Big Think

Question: Is Internet content too dumb?

Max Lugavere: I think that one of the reasons why the Internet is amazing is because you really can have both, and I don't see a problem, per se, with enjoying the occasional consumption of celebrity websites and the like. I think ultimately you want to live a life of balance.

I do think though that what a journalist is; that perception is shifting and evolving at a rapid phase.

Now it's social broadcasting sites like Twitter news, and information is disseminated often from regular people that haven't gone to graduate school for journalism. And I think that we're starting to see that people are becoming more engaged with conscious media. We've seen Obama come to office and Jason and I have been privy to the entire generation of outspoken passionate people that really see changing the world and have created ultimately the changing of the world with his election.

I think that with sites like Twitter and even Facebook, people are definitely using media for the betterment of society. While they have their Firefox tab open to Paris Hilton, that's another situation, but I wouldn't bash it because occasionally people want to know what's up with the latest.

Question: What's the appeal of short form content?

Max Lugavere: I think the virtue of short form programming is that it's well suited to a generation where we're all media over-saturated. We all have ADD to one degree or another. I just think it's easier to consume a broader range of media when it's all short form. Twitter's super popular for having status messages that can only be a 140 characters.

I think that in terms of production, because I'm also a filmmaker. I went to school for film. The immediacy of getting to create a short form documentary is great, because it requires so much less time to tell a story than the production that would go into a feature length documentary. I don't want to discredit feature length documentaries. I think that some stories; when a story is good, there is no time limit, as we've seen with "Inconvenient Truth" and  "Sicko."

I love Michael Moore's documentaries, but I don't agree with everything he does. But I think that he obviously has a knack for creating feature length documentaries that are compelling all the way through.

But in terms of daily consumption, I just think there is an immediacy to the short form pod that didn't exist before bite size information was really as ubiquitous as it is today.

Recorded on: April 14, 2009.