Study Hall Digest 8/21/2017

Hi

Happy Monday Everyone! How’s everyone feeling out there? It’s been a pretty shitty week in media. Mic laid off dozens of reporters and copy editors as it…you guessed it…pivots to video. People expected something was coming after Cory Haik, the publisher of Mic, wrote an op-ed in Recode a few weeks ago about the coming “revolution” in visual journalism. Seems kinda shady that Recode would publish something that makes Mic look good for firing people. Mic had been promising it wouldn’t lay people off, and even attempted to get applicants to turn down other job offers with that promise. The company also has a sketchy record of firing people and not hiring people, and leaving its newsroom devoid of diversity, all while presenting itself as a bastion of social justice journalism. Several sources have told me that working conditions there are pretty brutal: you’re expected to work 60 hours a week, work from home, work at a moment’s notice, and essentially always be in fear of getting laid off if you don’t bring in big numbers. There was a team of three Mic staffers down in Charlottesville producing video content. They seemed stressed and yelled at each other, lol. Any more goss to share? Email me.

Relatedly, Haley Mlotek wants to talk to you about unionizing.

I was in Charlottesville last week, and it was a good reminder that journalism is really bad for your mental health. I love my work but there are very rarely offers of time off, therapy, or anything else for journalists exposed to traumatic situations. That should change! But given the fact that journalism organizations can barely pay on-time or pay living wages, I don’t see orgs spending money on luxuries like therapy or trauma training anytime soon.

Study Hall friend Harron Walker has rightly pointed out that white freelancers need to be sharing their knowledge of freelancing with people from marginalized groups. Jessica Glazer and a few others took up the challenge, and I’ll be writing something about my freelancing life soon too. I’d encourage others to do it as well. Also, SH Listserv is open to People of Color and other underrepresented groups in the media at $1/month (the minimum we can charge because of Patreon rules), so email me if you know anyone interested.

You can now applaud on Medium instead of recommending things. Maybe this will save Medium.

Media orgs: Hire more Asian writers, lest you publish this disaster of a story.

Deadspin has a really good look at SB Nation, which profits off paying people ridiculously low amounts of money for editing and reporting work. Many contributors don’t get paid at all. I don’t really understand how this is legal, or why they haven’t been sued yet.

Hey, a bit of good news: Popular Science is doing well by focusing on deeply reported stories in themed print issues. Cool!

The bad take of the week goes to Frank Bruni and his “I’m a white man, hear me out” piece. I feel like the fact that you have an entire column in the NYTimes and get paid to write inane shit like this is proof that white men could be knocked down a level, Frank!!

Final Thoughts

What did everyone think of Charlottesville coverage? I thought there was a lot of good stuff out there. VICE’s piece tracking the white supremacists got a lot of good play. Current Affairs has a good piece exploring how exactly to write about Nazis. It’s tricky! It would be stupid to ignore them, and people have a right to know who they are and what they are doing, but you don’t want to help Nazis or make them seem attractive in any way. I think context is really important — context about why they’re bad, how many people are against them, etc.

I also noticed that younger media outlets—VICE, Mic, Splinter (which I wrote a story for)—did really stellar reporting, while the older outlets got caught kind of unprepared, and published really bad takes (The Atlantic published a piece about “violence” on the left the day before Charlottesville). Are we seeing the big pubs waning in influence? Despite Mic cutting back, it’s actually invested more in original reporting recently (as opposed to aggregation). Maybe the young orgs are realizing they need to differentiate, and Charlottesville is the first good example of that? <3 – Enav