The debate over a Josh Kushner profile reveals a growing media divide. "Enthusiast media" focuses on subjects the writers admire, contrasting with traditional journalism's often adversarial stance. This creates a new media category that legacy outlets struggle to classify, viewing it as less legitimate and a threat to their access.

Once a person becomes sufficiently famous, a large portion of the public stops seeing them as a person and instead views them as a 'conglomeration of ideas' or a story. This dehumanization allows people to justify saying and doing things to them that would be unacceptable toward an ordinary individual.

18th-century novels created a new literary form that explored the passions and ordinary lives of individuals. This cultural shift elevated the private sphere, previously considered unimportant, into a subject of value, fascination, and social anxiety.

The concept of the "celebrity CEO" originated in the 1920s. The launch of new media like Time Magazine (1923) and Forbes (1917) shifted public focus, putting business leaders on magazine covers alongside sports heroes, making them aspirational figures and fueling public desire to invest.

Samuel Johnson, a pioneer of parliamentary reporting, rarely attended the debates he covered. He essentially fabricated the speeches, capturing the "vibe" so effectively that politicians, flattered by his eloquent prose, never corrected the record. This reveals the creative, rather than strictly factual, origins of the practice.

While composers before him inspired devotion, Wagner cultivated a new level of intense, personal adoration, creating a phenomenon of "Wagner mania." This was driven by his self-promotion and the overwhelming emotional power of his work, establishing a model for artist-fan relationships that persists today with dedicated fan bases.

Gus Wenner views personality-driven creators as the modern embodiment of legendary journalists like Hunter S. Thompson. This talent-first approach, once central to iconic media brands, has been lost by many traditional publishers but is key to winning in the current landscape where personalities build the brand.

While now seen as a monumental scholarly achievement, Samuel Johnson's dictionary was framed as the "ultimate masterpiece of hack work." It was a massive, commissioned project that, upon completion, finally provided him the financial and professional emancipation to escape the life of a struggling writer.

Legacy media, like The Wall Street Journal, are hiring coaches to help reporters build personal brands. This mimics the success of social media creators who are displacing journalists on the press circuit for major celebrity and political interviews.