Scott Porch is co-founder of the podcast production company Big IP Media, which distributes The John Campea Show, Happy Sad Confused, Star Wars Explained and The Dan Murrell Podcast. He co-created Hugh Acheson Stirs the Pot and The Daily Beast’s The Last Laugh podcasts.
Porch has written about the media business for the New York Times, Decider, BuzzFeed, Fast Company, The Guardian, FierceVideo and Wired. He has written about books and ideas for The Daily Beast, The Atlantic, Los Angeles Review of Books and Politico Magazine.
Long Features
How Caitlin, Cate, Kate, Katy, Katherine (Who Goes by Katie) and Katie got a show on TV Land Called Teachers — and Why You Should Be Watching It, a 2,200-word profile of the Chicago improv group The Katydids, Decider, March 14, 2017.
Hard Knocks: Why HBO Is Having a Rough Transition from Auteur TV to Big-Time Streaming, a 3,700-word reported feature about HBO’s difficulties in 2015 and 2016, Decider, November 17, 2016.
Doctors Strange: The Complete Oral History of Childrens Hospital, a 4,400-word reported feature about the Adult Swim show, Wired, April 13, 2016.
A Week in the L.A. Comedy Grind, a 5,000-word reported feature about the Hollywood comedy world adapting new stories on new platforms, Buzzfeed, February 29, 2016.
The Pamphleteers, a 4,000-word interview with Gordon Wood, a historian of the American Revolution, Los Angeles Review of Books, September 24, 2015.
Bill Buckley Gets Bigger Over Time, a 3,600-word interview with Sam Tanenhaus, who is writing a biography of William F. Buckley, The Daily Beast, August 17, 2015.
The Book That Changed Campaigns Forever, a 4,000-word profile of author Teddy White, Politico Magazine, April 22, 2015.
How Karina Longworth Is Reimagining Classic Hollywood, a 3,600-word interview with the creator of the You Must Remember This podcast, Longreads.com, March 17, 2015.
The Power Broker Turns 40: How Robert Caro Wrote a Masterpiece, a 6,000-word profile of author Robert Caro, The Daily Beast, September 16, 2014.
Media Business
Comcast Is Totally OK With You Not Having an Xfinity Set-Top Box, reporting, Fast Company, July 20, 2018.
Discovery’s Deal for Scripps Nears Completion, But Is It Enough?, reporting, Decider, February 27, 2018.
FOX Goes All in on the NFL Ahead of Presumed Disney Merger, reporting, Decider, February 8, 2018.
Lionsgate Enters the Mix of Media Companies Looking to Merge — With Amazon, Verizon and CBS/Viacom Circling, reporting, Decider, January 18, 2018.
Amazon’s New Fire TV Edition Has a Great Interface, But the Killer App Is Your Voice, interview with Fire TV product manager, Decider, July 19, 2017.
How the NFL is Crippling ESPN and Harming the Future of TV Sports, reporting, Decider, May 8, 2017.
How Comedy Central Lost Its Mojo and What It Means for the Rest of Cable, reporting, Decider, August 23, 2016.
Comedians Are Loving This Whole Periscope Thing, reporting, Wired, January 7, 2016.
Not Even Michael Bay Can Fix Viacom’s Problems, reporting, Wired, November 13, 2015.
TV and Film
The Bold Type, a Modern Gloss on Sex and the Single Girl, reporting, New York Times, June 30, 2017.
Young Comic TV Showrunners from Left Field, reporting, New York Times, May 26, 2017.
Decider Talks Documentaries (Now!) with Bill Hader, Fred Armisen and Seth Meyers, interview, Decider, September 14, 2016.
Halt and Catch Fire Clears Its Cache for Season 3, reporting, New York Times, August 19, 2016.
What’s the Matter with Netflix’s Chelsea? Pretty Much Everything, review, Decider, August 2, 2016.
HBO’s $100 Million Debacle: Why the Network Gave Up on Vinyl, reporting, Decider, June 22, 2016.
Bryan Cranston Takes his L.B.J. to TV in All the Way, reporting, New York Times, May 13, 2016.
Veep Star Tony Hale Sits Down With Decider to Talk About TV Anxiety, profile, Decider, April 24, 2016.
Rob Huebel Goes from Transparent to Comedy to Virtual Reality in No Time, profile, The Guardian, January 22, 2016.
Music
How Beat Bugs Sells the Beatles to a New Generation, reporting, Rolling Stone, August 3, 2016.
Nancy Wilson on Leading Heart With Her Sister, interview, Salon, August 13, 2015.
FADER Explains: Apple Music, explainer about announcement of Apple Music and Beats 1 Radio, The Fader, June 9, 2015.
Politics
All the Single Ladies: Rebecca Traister on Feminism, Then and Now, interview, Signature, March 30, 2016.
The Reason Gun Control Gets Nowhere, Explained in One Book, interview with journalist Colin Woodard, Signature, March 23, 2016.
The 9 Secret Meetings It Took to Resume U.S.-Cuba Relations, interview with historian William LeoGrande, Signature, March 22, 2016.
Cory Booker: GOP Ignores Constitution interview with Senator Booker, The Daily Beast, February 18, 2016.
Ralph Nader: 2016 Race ‘Like Choosing Between Tuberculosis and Cancer’, interview, Signature, February 8, 2016.
Ronald Reagan’s Shifting Shadow in the 2016 Election, interview with Reagan biographer H.W. Brands, Signature, February 5, 2016.
American History
Candice Millard on James Garfield and PBS’s Murder of a President, interview with the historian and Garfield biographer, Signature, February 2, 2016.
Sarah Vowell’s Rough Guide to U.S. History, interview with the historian, The Daily Beast, January 10, 2016.
John Meacham on Bush 41, interview with the George H. W. Bush biographer, Signature, November 25, 2015.
Wil Haygood on the Hard-Won Victories of Thurgood Marshall, interview with the civil-rights historian, Signature, September 24, 2015.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s Leap into the Racially Charged 1960s, interview with historian Daniel Geary, Signature, July 14, 2015.
The Night Norman Mailer Tried to Fight William F. Buckley, Jr., essay about the 1966 Black and White Ball, Esquire, June 5, 2015.
Those Pesky Tapes: The Release of More Nixon Tapes is a Treasure for Historians, reporting about recent revelations from the Nixon Tapes, Kirkus Reviews, July 31, 2014.
When the Right to Vote Wasn’t a Right, essay on the PBS documentary Freedom Summer about the violent Mississippi voting-rights drive in 1964, The Daily Beast, June 23, 2014.
Literary History
Chasing the Last Laugh: Mark Twain’s Comeback Comedy Tour, interview with biographer Richard Zacks, Signature, April 20, 2016.
Don Quixote Hits the Big 4-0-0, interview with Cervantes biographer Ilan Stavans, Signature, September 17, 2015.
Joan Didion’s Life Is the Story of Postwar America, interview with Didion biographer Tracy Daugherty, Signature, August 25, 2015.
A Master Class With Angels in America Playwright Tony Kushner, interview with the Pulitzer Prize winner about the Arthur Miller’s plays, The Daily Beast, June 21, 2015.
Robert Roper on Language, Lolita, and Vladimir Nabokov in America, interview with the Nabokov biographer, Signature, June 16, 2015.
‘Literally,’ Emojis, and Other Trends That Aren’t Destroying English, an interview with experimental psychologist Steven Pinker, The Atlantic, December 30, 2014.
The Decade When The New Yorker Grew Up, a conversation with New Yorker editors about a new collection of the magazine’s reporting from the 1940s, The Daily Beast, May 20, 2014.
Book Reviews
Tallying the Facts of Obama’s Economic Legacy, Jonathan Chait’s Audacity (Custom House, 2017) and Michael D’Antonio’s A Consequential President (Thomas Dunne, 2017), Chicago Tribune, January 15, 2017.
Tailor Made for Tiny Hands, Mark Singer’s Trump and Me (Tim Duggan, 2016), Signature, July 5, 2016.
The Songwriters Behind Pop’s Biggest Stars, John Seabrook’s The Song Machine: Inside the Hit Factory (Norton, 2015), Chicago Tribune, October 22, 2015.
Andy Warhol’s Big Adventure, Deborah Davis’s The Trip: Andy Warhol’s Plastic Fantastic Cross-Country Adventure (Atria, 2015), Chicago Tribune, August 27, 2015.
Suffering Suffrage, Ari Berman’s Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America (FSG, 2015), Chicago Tribune, August 13, 2015.
Still Tricky, Evan Thomas’s Being Nixon: A Man Divided (Random House, 2015) and Tim Weiner’s One Man Against the World: The Tragedy of Richard Nixon (Henry Holt, 2015), Chicago Tribune, July 26, 2015.
Tea Time, Jeff Koehler’s Darjeeling: The Colorful History and Precarious Fate of the World’s Greatest Tea (Bloomsbury, 2015), Chicago Tribune, May 7, 2015.
The Persuasive Minimalism of Philip Glass, Philip Glass’s Words Without Music (Liveright, 2015), Signature, April 24, 2015.
Building the Great Society, Julian E. Zelizer’s The Fierce Urgency of Now: Lyndon Johnson, Congress, and the Battle for the Great Society (Penguin Press, 2015), Chicago Tribune, January 8, 2015.
How LBJ and Reagan Wrecked Our Faith in Government, Jonathan Darman’s Landslide: LBJ and Reagan at the Dawn of a New America (Random House, 2014), The Daily Beast, October 21, 2014.
Tavis Smiley Chronicles MLK’s Last Year, Tavis Smiley’s Death of a King: The Real Story of Dr. Martin Luther King’s Final Year (Little Brown, 2014), The Daily Beast, October 16, 2014.
Cracks in the Glass, Dorothy Sue Cobble, Linda Gordon and Astrid Henry’s Feminism Unfinished: A Short, Surprising History of American Women’s Movements (Liveright, 2014), Chicago Tribune, September 26, 2014.
Scott Porch 