Digest 7/12/2021

Addison Rae's sports journalism debut, the return of MEL, and more.

MEL MAGAZINE RISES AGAIN

Less than four months after MEL Magazine announced it would cease publication after owner Dollar Shave Club laid off a majority of staffers, the site is rising from the ashes under a new owner and aims to resume publication on August 3rd. The beloved men’s culture publication, best known for articles like “Fuck You, Papa John, I Actually Ate 40 Pizzas in 30 Days” and “An Oral History of How Stupid, Sexy Flanders Got Such a Stupid, Sexy Ass,” is being resurrected by Recurrent Ventures, a venture equity-backed digital media company that also owns properties like Domino Media Group and Popular Science. 

Editor-in-chief Josh Schollmeyer will remain in his role. Previous MEL staffers Miles Klee, Eddie Kim, Magdalene Taylor, Zaron Burnett III, Brian VanHooker, Tim Grierson, Quinn Myers, Andrew Fiouzi, and Ian Lecklitner are all confirmed to be returning. Isabelle Kohn is being promoted to Senior Editor, and Alyson Lewis is returning as engagement editor. Former news director Cooper Fleishman will be helping out with the transition but ultimately not returning.

Fleishman tells Study Hall by email: “It’s a brilliant group of writers and editors and the world deserves to see their sick minds back in business. As for me, I will always love MEL, I’m deeply proud of what we built, and I plan to stay connected in any way I can — first in an advisory role over the next month. Anything I can do to make sure they keep writing about Survivor.”

Former deputy editor Alana Hope Levinson is also not returning, instead launching her own consulting agency, Top Down Studio.

“I’m thrilled that MEL is coming back, but alas, I won’t be returning because it’s time for me to do my own thing,” Levinson says in a statement to Study Hall. “I’m so proud of all we accomplished building a completely unique and necessary men’s brand, and this new chapter for the magazine is evidence of just that. But as an editor, I specialize in developing new media properties, so I feel that my particular work here is (successfully) done! ”

When Schollmeyer announced the pause on Twitter on March 24, he wrote that “the complete focus will now be on finding the right new owner.” According to Axios, MEL received around 50 investor inquiries that they narrowed down to five to six serious options, ultimately going with Recurrent Ventures. 

“I can’t begin to tell you how many of the conversations with potential investors started with the money people telling me that it was their newsrooms that demanded that they save us (it re-instilled my faith not just in media, but in people),” Schollmeyer tells Study Hall over email. “And so, we can’t thank everyone enough — and esp Recurrent Ventures — for this second chance, which we’re determined to make just as great and memorable as the first.”

Over on Twitter, MEL clarified some questions about its relaunch, including how it plans to make money this second time around: “In some familiar ways (e.g., advertising and subscription content). And in some ways that are unique to us (i.e., we want them to be a surprise). To start with, we have an official relaunch sponsor we’ll be announcing later in the month.”

The new MEL will host 18 editorial positions, and will be hiring for new roles, including a new second-in-command who has been hired and will be named publicly later this month. Schollmeyer is also open to pitches from freelancers, and urges “any and everyone” to email him “with their MEL-iest ideas.”

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BLACK WOMEN IN MEDIA HAD A WEEK (EVERGREEN)

Last week saw a series of triumphs for Black women in media, but not in the typical celebratory sense: journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones, ESPNS’s Maria Taylor, and Man Repeller’s Crystal Anderson were victorious against tired, racist injustices they never should have had to overcome. 

On Monday, award-winning journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones gave the middle finger to UNC-Chapel Hill after the institution refused to offer her tenure for the tenured position of Knight Chair in Race and Investigative Journalism. Due to the conservative backlash to her work on New York Times Magazine’s “The 1619 Project,” she was instead slated to join on July 1 for fixed five-year term as Professor of the Practice; she rejected the offer with aplomb in favor of a tenured position at Howard University, bringing $20 million that foundations and individuals have already contributed and writer Ta-Nehisi Coates along with her. 

Meanwhile, ESPN is scrambling to keep star host Maria Taylor, who was the subject of leaked comments made by broadcaster Rachel Nichols, who suggested Taylor’s success at ESPN was due to her race, and the pressure of the network to be responsive to racism. ESPN later dropped Nichols from the NBA Finals sideline, and has reportedly offered Nichols a tripled salary of three million dollars a year. Taylor has not accepted. And former Man Repeller employee Crystal Anderson got some sweet satisfaction after founder Leandra Cohen royally shit the bed in her interview on The Cutting Room Floor podcast with Recho Omondi. Cohen’s continued blindness to her own privilege and refusal to acknowledge the role race played in her poor management only solidified Anderson’s initial public complaints that the Upper East Side blogger played favorites with her employees at the expense of the employees of color.  

There’s poetic justice in all of these instances, sure, but I can’t imagine they leave anyone feeling inspired.

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ADDISON RAE CAN’T HACK MEDIA TWITTER

Addison Rae is a 20-year-old TikTok star who dropped out of college to pursue content creation full time, going on to release a music single and will soon be starring in Netflix’s He’s All That. She is one of the biggest stars out there right now, and will only get more famous, so you now officially have no excuse to smarmily ask “who????” next time you hear her name. 

On Friday night she debuted as a UFC red carpet reporter — AKA, did one interview with fighter Dustin Poirier because they’re both from Lafayette, Louisiana — tweeting, “I studied broadcast journalism in college for 3 whole months to prepare for this moment.” This joke somehow made its way into the feed of media Twitter users who got very mad, convinced Addison Rae was…stealing their jobs? 

I never thought I’d see the day when my love of TikTok drama and my love of journalist drama would combine so spectacularly, but this weekend proved that there’s nothing that media Twitter can’t indignantly lose its shit over. Let’s be clear: if Addison Rae didn’t exist, there’s not a single person reading this that UFC would have asked to do the interview instead. They weren’t looking for journalists; they were looking for views. And Rae’s TikTok following could potentially bring in almost 82 million of them. There’s been so much talk about the “journalist as influencer” and media figures being treated like celebrities that maybe we’ve forgotten about real celebrities: real celebrities do paid appearances for publicity. Influencer Addison Rae was doing an influencer gig — but don’t worry, one day on media Twitter and she’s already out.

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SOME THOUGHTS ABOUT THE CAT PERSON ESSAY

Just kidding.

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COMINGS AND GOINGS

— Mike Bird is joining The Economist as Asia business and finance editor.

— Writer, comedian, and podcaster Olivia Craighead is joining new Gawker as a staff writer.

— Joseph Hernandez is departing Bon Appetit to join The Philadelphia Inquirer as deputy food editor. 

— Maybelle Morgan joins Refinery29 UK as entertainment editor. 

— Brett Holzhauer started at CNBC Select as a personal finance reporter

— Politico tech reporter Cristiano Lima announced plans to depart for The Washington Post as a reporter and author of the Technology 202 newsletter. 

— Margaret Eby is leaving Food & Wine to join Food52 as Editorial Lead of Food.

— BuzzFeed’s Jane Lytvynenko is leaving after five years to join Joan Donovan at the Harvard Kennedy School. Donovan is the Research Director of the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, examining internet and technology studies, online extremism, media manipulation, and disinformation campaigns.

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EVERYTHING ELSE

— Fox announced plans to launch its own weather channel later this year, and there’s a 99.9% chance they’re already lying. 

— The Information is launching its first standalone publication titled The Electric from Steven LeVine all about electric vehicles and batteries. Weather…batteries…who said the media industry was dying?!

— Columbia Journalism Review made some noise about the quiet exit of international picture editor David Furst’s from The New York Times back in April. A number of people who worked with the editor came forward and claimed he undermined coworkers and abused freelancers by forbidding them from freelancing for other publications without cause, only to unexpectedly drop them, leaving them without a source of income. They also claim complaints about Furst went unaddressed, despite a 2018 probe. 

— Man Repeller founder Leandra Cohen appeared on The Cutting Room Floor podcast with host Recho Omondi, who — on a third interview attempt — asked the Man Repeller founder about the company’s downfall, and the specific accusations against Cohen made by Black employees. These include laying off a Black employee, Crystal Anderson, at the start of the pandemic, and otherwise preventing employees of color from growing at the company due to racist favoritism. Cohen does herself no favors in the episode, making a number of comments about her own extremely privileged upbringing, Judaism, and her management style that show there hasn’t actually been much introspection since her “cancellation” in summer 2020. 

— Knewz is kno more.