In this fireside conversation from Media Summit | NYC 2025, J.J. Colao sits down with Eric Hippeau, Managing Partner at Lerer Hippeau and former CEO of Huffington Post and Ziff Davis, to unpack what actually broke the media business and what (if anything) can be rebuilt in its place.

Eric has spent three decades operating at the intersection of journalism, technology, and capital. He’s seen media before the internet, through the rise of platforms, and now into the AI era. This conversation is less about nostalgia and more about first-principles thinking: trust, distribution, monetization, and why the old models aren’t coming back.

We cover:

- How media shifted from publisher-controlled distribution to platform dominance

- Why trust eroded when journalism became entangled with clicks, commentary, and algorithms

- Whether quality journalism still has an economic moat in a world of infinite content

- Why AI will reshape media workflows, but won’t replace reporting

- Whether selling content to AI companies is a real business or just a temporary add-on

- What Eric learned selling Huffington Post in 2011—and why that year mattered

- Where venture-scale opportunities still exist in media (and where they don’t)

- What advice Eric gives to today’s media founders, Substack writers, and journalistsThis is a practical conversation for journalists, media operators, founders, and investors who want to understand how media actually works now, not how it used to work, and what role serious journalism can still play in an AI-driven world.Timestamps

00:00 — Introduction & Eric Hippeau’s media career

01:55 — How media used to work: gatekeepers, distribution, and control

03:25 — When power shifted from publishers to platforms

04:36 — Why trusted media brands lost their daily relationship with audiences

05:29 — Did publishers lose trust by chasing algorithms and clicks?

06:52 — When journalism blurred into commentary and entertainment

08:21 — Can trust be rebuilt — and by whom?

08:43 — Are there still venture-scale opportunities in media?

09:08 — Tools vs. media businesses: where investors are actually betting

10:07 — AI-produced content and the future of film, video, and production

11:29 — Are AI companies dependent on journalism’s raw material?

12:10 — Why selling content to LLMs isn’t a long-term business model

13:15 — 2011 and the decision to sell Huffington Post

15:03 — Community, moderation, and why early HuffPost worked

16:38 — When platforms took distribution — and why it never came back

17:27 — What BuzzFeed got right (and wrong) about platform distribution

18:51 — How programmatic advertising hollowed out media economics

20:25 — Why subscriptions now subsidize journalism indirectly

20:43 — Advice for media entrepreneurs and Substack writers

21:04 — Why AI must be a tool, not the product

22:27 — Final thoughts on media’s future