorial Committee. Then I worked in House leadership for a number of years and then to the private sector, PR firms, foray into sports even, association world, and now as an entrepreneur and doing public relations, public affairs advocacy, and now this new project, which I’m sure we’ll get to.

Del Guidice: Yeah, well, let’s talk about JAG Public Affairs. Can you tell us about it and what led you to create it?

Grella: You bet. So, for the past six years, I had run advocacy as executive vice president for public affairs for the U.S. Travel Association. And then thought that entrepreneurship was the next challenge and decided to start my own sole proprietorship called JAG.

And then about a year after that, I started Protean Public Affairs for other sole proprietors, so we can have the best of both worlds—the independence and small hands-on feel of a sole proprietorship. And then also, we could bring different experts together with different specialties and chase bigger business together.

So, it’s been great to combine the two of them. And there’s something to be said for entrepreneurship and learning how to fish, in that, you can have the peace of mind that you can make a living and make ends meet without too much difficulty.

Of course, you’re hustling. The downside of it, as many people have warned me is, you never feel like it’s OK to take a break but you kind of have to train yourself to do that. Otherwise, you won’t recharge the way you need to to be your best.

Del Guidice: On that note, before we get back to talking about conservative media, what was it like starting your own small business, being an entrepreneur? And for people who maybe have that entrepreneurial bug in them, what kind of advice would you give them to say, “Hey, this is what you need to be aware of, but this is the good thing about it if you want to go this route”?

Grella: Yeah. Truth be told, I started my LLC about nine months before I ended up needing it, not thinking I would ever actually need it. And I thought of it like the first time I bought a tuxedo. Where if you buy the tuxedo, you could say yes to more things. And you could have that flexibility, that if you ever got a last-minute invite, you could say yes.

So, that’s how I viewed having the LLC. I picked out the name, picked out the web domain, and filed the paperwork. And I knew that in a moment’s notice, I could be ready to go. And sure enough, several months later, I decided to take the plunge.

And I would say my advice to aspiring entrepreneurs, not that I have it figured out, I certainly do not, is to buy the tuxedo. Pick something out, have it ready. You never know when you’re going to need it. And it eliminates a major hurdle and a major block between you and that next career.

So, a lot of times it’s kind of tough to fix your resume. You feel like, “I shouldn’t have to do that. I don’t want to update my bio.” Some of that drudgery, like you just kind of dread it. And this was one of those things where I said, “I got to take care of this thing and have it, otherwise I won’t get around to it,” and I’m glad I did.

Del Guidice: That’s a great pep talk. I love it.

Grella: Thanks.

Del Guidice: You’re also the founder of Daily Malarkey. What is Daily Malarkey and can you tell us the story behind it?

Grella: Yes, sure. So, there are four of us. Garrett, Baba, Ian, and myself. And Ian’s going to be down here later on today. And in January, we began talking—I should say that a couple of them had talked previously about the need for a daily email blast. Like a newsletter of sorts that’s very short and to the point, very clever and pithy. And they recruited me to write for it and to be one of the co-founders.

Our first issue was on Inauguration Day. And so, we’re a few months into the thing and it’s really blown up in such a great way over the past few months. We get great feedback, not just on Twitter and online, but also fan mail and emails and such. And our list has grown, our readership is great, and our open rate is fantastic.

We really think that there is a place in the market for “snark brevity,” as we call it. Like Axios coined the phrase “smart brevity,” and we do “snark brevity.” So, certainly, there’s a lot of competition for people’s attention nowadays. So, you’ve got to be quick and to the point and in order to get and keep people’s attention, you have to be creative and clever. So, we bring those couple of things together.

And then certainly, the news media is not going to scratch that itch for people as things currently stand and certainly, it’s not terribly difficult to come up with inspirations for our daily email blast because there’s just a deluge of malarkey out there that we can opine on and poke fun at.

Del Guidice: On that note, with the current culture of the news cycle that we see, it’s honestly never-ending. They’re always in our hands, on our phones, and in our living rooms. It’s everywhere and it’s not positive, really, ever.

Do you see Daily Malarkey as something that is going to counteract that constant daily deluge of just negative news that just brings people down and that’s constantly hyped up and spun different ways and taken with different angles and just regurgitated in different aspects?

Grella: Yeah. I feel like the media is being disrupted and it’s long overdue. It’s not over yet. And we don’t know what the next phase will be, but there certainly is a growing awakening that the mainstream media does not speak to everyone, does not care for about half the country, and people are now aware that the media is not covering reality as they see it. And that there are narratives and there are versions of reality, manufactured realities, that are instead covered.

So, there is some demand out there for someone to bring what’s important to them and certainly, to speak to people who feel like common sense is out the window and not provided online or on TV. And that’s what we try to do.

So, it could be one development in a given day. A lot of times, some of my favorite stuff to write about are trends, where you take things that may not look like they’re connected and connect them. So, it’s fun to be able to do that.

And you say, “I only need a couple of minutes of your time. At 4 o’clock every day, I’m going to send you this very quick, clever blast and you’ll be in and out and you’ll be smarter for it. You’ll be a little entertained. And it’s kind of a good deal.”

So, we feel that the model has been validated thus far and you kind of have to plug away at it every day over time. And as I’ve learned from entrepreneurship and my whole career, great ideas are a dime a dozen. It’s execution, where it’s at.

Del Guidice: We also have something called the Anti-Malarkey Avengers. Can you tell us about the genesis behind that?

Grella: Yes, so glad you asked about that. So, another thing I’ve noticed in the current environment is, certainly there’s cancel culture, and who is not only breaking through nowadays and at the height of their super powers, but also as part of their superpowers are seemingly impervious to cancellation. There are a number of names that I could bring up and will. The names could be distracting.

The real common threat, the sheer DNA between all of them is a certain personality type, a larger-than-life, “I don’t care” bravado that they bring and they don’t give their detractors the power and the satisfaction of sweating them.

Heck, you could say that obviously [former President Donald] Trump had—regardless of what you think of Trump, Trump has some of this DNA. As does Tucker Carlson, as does Dave Portnoy, as does Clay Travis, and so many other folks who are lightning rods. Joe Rogan is another one.

And they aren’t always conservative but they are sort of no-nonsense: “You’re not going to intimidate me. I’m going to tell you what I think about things from my perspective. My take on common sense is this.” And they are the masters of the universe right now as far as, or at least the media universe, as far as I’m concerned these days. And we’re trying to do some of that.

So, they are to be admired because of how strong and robust they are, how brave they are to stand tall and not be intimidated. But they’ve also got the authenticity that people crave nowadays.

And there’s a whole bunch there and they’re also scratching the itch, as we mentioned earlier, and giving people, not the sanitized, politically correct version of reality. They’re not afraid to call balls and strikes and nobody owns them, right? They don’t feel like they’re beholden to one side or the other. And I think that’s where their strength comes from. So, they certainly have our attention and our respect and admiration.

Del Guidice: Well, big picture, Jonathan. What’s your perspective of the media today?

Grella: Completely and utterly broken. The lack of self-awareness is breathtaking, in that if you were inside CNN, MSNBC, New York Times, Washington Post, and knew what everybody was saying about you, you wouldn’t continue to conduct yourself the same way you have, but yet they do. And I would be going way out of my way to prove the point that I’m fair, right.

There was that line that we poke fun at today in the Malarkey about how journalists don’t root for a side. And that is malarkey. That is the essence of malarkey. Of course, they do. Of course, they do.

So, it’s got to be broken to be rebuilt into something that’s worthy and believable and to restore journalism to what it should be. And if journalists were what they said they were, which is the guardians of democracy and freedom, there wouldn’t be such animosity from the general public toward them and certainly, in the other direction where the news media basically has nothing to say, certainly nothing good to say, to half the country.

So, we’re in the middle of disruption. It’s long overdue. There’s a lot of pain between here and the end of the process but hopefully, good will come of it.

I’ll certainly say that the last few years, as painful as they’ve been in many ways, [have] unmasked a media that insisted for the longest time that they’re not biased. And I don’t think there’s any pretending anymore. And they just look foolish every day that they continue to deny that and insist that the only people who think that there’s bias are conspiracy theorists because it’s pretty plain to see now.

Del Guidice: Diving into the notion about bias media, as someone who’s worked in media and public affairs, what have you learned or noticed or just observed about how the mainstream media generally covers and operates under a Democrat administration versus the Republican industry?

Grella: That’s very funny because today’s Malarkey is going to be about that, on the occasion of the president stepping out yesterday and making yet another racially insensitive comment.

And I’m not here to hate on [President Joe] Biden, he doesn’t bug me the way he might bug some other people, but I could see through the stuff, right? See through the malarkey. And no politician gets to make dozens of racially insensitive comments and live to tell. Ask [former Sen.] Trent Lott and any number of other ones.

Whether Biden is talking about [former President Barack] Obama being clean and articulate several years ago and then ending up, “You ain’t black.” That comment and that black folks don’t know how to muster up an ID to vote, and now they can’t find themselves lawyers and accountants, it’s just this patronizing brand of condescending progressivism.

And my view is, not only does the media hate Trump so much—they would do anything to get him out, and they did—but they are obviously very protective of Biden, not just because he’s liberal, but I think, to borrow a phrase from [former President] George W. Bush, this is the soft bigotry of low expectations.

When it comes to Biden, he’s not held to account for his gaffes, for putting his foot in his mouth because they, deep down inside, know that he’s not 100%. And I hate to say that. And it’s sad that we’re in such a spot but I think he’s graded on a curve because they know he’s not completely coherent all the time.

Del Guidice: On that note, Jonathan, where do you see challenges and where do you see opportunities for growth?

Grella: All right. So, challenges. We don’t seem to be anywhere close to the end of woke culture, political correctness, critical race theory, media bias, and any number of the topics that we tend to focus on at the Malarkey. So, there’s no shortage of things to cover, but it’s unfortunate that the things that we view as common sense and plain to see are still being grappled with around the country.

I even have these conversations with family members and they’ll say, “Well, what’s so bad about this thing or that thing.” And I’ll say, “Don’t you understand?” We’ve got a lot of work to do to educate folks. But we’ve also come a long way rather quickly, too. I think the public’s wise to a lot of the nonsense that’s out there. I hate to keep saying “malarkey,” so I’ll say “nonsense” now.

There is no shortage of things to cover. There is still a ton of work to do. But we believe we’re onto something just based on the response that we’ve gotten. The subscribership, the growth, the open rates, etc.

There is an appetite out there for someone to cut through the nonsense—and there’s another synonym, nonsense—and deliver to them snark brevity every day at 4 o’clock, make them chuckle a little bit, maybe make them a little bit peeved from time to time. But ultimately, delivering information in a way that was worth the five minutes you spent taking it in. So, that’s what we hope to do.

Del Guidice: Jonathan, before we wrap up, you mentioned cancel culture. It’s become rampant everywhere. What is the way out of cancel culture, as someone who knows media? Where do we need to go to address this and move on?

Grella: It’s a great question because having worked in corporate communications and sports and some high-profile entities, the old textbook says that you’re supposed to acknowledge the gravity of the situation and offer a very contrite apology and hold yourself to a standard that’s higher than the law and ethics moving forward and turn the page.

There are all these maxims out there about how you navigate crisis. And I’m not saying there’s nothing to them, but when it comes to this kind of crisis where a bunch of cancel culture cannibals are coming for your scalp, and essentially, it’s not about what you say, but you got stuck by saying something that they were able to seize on, or even pounce. I know the left can’t pounce. Only Republicans can pounce. But they dislike you for who you are.

And no matter what your apology sounds like or how contrite you actually are, you’re not going to be forgiven. That’s not the game. The game is about destruction of everyone who is not them. So, our tactics need to change consequently.

So, the answer to that question is: Don’t give them the satisfaction. Their condescension and self-righteousness is so central to their identity. They insist upon themselves. And if you don’t even give them that basic acknowledgement and respect and you laugh at them, and I say, mock them mercilessly—

I am, on a human level, a kind and caring and friendly person to anybody regardless of their politics, but when we’re in the ring, when we’re duking it out, I fight hard. And their kryptonite is not being taken seriously. And so, thankfully, it doesn’t require much acting on my part to not care what they happen to think.

And we all know the story of the boy who cried wolf. And if you scream and yell over every last thing, then it’s hard for me to take seriously when there actually is a problem.

So, I think they’ve done that to the culture. They’ve cheapened terms like “racist” and “misogynist” and “sexist” and all the other -ists that are out there so that they’re rendered less valuable, sadly, for when they’re actually needed.

And so, for that, I think we’ve got to fight back. Don’t commit yourself to playing offense. Don’t think that you’re ever for a minute going to befriend or win over or persuade them. Just go about doing your thing. Make no apologies for it.

And more than anything else, and this is the best part, is, they could be screaming mad. And if you still have a smile on your face, there’s nothing that will drive them crazier than that. So, thankfully, the smile that’s on our faces is sincere. We’re having a blast and that’s just who we are. So, we feel like we’re uniquely positioned to deliver this message to the people.

Del Guidice: On that note, Jonathan, thank you so much for joining us on The Daily Signal. It’s been great having you with us.

Grella: Thanks for having me. It’s been fun.

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