Interview of Jonathan Garthwaite

The following interview was conducted on June 28, 2006. It is part of the TechJots Interview Series. You can listen to this interview here.

Chip Griffin: Hi, my guest today is Jonathan Garthwaite. He's the editor-in-chief of townhall.com. Thanks for joining us today Jon.

Jon Garthwaite: Thanks Chip. Glad to be with you.

Chip Griffin: In the interest of full disclosure, before we get started here I want everybody to know that at one point in time many years ago I actually ran Town Hall and for a period of time was actually Jon's boss. So, hopefully he won't hold that against me in this brief interview that we're going to do.

Jon Garthwaite: All right, I'll try.

Chip Griffin: I thought, Jon, what we'd do is just sort of let the readers and listeners know more about what the sale and acquisition of Town Hall means for the future of your web site. Obviously next week you guys are launching a number of changes to townhall.com to, I think, make it more interactive. But I won't put words in your mouth. And then I'd like to wrap up by telling me a little bit about what you see as the future of Town Hall. So, why don't we jump right in with you telling us a little bit about the acquisition that recently happened and what it means?

Jon Garthwaite: Sure. Sure. Well, for more than a decade Town Hall has kind of been a clearinghouse for conservative groups and commentary and everybody from George Well to Ann Coulter. It's really kind of been a one-stop shop for kind of political policy, opinion side of things especially written and D.C. focused conservative movement. A couple of months ago, Salem Communications, which is quite a large broadcasting company, acquired Town Hall and we've spent the last sixty days or so cramming all of these different businesses and products into kind of into one bag of tricks.


On July 4th, we're going to be launching a new web site. The biggest component of that web site really is the blending of talk radio, blog-o-sphere, and internet activism and commentary all into one landing spot for people to show to on a daily basis. It really is, I think, the first of its kind. Really, from where I sit, it really fulfills the original mission kind of a hundred ten percent where Town Hall has always wanted to be. So it's pretty exciting for all of us involved.

Jon Garthwaite: You know, first of month the big changes: we're adding five big co-hosts to the site. Bill Bennett, Mike Gallagher, Dennis Pregger, Michael Medvet, and Hugh Hewitt of talk-show fame and blog-o-sphere fame. They're going to be writing columns, inviting their audience on to the web and holding a dialog across both the talk radio and the Internet medium. They'll all have blogs and people will be able to come to the site and debate them, agree with them, you know challenge them and participate alongside.

Jon Garthwaite: What we, another approach that we think is the first of its kind is on an ideological site we're going to give people the first opportunity to create their own blog and to blog side-by-side with Hugh Hewitt. So you'll be able to come on, readers will be able to come on to site and with one or two easy steps be able to create their blog, post their opinion, write columns, and kind of go toe to toe with the best in conservative opinion.


We're also going to have a pretty strong Podcast thing offering with the Northern Alliance, the blogger folks from Powerline, Ed Morrisey, and also Mitch Berg will be doing their radio show from townhall.com. We also have a few other partners, DSW being one, and a few others that will be holding their Podcast.


On the interactivity and kind of activism side, our activism roles are modeled after the Bush-Cheney '04 tools which got a lot of awards and was credited with a lot of their "Get Out to Vote" and local activism. As you may know, they ran "Parties for the President" campaign and had thousands of people holding living room parties and fund raising events for the campaign.


And then, another big improvement to the site is the involvement of readers and being editors themselves. A couple of items where they get to be involved the voting opportunities on the site, to recommend articles or activism action points or Podcasts is quite robust. And you can recommend them to friends, you can vote whether you agree with them, how good the article was. Basically, four or five different ways to kind of place your ballot, or your vote for a particular columnist or article specifically. And then essentially, journalist bloggers and opinionaters can gauge what opinions are most important to grass-roots conservatives in real time.

Chip Griffin: Now, Jon, when you talk about readers as editors and allowing them to vote, I mean are you essentially looking to be almost like a digg.com for conservative readers or I mean what, what's the objective there?

Jon Garthwaite: Yeah, I think that is kind of the direction that smart publications are going in. Obviously you know, it's an age-old adage that the customer is always right. Well, the reader you know obviously has the best idea of what they want to read. And sometimes, you know a combination of kind of institutional editorial discretion and reader input, I think it has a, it's kind of a killer combination in creating a publication that people are going to want to read. If we've narrowed it down to five hundred opinion pieces and think-tank articles and policy research you know research reports. And we've narrowed that down to ten or thirty and then two or three of them are really hit a cord with our readership then those are two or three that every single reader at Town Hall should definitely take the time to read. So kind of a combination of us on staff and our readers coming up with the best product possible.

Chip Griffin: And how much of what you're doing is a reaction to or learning from what the other side is doing? Say Daily Kos or something like that? I noticed the emphasis, in your email, on allowing folks to create their blogs and that sort of thing.

Jon Garthwaite: You know, I'd never say that anything is ever a reaction. I mean, good ideas are good ideas. But I think you know, the combination of a talk radio and an internet web site and opinion site is quite unique. Essentially if you take you know, the seven or eight million people that listen to what essentially becomes Town Hall talk radio and you add that one to two unique people on the web site, you're talking about a readership that's you know four to five times you know any published numbers from Daily Kos and that's supposed to be the largest site on the left. So I think it won't take long for people to realize that the right has a significant tool at it's disposal.

Chip Griffin: Now obviously you talk about Town Hall extending the radio programs, the talk radio that Salem has, and you know serving up additional information for that. Do you anticipate it will go in the other direction too? That the Salem radio stations talk shows will start you know building off the conversations that are taking place on-line?

Jon Garthwaite: Well, you know, a lot of talk show hosts have said to us that you know, we're one of their best show prep tool. And that a visit to our townhall.com by one of their producers is some of the best use of time they can make. You know, I think there's likely to be a lot of back and forth of content. I've been five radio shows today already. So, if that's a sign of the future, it's a welcome one.

Chip Griffin: Now, you also talk a lot about you know creating a dialog with the co-hosts here. You know, how much of this new site is really focused on having online conversations versus having some of the more action-orientated tools that you talked about... I mean the action center? Or it is really a balance of the two?

Jon Garthwaite: Well, I think it's all of the above. Almost every section of the web site has an opportunity for people to vote on whether a Podcast, a blog post, an article, you know a commentary is good or bad. They have the opportunity to send it to a friend, to friends. They have the opportunity to forward it on to Congress, to forward it to a newspaper. They have the opportunity to vote in polls, to take action on Capitol Hill. To comment on if Hugh Hewitt has a blog post you know about, say, the New York Times [static] our readers are going to have the opportunity to sound off right there. That's something that a lot of blogs, some blogs, some of the big name blogs don't have comments right now, but Town Hall is going to be full of comments. It's going to be a very vibrant conversation.

Chip Griffin: Are you going to moderate the comments or is a free-for-all?

Jon Garthwaite: Well, I think free-for-all is probably too strong a term. There's obviously a limit when a couple of million of people start chatting. There's a limit to what a small group of folks can do. We want to truly be an all inclusive town hall and get the discussion going but obviously rules of libel and slander still apply. And we're not interested in the hate-filled you know rhetoric from the far left and far right.

Chip Griffin: You know, Jon, there's been a lot of discussion lately. I think National Journal in fact had a recent survey of so-called insiders of the Republican and Democratic Party. It seemed like the consensus out of that was that the Liberals have a real advantage in the blog-o-sphere while Republicans and Conservatives still have a advantage in talk radio. Talk to me a little bit about how you see the ideological divide online and what it means for the future of policy and politics.

Jon Garthwaite: Well, you know, I mean I think in some areas. I mean you go to these type conferences, the participants in these conferences tend to be more skewed to left of center. But I'm not really sure that translates into electoral success. I mean I think it's certainly not something new that I'm saying, but you know the folks at the Daily Kos you know aren't necessary considered a positive influence within democratic circles. And I'm sure there are a couple of bloggers on the right that some of the folks in the Bush administration might not appreciate on a daily basis. You know, but I you know, think ultimately it's a medium that encourages debate and conversation and that's got to be healthy for the nation.

Chip Griffin: Now, have you all looked at doing anything as far bringing together people in the real world, if you will? You know, I know, not to harp on Daily Kos today, I'm not sure why I keep bringing them up, but they just recently had their conference out in Las Vegas. I mean is that something that you all look to do to perhaps combine the radio, online medium together with you know face to face type activities?

Jon Garthwaite: Yeah. I'm not entirely sure whether face to face is in the immediate or the long term future, for you know conferences and so forth. Right now we're focused on building a web site to launch on July 4th that will be the kind of the biggest thing of it's kind, you know attracting millions and millions of readers and participants each day.

Chip Griffin: I seem to remember that you'd done Town Hall meet-ups in the past. Is that's something that's still ongoing, or has that been discontinued?

Jon Garthwaite: Yeah, on a local level there are groups of Town Hall readers that get together and discuss politics on a local level. Then some of those groups are quite vibrant and others are you know fun social clubs or dinner clubs for conservatives to find a safe-zone to discuss politics.

Chip Griffin: In fact, if I recall correctly, when I last looked, Town Hall was one of the largest meet-ups in the political realm on Meet-Up.

Jon Garthwaite: Yeah. Yeah. I mean Town Hall has a huge readership, and a very loyal readership and it's a readership that's heavily active in public policy.

Chip Griffin: One of the things I noticed in you're email where you talked about the various features you'll be adding next week is talk of enhanced email lists. And I think you know a lot of readers continue to get information pushed to them by email these days. Could you talk a little bit about the new offerings that you may have and particularly I'm intrigued by this talk radio report that you mentioned?

Jon Garthwaite: Sure, I mean essentially one of the things we're really doing and opportunities Town Hall now has is to kind of be more targeted. Rather than just creating an email list and get people to sign up, and then blasting out to it everyday we're going to be getting a little more sophisticated in the offerings that we can send to people. Whether it's choosing which columnist they want to hear about on certain days, our talk radio report which will give a weekly update on what our five major national talk show hosts are up to, and including Podcasts from their shows. And essentially each show is going to have one or two feature monologues and a couple of you know exciting listener calls. Plus transcripts, something that Hugh Hewitt has been doing for a long time. Having those transcripts published so that people can actually read the interviews with opinionaters and newsmakers.


And we'll also have a you know a couple financial idea things and some issue action alerts so that people that can choose specifically which issues they're interested in and get information only on those issues that they really want to take action on. And we really want to, we've really always wanted we've really respected the privacy and the time constraints on people's lives, trying to create products that are really tailored to what people really want and really need on a daily basis.

Chip Griffin: Now I hate to be the one to ask the dirty questions, but you know obviously in the current internet world everybody is focused on how do you monetize web sites, how do you monetize content? And you know, I don't get too into detail on this call about that, but talk to me a little bit about you know what you're doing as far as advertising or promotions that will help Salem to monetize their investment here.

Jon Garthwaite: Well, sure. I mean Town Hall is primarily a you know space, you know banner ad, advertising kind of site. I mean we have banners in every shape, size and color and various commercial opportunities and content development opportunities like Podcasting and other you know companies or organizations of any on any issue can take advantage of. But essentially it's typical, typical Internet publishing business. We have advertising and partnerships.

Chip Griffin: OK. And now obviously I'm sure you've got your head down in the bunker, focused on the changes that are coming up on July 4th at townhall.com. But you know talk to me for just twenty or thirty seconds about you know where you see Town Hall headed down the road. What's the theme that you see going forward?

Jon Garthwaite: Town Hall right now is really focused on a national audience you know with the five major national talk radio hosts, and the offering that Town Hall has, and kind of having a nationwide discussion. Over the coming months and years it's going to, the focus is going to really be to add a lot of locality to the site and to involve all of the local radio stations that Salem is involved in, and owns and operates some a hundred and twenty or so. But basically to create one big community across the country involving local newscasters and local hosts and local news. And so you'll be able to come to Town Hall and its' affiliate sites and get your national opinion, your local news, your drive time Podcasts, and everything in-between.

Chip Griffin: It sounds like a very exciting few days while you get ready and very exciting months and years ahead. Jon I really.

Jon Garthwaite: You'll have to have a hot dog and a hamburger on the Fourth of July, because I'll be busy.

Chip Griffin: I'll do that. Jon Garthwaite I appreciate you taking the time to talk with us. Again, my guest today was Jonathan Garthwaite. He's the editor-in-chief of townhall.com. and I encourage you to check it out on July 4th and see what the changes are all about.

Transcription by CastingWords