Jubilee Media and CNN announced they’re teaming up for a live town hall with Texas’ Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico moderated by CNN’s Erin Burnett.
The first-of-its kind partnership is a big deal and signals just how much Gen Z’s media habits are reshaping the industry.
It’s also proof of how legacy media and new media are creating new and necessary alliances to stay relevant in today’s shifting media environment. Both companies will benefit from the other’s audience and exposure. And it’s great for Talarico — a 37-year-old former teacher who has already caught young people’s attention and appeared on Jubilee’s ‘Surrounded’ show last year.
For those unfamiliar, Jubilee is a digital first media company with an exceptionally large YouTube presence (and 11 million YouTube subscribers). Their hallmark ‘Surrounded’ series features a debate between one person against 20 people of a different perspective. Ex. 1 young politician (Rep. Maxwell Frost) vs. 20 boomers, 1 liberal teen vs. 20 Trump supporters, the late Charlie Kirk vs. 25 woke students.
Love it or hate it, Jubilee has cracked the code in catching Gen Z eyeballs.
Jubilee’s heterodox format flies in the face of the curated ‘balance’ CNN panels typically seek out. But the unfiltered nature of their debates get attention — especially from young people.
And while the town hall collaboration with CNN will certainly look different than its typical made-for-Gen-Z social-first show (CNN is airing the town hall first and is responsible for the town hall’s audience as well as all editorial decisions, according to Axios), the partnership confirms that media executives are hungry for modern formats and looking to new media for inspiration.
*READ OUR RELATED PIECE: THE TRUTH ABOUT GEN Z AND THE NEWS*
‘It’s like a cigarette’ — More on Jubilee, and the truth about debate-style videos
Over the years, Jubilee — and the debate style videos the company is now famous for, which are similar in style to videos made by Charlie Kirk — have come up again and again in my focus groups.
Truth is, not all young people are fans of this format (mainly, because they think it’s inflammatory, and it for sure is) — but they’re hyper-aware of Jubilee. It’s everywhere.
In one such focus group, a 26-year-old from New York likened debate videos to nicotine.
“It’s like a cigarette, where I know it’s bad for me. I shouldn’t click on it, I shouldn’t watch it, and then I end up clicking on it and I’m like, this is not making me feel good and yet in some ways i can’t stop,” she explained.
A 19-year-old from New York said these videos remind him of a boxing match. “At first it seems interesting, but I agree hot mess is the best way to describe it. It’s super pugilistic. It’s like you’re seeing caricatures of caricatures face each other. It’s not really people. And so I still click on it because there’s something interesting there. Oftentimes I click it, I watch a little bit of it, but then I say I’m done with it.”
And a 22-year-old from Washington, D.C. complained that the whole culture of debate videos, “especially the type Jubilee posts,” is the problem with social media in general.
“It gives you this false sense of a narrative that there are two sides to an argument and it’s entirely black and white. It’s either you agree with one side or you agree with the other one, and there’s no in between. I think social media does that in general a lot but debate videos give the viewer – gives me – a false sense of engagement. I get passionate about what one of them’s talking about and I find myself starting to agree with them a lot more without doing the work of coming to an opinion on my own. It feels like someone is feeding you an opinion.”
But for all the flack Jubilee and debate videos get, last night, I spoke to a class at NYU and everyone (everyone!!) was familiar with Jubilee. That’s rare in today’s crowded media ecosystem. And it speaks volumes about why CNN is teaming up with them.
A Few Thoughts
It would be hard to write a Gen Z newsletter today without referencing what’s now being referred to as ‘The Cornell 7,’ a 2024 sexual assault case, which was brought to light after The Cornell Sun (Cornell’s student newspaper), covered a newly filed lawsuit alleging a victim had been gang raped at the time at the Chi Phi fraternity.
Disappointment with Cornell’s administration, the Tompkins County district attorney, law enforcement in the area, and men in general is plastered all over my social media feed, mostly thanks to young women who are rightfully outraged by the description of the case — and the punishment the young men involved in the situation received at the time, which allegedly included writing essays.
Unfortunately, high-profile sexual assault cases like these are not abnormal — and certainly not new for members of a generation who grew up in the #MeToo era and, in many ways, saw little structural change. I mean, look at the White House. As a result, plenty of young women are still pissed, but they don’t necessarily expect anything to change.
“Women have honestly exhausted so many of the options available to make this less likely, and at this point, women online and those I’ve talked to in person are just fatigued by all of it,” one of our ambassadors told me today.
“To me, this shows that no matter how much we talk about #MeToo and the resources that exist, if there’s no action behind them, those resources are useless,” said another.
“As someone who was in a fraternity, it’s appalling that the punishment was only an essay,” said one of our young male ambassadors.
I’m left thinking about this post from Avalon Fenster, otherwise known as @InternshipGirl, asking for the men in her life to weigh in.
Noteworthy Reads
The New American Dream Is Enjoying Life, Michelle Amponsah and Zijia Song for Bloomberg
Middle-Schoolers Are Seeking Out AI Friends Instead of Real Human Ones, Julie Jargon for The Wall Street Journal
The 7 Gen Alpha Slang Terms Adults Are Googling Most in 2026, Ashley Fike for Vice News
He May Be the Most Extroverted Actor Ever, Callie Holtermann for The New York Times
Great piece powerful stuff. I thought that was a powerful piece from internship girl.