Why War Reporting Is the Right Mental Model for Today's Media, Feat. Jake Hanrahan
The founder of Popular Front joins NLW for a discussion about protests, media and how the people being covered tend to not reflect divisive politics.

The founder of Popular Front joins NLW for a discussion about protests, media and how the people being covered tend to not reflect divisive politics.
For more episodes and free early access before our regular 3 p.m. Eastern time releases, subscribe with Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pocketcasts, Google Podcasts, Castbox, Stitcher, RadioPublica, iHeartRadio or RSS.
This episode is sponsored by Bitstamp and Ciphertrace.
On today’s episode of The Breakdown, we introduce the Breakdown Brief - a look at three key topics in bitcoin and crypto. Today, the Brief covers:
- Brave browsers auto adding ref links to Binance.us
- The disconnect between Wall Street and crypto when it comes to inflation expectations
- A 2018 Pentagon war game including bitcoin
Our featured interview is with Jake Hanrahan, founder of Popular Front - a podcast and independent media company covering underreported and irregular conflict with “no frills, no elitism.” Jake was previously an embedded reporter with Vice and has covered conflict in Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Palestine, Ukraine and elsewhere.
See also: Cellphones, Bitcoin and the Citizen Tools of Anti-Authoritarianism, Feat. Alex Gladstein
In this conversation, Jake and NLW discuss:
- Why Jake left Vice and decided to build an independent journalism project
- Why the mainstream media isn’t bad because of some political conspiracy, but because its business model doesn’t allow it to understand how real people are experiencing issues
- How the protests are being (mis)covered around the world
- Why American protests are going global
- What he learned covering protests in Hong Kong last year
- What situations people should be paying attention to around the world that they’re not right now
Find our guest online:
Twitter: Jake_Hanrahan
Website: popularfront.co
For more episodes and free early access before our regular 3 p.m. Eastern time releases, subscribe with Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pocketcasts, Google Podcasts, Castbox, Stitcher, RadioPublica, iHeartRadio or RSS.
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