Study Hall Digest 9/18/2017

Hi

Rolling Stone is for sale. Anyone wanna buy it? It seems like the era of big, splashy magazines is finally coming to an end. I mean not that it wasn’t already over—mags like Rolling Stone and Vanity Fair and the rest were paring back to the bare minimum for years, putting one splashy feature in each or every other issue so they could keep the facade of serious journalism as they hollowed themselves out, firing journalists and underpaying the ones they didn’t fire (but not all of them) and pivoting to garbage web content. The whittling has taken years, and now that the top brass have squeezed every last drop of profit from their properties, they’re heading for the door. Jann Wenner, the founder of Rolling Stone, put his 22-year-old son Gus in charge of the website a few years ago, and Gus used his young, sharp mind to fire a bunch of people and sell off various parts of the company until the family was left with barely a controlling stake. Now they’re selling that too. And caricature-of-an-insufferable-Upper-East-Sider Graydon Carter, editor of Vanity Fair announced he’d be stepping down. So have a few other high-profile editors. So is this a chance for magazines to reinvent themselves? Likely it just means their brands will sold off to stranger and more far-fetched things like bad apps and under-attended music festivals until they mean absolutely nothing, and longform journalism, good writing and design will move to new platforms, as they already have been.

In some good news, The National Writers Union signed an agreement with The Nation that covers minimum payment for articles, kill fees, and payment dates. It’s the first time I’ve heard of a freelance agreement like this. Maybe it can become a model for other publications?

TV stations owned by Sinclair Broadcasting are being forced to air pro-Trump content, including a daily news update from the “Terrorism Alert Desk.” Oy.

The best scoop of the week goes to Phoenix New Times, which found out that Motel 6s in the area were referring Central American hotel guests to ICE regularly. The reporters there said the story shows the importance of alt-weeklies. I agree!

These WaPo satire videos are extremely embarrassing and only being watched by like 5 people.

The Outline is now selling merch. Does this mean The Outline is dying?

Final Thoughts

Can The Nation freelance contract become a model for every publication? How do you get a publication to sign one of these things, and why would it be in their interest to do so? I feel like if this listserv was big enough, we could essentially withhold work from publications that treat writers unfairly. But as of now we don’t have a critical mass to make an impact. How do we build that?