Study Hall Digest 9/24/2018

By Study Hall staff writer Allegra Hobbs (@allegraehobbs)

BuzzFeed Axes Podcast Staffers

Here’s a painfully familiar story — BuzzFeed this past week laid off its in-house podcasting staff, announcing that it would be recruit independent contractors for the work moving forward. As a result of the cuts, most of the podcasts they produced are shuttering, including “Reporting to You,” “See Something Say Something” and “The News.” BuzzFeed will still produce podcasts using freelancers, but the cuts signal a shift in focus to original video content produced with social media platforms (like the company’s Twitter-hosted morning show, AM to DM).

In an all-hands meeting, Editor-in-Chief Ben Smith said the decision was not “driven by a financial calculation” but was made because BuzzFeed struggled to find an audience for the podcasts.

But Jenna Weiss-Berman, former director of audio for BuzzFeed, on Twitter said she believed BuzzFeed never put adequate resources into its podcasting division, even claiming Smith straight-up said he didn’t like podcasts.

Weiss-Berman didn’t return an inquiry from Study Hall. But we did talk to one of the laid-off podcast staffers, Alex Laughlin, who worked on both “The News” and “Reporting to You.” Laughlin didn’t have a bad word to say about BuzzFeed or its leadership, but offered that perhaps it wasn’t Smith’s priority due to his laser-focus on reporting.

“I really respect Ben, and he is a journalist and he cares about reporting, about scoops,” she said. “Because he was focusing on [breaking news], maybe he doesn’t prioritize other parts of the newsroom, but I don’t necessarily fault him for that. It’s what happens when you have a very clear vision and passion for what you’re doing.”

Laughlin, who worked at BuzzFeed for a little over a year, added she is “heartbroken” to say goodbye to her podcasting team, which went by the nickname PodSquad.

“It’s really, really something special when you’re on a team of all women and mostly women of color who prioritize humanity and empathy before everything else,” she said. “It has changed me immensely and I’m heartbroken that it’s ended.”

There are now rumblings around whether BuzzFeed’s staff will move to unionize. When asked whether he’d support unionization, Smith would only say that’s “not a decision for management.” The company has always posed itself as friendly to its news employees, despite intermittent evidence to the contrary, and unionization plans have always seemed hazy.

Hero Freelancer Uncovers Sleazy Payment Scheme

In simply trying to get the $700 owed him by Huffington Post, freelance writer Luke O’Neill was introduced to WorkMarket, a payment service that gave him the option of either forfeiting $52.50 (roughly 8 percent) to be paid immediately or waiting a few weeks for the full check. As O’Neill points out, the model is not so different in practice from a payday loan. It’s also fundamentally predatory because a writer in a tough financial spot would be tempted to give up the chunk of their paycheck for the instant payout — in fact, WorkMarket reported the feature is very popular amongst freelancers. Fancy that! Thanks to O’Neill’s independent reporting, Huffington Post stopped using the feature, then ADP (which owns WorkMarket) suspended it for a review. Luke, thank you for your service.

The Celebrity Profile Is Dead

The thesis of this essay, from the New York Times, is interesting but questionable. The piece argues that, while interviews with celebrities used to be valuable and illuminating, “hyperdocumentation” facilitated by the internet and social media has rendered the celebrity profile largely irrelevant. After all, all the behind-the-scenes access you could want is right there in their Instagram story. And when celebrities do submit to a profile, they’re often penned by a friend, a la Interview Magazine. The press doesn’t have control over the narrative anymore!

Counterpoint: Any celebrity profile ever written by Taffy Brodesser-Akner. Gwyneth Paltrow can curate the fuck out of her image online, but when she sits across from a journalist the result is obviously going to be more revelatory and raw, and journalists still have that ability no matter how active celebrities are on Instagram. (Even if the strategy is the journalist exposing more of their own biases in the process.)

Hitch 22: Cafe Booga-Loup

I’m sorry, but breathless obituaries for hallowed literary hangouts bring out one of the (many) worst versions of me, which gleefully mocks adult cliques that have designated hangout spots around which they craft overwrought mythologies (oh so you’re eating… at a restaurant!). While reading this New Yorker retrospective by Sadie Stein on the maybe-closing Cafe Loup, I rolled my eyes backwards in preparation just to save time, then when I hit the earnest “New York is really winding down” text from a mourner in the first paragraph I let out an involuntary “OH, OK.”

I thought my attitude was almost certainly a symptom of jealousy, that I wanted to be a part of this exclusive enclave where literary scions traded tit for tat by candlelight, UNTIL I arrived at Christopher Hitchens “debating with newly met fact-checkers from glossy or obscure magazines” and experienced truly visceral panic. I mean, Hitchens is dead, so fact-checkers can now blessedly have a fucking drink in peace, but what about the atheist bros who carry around copies of Hitch 22 and ask if you’ve ever heard of Christopher Hitchens?? (This has actually happened to me.) Do THEY make pilgrimages to Cafe Loup? If so, KEEP IT.

CONVICTED BY TWITTER!!!

New York Review of Books editor Ian Buruma published an objectively bad, universally panned piece of writing, riddled with inaccuracies and omissions, by an accused serial abuser who isn’t even a writer and is largely irrelevant outside Canada. But that’s not why he stepped down from his role as editor at the New York Review of Books! No, it’s because he has been “convicted on Twitter” without “due process.” I ask you, WHEN will we stop appropriating language intended for the criminal justice system for…literally anytime anyone levels professional criticism, however well-founded.

“Due process” isn’t a thing outside of a courtroom. What would “due process” even look like in this context? What would be the equivalent of a trial? Do you want to face a jury of your peers? The vast majority of your professional peers lambasted a very poor professional choice you made, in unison, for all the above reasons, but instead of reasoning that perhaps you’ve made an error, you’ve decided you’re the victim of a rigged trial. Sixty-six is probably a good age to start owning your shit a little, Ian! Also everyone knows that he didn’t get fired just for PUBLISHING the piece, it was his looking like an incurious, insensitive idiot in this interview afterward.

Longreads of the Week:

— Years after her Texas hometown turned against a rape victim and authorities failed to enact justice, Elizabeth Bruenig goes back to find out what happened. The result is deeply troubling and haunting, but also hopeful.

— Michael Hobbes wants you to know that everything you know about obesity is wrong. An infuriating piece about the harms committed by medical professionals and society at large under the guise of concern.

SHORT LINKS:

— Tronc is hiring a labor relations director to, among other things, “maintain the non-union status” of its employees. Kinda blown away by the shameless transparency, tbh.

— Beware the billionaire saviors of media companies. Sure, they have a lot of money, but there are risks! (Hey Mr. Ricketts!)

— Here’s a tip: don’t write for Salon. Writer Deidre Olsen wrote a piece that went viral back in February and just now managed to strongarm them into paying her. Another moral: Twitter shaming can work.

— Rumors were flying that Mic is shutting down, but Mic denies it. Apparently an acquisition offer was considered.

— Former ProPublica reporters have launched a new site dedicated to investigating big tech, funded by tech billionaire Craig Newmark (Craigslist), whose fortune came from disrupting traditional media. Exciting news but the irony is a little annoying, no?

— SiriusXM is buying the old-school streaming service Pandora, further consolidating the audio industry. Pandora has fallen in value over the past few years, but its digital scale will complement Sirius’s physical network.