Nice-guy Dan Benjamin built a podcast empire on being unable to ask a real question. I told you about this already.
Interviewing Marco Arment about his sale of Instapaper, Benjamin again showed he is not up to the job of interviewer (≈18:21):
– Well, I mean, I – regardless of – um, you know, I’m not gonna put you on the spot and say, tell me exactly – I mean, unless they [sic] want to – tell me exactly how much it makes for you, but it makes enough, I would assume, that not having – I mean, obviously, you made some money with Instapaper when you sold it. You wouldn’t sell anything for – nobody’s gonna sell something like that and not make some money about it. I’m not gonna put you on the s—people want me – by the way, everybody wants me to ask you – I will ask you! How much money did you make on the sale? I don’t expect you to answer. You can say “Pass!” But the point is you made some money on that, and you’re making some money from the Magazine – enough to live, I’m gonna guess – enough to live –
– Yeah.
– that you, you don’t have to, you don’t have to, you’re not freaking – OK, you’re not freaking out about money right now.
– No. No, I’m not.
Instapaper raked in a million bucks a year before its sale, a fact we didn’t learn from Benjamin’s interview, because he was too chickenshit to ask questions like that one. Benjamin is afraid of actual content. And (this is a separate but related issue), as a natural pushover, he is far too easily bulldozed into a thin bloody membrane by the undermedicated, manipulative, heavily-coddled and ‑enabled huckster known as Merlin Mann.
I could try to solve the problem, but it’s clearly never going to happen, especially with Monteiro’s Twitter goons attacking the very concept.