Digest 11/16/2020

Why Substack is becoming the platform of choice for aggrieved media men, in praise of broken games, and more.

THE GREAT SUBSTACKENING

Last week, Matthew Yglesias stepped down from his role as senior correspondent at Vox.com, the site he co-founded with Ezra Klein and Melissa Bell in 2014, and announced that he would, inevitably, be moving to Substack. A wave of of high-profile media figures have left their salaried staff jobs to self-publish on the platform — BuzzFeed’s Anne Helen Peterson and The Verge’s Casey Newton made the switch almost simultaneously in late September, both citing the increasing precarity of the volatile media industry among their reasons (I interviewed both for the Digest at the time). Substack has also become the platform for aggrieved media men who resigned from their high-paying jobs because they felt persecuted by either criticism — from their colleagues and from people on Twitter — or workplace editorial standards. 

Andrew Sullivan bid farewell to New York Magazine in July, decrying what he labels an illiberal groupthink among his colleagues. (In fact, his colleagues had continued to criticize him because he had promoted a theory arguing there was a link between race and IQ while at The New Republic in the early nineties and never recanted.) Sullivan now publishes a revival of his old blog The Dish on Substack. In late October, Glenn Greenwald announced his departure from The Intercept, which he also helped found, claiming that his editors were censoring him by sending an edit memo outlining problems with his piece on Hunter Biden that they asked him to rectify before publication. Greenwald now publishes a blog on Substack. He claims his departure was not about one incident, but rather the “pathologies, illiberalism, and repressive mentality” to which he attributed his perceived “censoring” — “viruses” that he claims have “contaminated” every mainstream center-left newsroom. (This morning, Greenwald accused writer Clio Chang of “demanding Substack be censored” — and, bafflingly, of homophobia — for asking some very fair questions in a piece for the Columbia Journalism Review about Sullivan’s role on the platform and how Substack plans to approach content moderation as it takes on more controversial clients.)

Yglesias’ departure from Vox, in contrast, seemed free of acrimony, and if he holds the same alarmist view of an illiberal virus infecting newsrooms, he’s kept it to himself. He’s attributed his departure to a desire to write and self-publish freely, without the editorial oversight that necessarily comes with working for a media company, and that’s certainly his prerogative. But in an interview with The Atlantic about his departure, he expressed similar concerns to Sullivan and Greenwald about the newsroom culture he leaves behind — a culture he attributes to the politics of “young college graduates in big cities” whose worldview is not shared by “older people, and working-class people of all races and ethnicities.” (I’m fairly certain young college graduates aren’t at the helm of media companies, and as for being out of touch with the working class, Yglesias is a Harvard graduate who in 2013 bought a $1.2 million condo in DC.) 

Yglesias spoke in the interview about a workplace incident that occurred when he chose to sign the Harper’s open letter that decried a “stifling atmosphere” the signatories perceived in the media. His Vox colleague Emily VanDerWerff, a trans woman, wrote a letter to Vox editors explaining that because the letter was signed by anti-trans thinkers and contained anti-trans dog whistles, Yglesias’ participation made her feel “less safe at Vox” while also complicating her ability to do her job, as sources would conflate his position with hers. The letter was widely cast as an attempt to silence Yglesias or make him suffer professional repercussions; in fact, as VanDerWerff clarified in a Twitter thread, she was simply registering her disappointment via a letter to the editor — the favored feedback medium of Harper’s itself — and never filed a complaint with HR. In other words, she was speaking freely and publicly, countering Yglesias’ views with her own. 

When asked about the letter in the Atlantic interview, Yglesias said it was unfortunate that media organizations showed “increasing sensitivity about language and what people say” and that “if you treat disagreement as a source of harm or personal safety, then it’s very challenging to do good work.” But some ideas can, in fact, be a source of harm, and saying so is not censorship. Why shouldn’t have VanDerWerff expressed her response to the Harper’s letter? Why should any trans person in the media industry have to pretend that anti-trans ideas do not have real-world repercussions? 

It has always seemed to me that the anti-cancel-culture brigade is rebelling against what they perceive as a posture of woundedness in their detractors — people who say they were wounded, or could be harmed, by the expression of an idea are used as objects of derision. I suspect this has something to do with our culture’s disdain for anything that could be perceived as weakness, so that even if a member of a marginalized community says something like, “The championing of this idea makes me feel less safe in the world,” it is seen as a claim to victimhood rather than a description of the very real dangers they face. 

When those who decry cancel culture express outrage, they take great care not to make it about feelings — the way they feel, or the way others feel — or even about themselves. Instead, they frame it as an attack against a shared value system, impersonal and bigger than all of us. Democracy is at stake, or the free press, or liberalism. The people who make these grandiose claims are often being paid by media organizations to share their thoughts widely; they are never at risk of being truly disenfranchised. These statements channel rage through abstract principles, but they share a sense of personal grievance. Their authors believe they have the right to feel wounded and express that woundedness, and others do not, because they see their hurt as aligned with greater virtues, symptomatic of problems afflicting society at large.

Over 11,000 newsroom jobs were lost in the first half of 2020 alone; many more had already been lost in 2019. Others have been pushed out of jobs in this industry by rampant workplace racism and sexism. Yet when workers at institutions like the New York Times attempt to root out such ills in their own newsrooms or when a journalist of color calls out a pattern of racist attitudes at The Intercept, they are smeared as jeopardizing the institution they work for instead of attempting to improve it. 

Amidst all this, we are expected to take seriously the grievances of well-paid pundits who voluntarily leave their cushy salaried jobs because they have suffered criticism — or even editing — all while bemoaning the influence of young workers who live with greater precarity. It seems one lesson these aggrieved bloggers could take from the young “wokes” comes from organizing 101: before planning an action, consider who holds power. The likes of Andrew Sullivan and Glenn Greenwald hold far more power (and wealth, and job security) than those they target as their enemies; they also spend a great deal of time blaming abstract groups like “Twitter” for their perceived ills. They may want to interrogate why they believe they alone hold the right to allege harm by ideas. 

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STUDY HALLERS RECOMMEND You can log onto Twitch.tv and watch video game streamers play any number of lush, innovative, brilliantly designed games — games that express the breadth and depth of human creativity. This blurb is not about any of them. Recently, I have become a fan of the trending co-op game Phasmophobia, in which players are ghost hunters sent to a spooky location, aiming not to exorcise the spirits, but to simply log what type of ghost they are — something that nevertheless gets you killed half the time and nets you about a $30 payday when it doesn’t. Made by a single developer, to call the game buggy is charitable. In these chaotic times, it can be strangely soothing to watch content that seesaws between internet slapstick and terrifying paranormal hunt within seconds. Check out actor Thomas Middleditch’s stream for someone who screams a lot or Lil_Lexi for pro-level play. — Erin Schwartz

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EVERYTHING ELSE

— Speaking of Substack, it’s piloting its own version of the now-defunct aggregator Google Reader! But will it bundle subscriptions at a discounted rate? (I love all your Substacks, I simply cannot afford to subscribe to all of them!) 

— BuzzFeed’s Black culture vertical Cocoa Butter is expanding across platforms and building its YouTube presence with original series offerings — in fact, its primary platform will now be YouTube.

— BuzzFeed is also…expanding into the realm of sex toys? The company, in an attempt to bill itself as an authority on sexual wellness, has partnered with a toy maker and porn company to produce a branded vibrator. Since when has BuzzFeed attempted to position itself as an authority on sexual wellness?? How does selling a branded vibrator help towards that end???? 

— I cannot believe this happened this week because it feels like it happened months ago, but after an investigation, Jeffrey Toobin was fired from the New Yorker after masturbating while on a Zoom call with co-workers.

— Patricia Escárcega, restaurant critic for the Los Angeles Times, shared yesterday on Twitter that six months after filing a pay discrimination complaint through the union, LA Times management has refused to pay her the same amount as her white male co-critic. Just months ago, the paper published an investigation into its own racist history and pledged to do better — it’s hard to take such pledges seriously when the paper is refusing equal pay for its Latinx writers.