Josh Sternberg
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joshsternberg.com
Josh Sternberg
@joshsternberg.com
31K followers 600 following 15K posts
Executive Editor at Morning Brew

Priors: NBC News, WaPo, Adweek, Digiday

Bylines: The Awl, The Atlantic, Pacific Standard, Entrepreneur, HuffPost, Mashable, etc etc etc

Failed musician.

YMMV.

Tips? Signal: joshsternberg.08
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joshsternberg.com
Been listening to this @godstreetwine.bsky.social album for 30 years (on CD), and now my 11yo listens to it on vinyl. Thanks, GSW! You’ve made an 11yo incredibly happy.

Now if I can only take her back in time to see GSW at Irving Plaza and watch Willy Wonka during set break.
God Street Wine’s $1.99 Romances Vinyl if $1.99 spinning on my daughters record player
November 24, 2025 at 12:02 AM
joshsternberg.com
Have to imagine that whatever presidential aspirations Gretch had, they went down the drain with this photo. How embarrassing.
Gretchen Whitmer, in a blue blazer, hides her face in embarrassment behind a blue folder during a meeting in the Oval (Opulent) Office.
November 23, 2025 at 8:35 PM
joshsternberg.com
This is where it started: a D.C. newspaper from the date my great-grandfather was born: Feb 7, 1898. He was born in Hungary and emigrated to Philly, and was given this when he retired in the 1960s. Love of history + journalism.
November 23, 2025 at 2:55 PM
joshsternberg.com
I do appreciate how Bluesky has now become my town square, where people converse in the discourse of the day with winking knowledge that everyone else “gets it”.
A series of posts of people talking about the same topic without expressly saying what the topic is. But we all know because we are all too online.
November 22, 2025 at 6:07 PM
joshsternberg.com
“And while sometimes I wish I could unknow it, the least I can do is share the parts I believe you should know too.”

Oh, buddy.
Darren Rovell @darrenrovell i feel bad for our country. But this is tremendous content. 11:21 PM - 19 Oct 2016
November 22, 2025 at 12:35 PM
joshsternberg.com
When I was covering adtech, understanding the Lumascape, a slide from a banker about all the companies that sit between publisher and end-user, was an important text to know where the messy middle is, but also the fraud.

They've now done it for AI companies.
an eyesore of AI companies. https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7397009108526153728/ The parameters we used to construct the scape are as follows: 1. Selection based on strategic relevance to advertising 2. Selection based on core business model focus, not scale 3. Broad categories reflect converging capabilities 4. One logo per company (unless your market cap is denoted with a “T”) 5. Corporate logos only, no division or product logos 6. Agentic / AI co-pilots not broken out separately
November 20, 2025 at 3:02 PM
joshsternberg.com
"Two months after Kirk’s assassination, a gov-backed campaign led to firings, suspensions, investigations and other action against 600+ people. GOP officials have endorsed the punishments, saying those who glorify violence should be removed from positions of trust."

www.reuters.com/investigatio...
This account is the most comprehensive to date of the backlash against Kirk’s critics, tracing how senior officials in President Donald Trump’s administration, local Republican lawmakers and allied influencers mobilized to enforce the Trump movement’s views. The story maps the pro-Trump machinery of retaliation now reshaping American political life, detailing its scale and tactics, ranging from shaming on social media to public pressure on employers and threats to defund institutions. Earlier reports by Reuters have documented how Trump has purged the federal government of employees deemed opponents of his agenda and cracked down on law firms defending people in the administration’s crosshairs. The backlash over comments about Kirk’s shooting stands apart because of its reach and its public backing from Trump, Vice President JD Vance and other top government officials. It represents a striking about-face for Republicans, who for years castigated the left for what they called “cancel culture” – the ostracism or punishment of those whose views were deemed unacceptable.
November 20, 2025 at 2:42 PM
joshsternberg.com
Lazy-ass muthafucka
Bodie the pup under an orange blanket laying on his paws on a bean bag chair
November 20, 2025 at 1:06 AM
joshsternberg.com
Tech companies are backing away from creating diversity reports.

Microsoft, which released its annual diversity and inclusion report in 2024, is choosing to not do one in 2025.

www.hr-brew.com/stories/2025...
“We are not doing a traditional report this year as we’ve evolved beyond that to formats that are more dynamic and accessible—stories, videos, and insights that show inclusion in action,” Frank Shaw, chief communications officer at Microsoft, told HR Brew via email. “Our mission and commitment to our culture and values remain unchanged: empowering every person and organization to achieve more.”
November 19, 2025 at 9:41 PM
joshsternberg.com
On this day in 1863 Lincoln gave his Gettysburg Address.

“Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.”

www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/spee...
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate - we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion - that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain - that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth. Abraham Lincoln November 19, 1863
November 19, 2025 at 12:02 PM
joshsternberg.com
Literal plank of the party:
Smiling white people holding up blue "Mass Deportation Now!" signs at the 2024 RNC.
November 18, 2025 at 7:46 PM
joshsternberg.com
I would simply say, “no thank you I do not need to be photographed sitting on a rug”.
Joe Kahn, editor of the NYT sitting very naturally on a rug. The newspaper spread out in front of him. A cup of coffee that I think says Life on it, beside him. Joe is a white man with a white button down shirt and thin tie. Gray slacks and socks. A chair, alone and empty, rests under a table. Joe could be sitting in the chair. Yet he does not.
November 18, 2025 at 3:09 AM
joshsternberg.com
Is this what she meant?

archive.is/uzlU8#select...
In this period of now, from 2015 to 2025, in which the man through whom the culture was synthesized achieved dominance, I found myself fixated on the flag, on the way the flag expressed how the country was warping, and yet the magnitude of this change could not be categorized appropriately or cataloged completely amid such amnesia. At the southern border or the White House or the Midwestern auto factory or the boat in the Atlantic or the truck rolling beside the Pacific, the very flag that had been clutched like pearls at the turn of the century was refashioned as costume jewelry. Red, white, and blue asphyxiated blue, gray, and black. Stars and Stripes a backdrop for the star of the country. One stripe remade a banner across which his campaign slogan crawled. Donald Trump hugging and kissing an American flag. Photo: Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images
November 17, 2025 at 10:10 PM
joshsternberg.com
“The lunatics are in my head”🎶

Bodie singing “Brain Damage”
November 16, 2025 at 7:28 PM
joshsternberg.com
The puppy is growing up
Bodie the dog up on his hind legs looking out the window behind a curtain. A guitar on his right.
November 16, 2025 at 5:56 PM
joshsternberg.com
Went to the semi-annual record fair in my town.

The 11yo got a Wes Montgomery album and a Fleetwood Mac album, continuing her run of impeccable musical taste.

And got to see @themikeayers.bsky.social and his booth with his great oral history of 1990s jambands.
Record fair! Wes Montgomery and Fleetwood Mac albums
November 16, 2025 at 4:33 PM
joshsternberg.com
We should talk more about credit card companies adding a 3% vig to small businesses, and how small businesses have the tough choice of eating g that fee or passing it on to customers.
A bill where the card total is 34.21 and the cash total is 32.89
November 16, 2025 at 2:55 PM
joshsternberg.com
The Athletic polled professional athletes and turns out they are not fans of gambling’s impact on their lives.

archive.is/rgDFu
“Terrible. Hate them. Every game, no matter if it’s a good game or bad game, you’ve got motherf—— sending death threats, saying racist s—. Every game. I guarantee you, if I check right now, I’ll probably have something from this game. Every game. Everywhere. DMs, Twitter. People be tripping, bro,” a player said. “I hope it doesn’t happen, but it’s going to come to a point where players are going to be targeted because people have lost so much money on them. That’s what I think. But hopefully I’m wrong.”
November 15, 2025 at 1:53 PM
joshsternberg.com
bluesky serendipity:

🙈 🙈 🙈
lolgop: let's all work on one thing today: don't share the bad link. you know. pwnallthethings: what a terrible day to know how to read
November 14, 2025 at 7:25 PM
joshsternberg.com
An ontological discussion of how this stupid industry operates.

www.nytimes.com/2025/11/14/s...
Like Trump, Nuzzi attended Fordham University. He transferred to Wharton, the business school at the University of Pennsylvania. She got an internship with Anthony Weiner’s 2013 campaign for mayor. She then wrote a piece about what a mess it was and took it to The Daily News. When the story was published, Weiner’s spokeswoman, Barbara Morgan, dismissed her to other press outlets as a “slutbag.” They are now close friends. Two years later, at 22, she was writing full time for The Daily Beast about Trump, hitting Trump Tower during the day and reading Jimmy Breslin at night — a crash course in the school of journalism where a writer doubles as star witness. She parlayed that effort into a job at New York magazine, becoming at 24 its Washington correspondent, the first time in the magazine’s 50-year history anyone held such a post.
November 14, 2025 at 6:14 PM
joshsternberg.com
An op-ed from Chris Christie (!!) that says "Regulated betting, when done right, strengthens the integrity of sports."

No discussion of gambling's deleterious effects on people!
Chris Christie: Keep sports betting legal https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/14/opinion/chris-christie-sports-gambling-mlb-nba.html
November 14, 2025 at 3:27 PM
joshsternberg.com
Not only is "the media" now a key player in this Epstein story, reporters are now interviewed about each other.

Also, this quote is quite something.

www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...
Ben Smith, editor-in-chief of the news site Semafor, told the Guardian that Wolff quite consciously steps outside the bounds of conventional journalism. “He considers himself a writer, not a journalist. He has never played by the rules of American newspaper journalism.”
November 13, 2025 at 9:41 PM
joshsternberg.com
"Fifteen years ago, nearly nine in 10 US households had a pay TV subscription. By the end of 2025, that number will be down to five out of 10."

Almost 5yrs ago, a tv exec told me:

www.businessinsider.com/cable-tv-hou...
Our industry faces many challenges, and we’ve yet to meet them head on because, when all’s said and done, the executives at top are just waiting to hit their retirement, get their golden parachute, and pass the baton to the next group of executives who will inevitably do the same. “The reality is this: the media business, whether that’s digital, linear or print, is declining,” said a former television executive requesting anonymity, as they did not receive a golden parachute and currently looking for work. “We’re reliant on two revenue streams, and both are plummeting. Cable TV will go from 90 million homes to 50 million in 5 years. As that plummets, their distribution plummets - how do you replace subscription? Ad declines are a reflection of audience. They have the greatest grift in the history of the world, 35 percent watch and 100 percent pay for it. When you think about digital and offer content experiences that mirror the consumer behavioral patterns, clearly there’s no fucking answer.” And the result? A decimated industry. https://medianut.substack.com/p/yet-another-bad-spring-for-media?utm_source=publication-search
November 13, 2025 at 1:47 PM
joshsternberg.com
One of the things about today’s media ecosystem that I’ve come to appreciate: the creativity in telling stories.

Biased here, but I think our social content team does a great job of communicating The News in interesting ways.

It’s just another layer of journalism, of information exchange.
November 13, 2025 at 1:34 AM
joshsternberg.com
They are OUTRAGED. But the bill will still pass.

(I wish one didn’t have to be a millionaire to run for Congress. I’d love to run, to be a public servant and help my state, but I can’t just quit my job to run. I have bills to pay, mouths to feed. And if I lose, then what? Not many media gigs!)
Lawmakers outraged by provision allowing senators to sue over Jan. 6 records
November 13, 2025 at 1:17 AM