Study Hall Digest 5/7/2018

It looks like it’s only a matter of time before we get a Netflix or Spotify of journalism. Apple is now rumored to be looking to get deeper into subscription media. The company might even been looking to purchase Condé Nast, or at least part of it (likely its high-brow offerings like The New Yorker, not it’s lower-brow ones like Brides). Condé could use a savior, as it struggles to figure out how to translate its brand cache into cash. One analyst told The Guardian that within the next five years, there’d likely be “one single offering for video, music and print content,” — in other words a way to read, watch and listen to all the stuff you want from one company. Apple also wants to make more original content, but the problem is, unlike Netflix and Amazon, they’ve so far proved terrible at producing it. Their only two TV shows are both things I’ve never heard of: something called Planet of the Apps, and an expanded version of James Corden’s Carpool Karaoke, both of which were reviewed terribly. IMHO if Apple spent a billion dollars creating a newsroom and magazine that people could subscribe to on their phones, it’d be a huge success. Instead, they’re dipping their toes in the water, too scared to make the leap. If anyone reading this works at Apple, hit us up, we can help, lol.

Everyone’s favorite mysterious media company The Outline (not to be confused with everyone’s least favorite mysterious media company, Medium), has raised $5 million in a second round of funding. It’s planning on expanding all of its departments. What’s notable is that $5 million isn’t really that much money. Josh Topolsky seems committed to not making the same mistakes as places like BuzzFeed and Vice, which burned bright and are now fizzling, or at least burning more dimly. Other media companies, like Axios and the Athletic are raising more in the ~$20 million range. Note to self: check back in five years to see which strategy was more successful.

More on the awful hypocrisies of the White House Correspondents Dinner and all the tsk-tsk-ing they’re doing. But the long story short is: STFU and learn to take a joke, media!!!

A bizarre media mystery: The @four_pins Twitter account, who runs it, and why. Mel Magazine discovers the man behind the popular mens streetwear account, but no one can answer why Complex Mag is paying for him to do it…

Kyle Chayka writes in from the tech journalism front:

Lauren Powell Jobs’s Emerson Collective bought a majority stake in The Atlantic last July. Now the company is spending some of that money on an expanded San Francisco bureau. It poached Buzzfeed’s SF editor Ellen Cushing, who has been core to their tech desk, and Cushing will be hiring a bunch more staff writers. Taylor Lorenz was also poached from The Daily Beast to cover tech and culture. The Atlantic already has Alexis Madrigal in Oakland, but the race to report on Silicon Valley seems to be heating up. If only you could afford to live there!!!! Hahaha x_x

Gimlet is auditioning people to host their own podcast, like some nerd version of American Idol. It’s billed as if it’s a fun thing. I see it more as a, “shit, you have to humiliate yourself publically to get a job in 2018???” thing.

Props to the workers at the Denver Post, who are being axed left and right for standing up to their hedge fund owners, and still protesting.

This is satisfying to see, but also plz clean up after yourselves, you crazy ppl.