In Trust Me, I’m Lying, Ryan Holiday reveals the media manipulation tactics he used as Marketing Director of American Apparel, and for his PR clients. Meanwhile, he exposes the inner workings of a modern media machine in which incentives make it impossible for the version of reality depicted in the media to come close to resembling the truth. I think it’s Holiday’s best book, and one of the best media studies books. So, here, in my own words, is my Trust Me, I’m Lying summary. Yes, this book is about lying Before Ryan Holiday became known as an author of modern stoicism books, he dropped out of college at nineteen to apprentice under 48 Laws of Power author, Robert Green. He later was the marketing director for American Apparel, and now has a PR agency, Brass Check, where he advises corporate clients and authors. As the title of the book suggests, the tactics Holiday confesses to might make your skin crawl. They involve deliberate provocation, bribery, impersonation, and – since it’s called Trust Me, I’m Lying –making stuff up. But everyone should read it This may turn people off to the book, but if you’re an author, marketer, entrepreneur, musician, filmmaker, or comedian, you’re in the business of trying to get your message into the world. So, ignore this book at your own peril. The people with whom you compete for attention are using these tactics. Understanding these tactics is a good way to understand the mechanics of media. You can use this knowledge to get your message out in less nefarious ways (more on that later). And, if you’re someone who thinks it’s your duty to read the news, to “stay informed,” you owe it to yourself to read this book. But be prepared to have that belief challenged, and your conception of reality altered. Media is a “racket” Holiday describes the modern media system as a “racket,” the word which Major General Smedley D. Butler once used to describe war. He defined it as something “where only a small group of insiders know what’s really going on and they operate for the benefit of a few and at the expense of basically everyone else.” Journalists are poor, busy, and desperate for a story The main insider in the modern media system is the journalist, more generally, a “blogger,” who might be someone writing articles for a small blog, or even a major media outlet such as the Huffington Post. Holiday uses “blogger” and “journalist,” interchangeably, and I will, too. Journalists are poor To help you understand the motivations of many of these journalists, Holiday points out this: They might have gone to an expensive grad school, and now live in a big, expensive city, such as NYC, San Francisco, or Washington D.C. They’ve been close enough to taste a $200,000-a-year journalism job. But now they’re churning out articles at a breakneck pace, without even getting health insurance. Meanwhile, the people they cover are rich and successful, and may include talentless reality TV stars. New York magazine called the result “the rage of the creative underclass.” Journalists are busy These bloggers have to write a face-melting amount of content. When journalist Bekah Grant left VentureBeat, she wrote a post saying she averaged five posts a day –more than 1,700 articles in twenty months. Henry Blodget, founder of Business Insider, said his bloggers need to generate three times their salary, benefits, and overhead costs to be worth hiring. So, an employee making sixty-thousand dollars a year needs to produce 1.8 million page views a month, every month. (1.8 million page views is a lot. At my current traffic, it takes me about a decade to generate that much on my blog, and I make more than sixty-thousand dollars a year.) Journalists are desperate for a story Most sites that journalists write for make their money from ads, and the way to make money from ads is to generate page views. ...