Study Hall Digest 2/11/2019

By Study Hall staff writer Allegra Hobbs (@allegraehobbs)

Jill Abramson Is Now Legally Obligated to Get a Tattoo of the VICE Logo

Jill Abramson’s blatant plagiarism and bizarre justifications for blatant plagiarism point to the delusions of superiority one could reasonably expect from a person with both a New York Times and Harvard tattoos — it’s clear she believed, perhaps subconsciously, that the journalists whose work she stole did not deserve the baseline consideration she would have granted anyone she deemed an equal. Defenses that the instances of plagiarism — which are MANY and OBVIOUS — were the result not of malice but sloppiness miss the point. Such a degree of sloppiness indicates a profound lack of care and respect for the journalists whose work she was using for profit.

But it also indicates, yet again, just how out of touch Abramson is with the realities of the industry of which she claims to be an authority — remember, her response to the recent loss of literal thousands of media jobs was “there are jobs.” No one with a single pinky nail on the pulse of this dumpster fire of an industry would make such a proclamation. Employment in news media has declined by nearly a quarter in the last decade — a statistic that was produced before the recent bloodbath. It is a fact that there are not sufficient jobs to match the pool of searching qualified journalists. To suggest otherwise, and to suggest snagging another job is simple if you have the connections — especially after a wave of mass layoffs — is insulting.

And now she’s demonstrated pretty clearly she’s still living in a bygone era where journalists are even vaguely intimidated by the puffed-up prestige of the old guard — she clearly believed these ragamuffins with interesting haircuts either wouldn’t notice her egregious errors (because, remember their only qualifications are INTERESTING HAIRCUTS) or they wouldn’t dare speak up. Or, if they did speak up, maybe their complaints wouldn’t gain much traction because the shadow of the New York Times is too great. I mean…wrong, wrong and wrong. Step out of your mahogany and book-lined summer home, Jill, and take a look around. Millennials LOVE dragging the New York Times — it’s right up there with tattoos, wokeness, CBD, and putting “interesting haircut” on otherwise blank resumes.

Patreon May Also Fail Us

Even while every digital media company capsizes around us, there’s always self-publishing — as our story on Substack and other self-published newsletters points out, it’s rarely a replacement for a full-time job but can be a decent way for creators to make money off their content on their own terms. But Patreon isn’t exempt from pressures of capitalism — the company has taken in $107 million in VC money, and the CEO is now afraid the current model — which grants 90 percent of project funds to the creators on the platform — is not “sustainable.” The platform may start offering additional services, like merchandising, and may alter that 90 percent payout. As YouTuber Dan Olson pointed out in a popular Twitter thread, Patreon’s business model is in fact the “definition of sustainable” — it provides creators with a platform to do what they do and seamlessly manage subscriptions, and the model’s simplicity means increased users doesn’t necessitate significant scale in staff. Without the pressure to deliver returns to investor Thrive Capital, Patreon would more than likely be just fine as it is — but that’s not the world we live in! And creators on the platform will almost certainly bear the brunt of whatever overhaul gets pushed through.

A Humble Plea to Craig Newmark: Give Us Your Money

Billionaire Craig Newmark loves journalism — so much, in fact, that he has given what can only be described as a shit ton of money to the Jill Abramson-approved cause of journalism schools! He’s giving $10 million to launch the Craig Newmark Center for Journalism Ethics and Security and the Craig Newmark Professorship of Journalism at Columbia Journalism School, plus $5 million to launch the Craig Newmark Center for Ethics and Leadership at The Poynter Institute. $15 million to study ethics!! I guess it’s admirable Newmark is putting money towards continuing Jill Abramson’s education, but who else can afford the tuition these days? Really, I can’t help but wonder whether there could be…better uses for $15 million?? I mean, thousands of media employees have lost their jobs over the past few weeks and local newspapers across the country are going up in flames. I’m sure they would welcome $15 million. OR give it to us, Study Hall! We can teach Jill Abramson ethics!! Give it to us, Craig.

UK-based women’s site The Pool has shuttered and its contributors are out thousands of dollars — it turns out the company, apparently beloved for its deft handling of sensitive subjects, was deep in debt and hemorrhaging money. “As a freelancer, you can’t possibly be aware of office politics, or worrying signs such as the fact that the entire board bar one resigned in August 2018,” writes former The Pool freelancer Laura Craik, who is owed £7,250 she’ll probably never see.

It raises an interesting question — how much should freelancers be expected to know about a company’s financial situation? To what extent is it wise to be inquisitive about these things? Of course freelancers are not responsible for the mismanagement within the media companies they write for, but strictly for the purpose of self-preservation, to what lengths should they go? At the very least, what can we do to protect each other? Craik writes that, though The Pool was behind in its payments to her, she trusted the company — she gave them the benefit of the doubt and continued to wait. There doesn’t seem to have been much communication among the freelancers.

When I spoke to travel writer Adam Groffman, who is one of over 50 freelancers awaiting payment from Out, he told me that he had no idea that dozens of workers were in the same boat — having realized that, those workers are organizing to demand the money they are owed. Keeping one another informed of bad practices may be an effective of way of staying ahead of this shit!

SHORT LINKS:

• Media may be fucked for the most part, but the New York Times is doing extremely well. It generated $709 million in digital revenue last year (putting it on track to hit $800 million by 2020) and reports 3.3 million paid digital subscribers, a 27 percent increase since 2017. This is not surprising. The Times is the Times. It has the brand recognition that will ensure its thriving. Sure, there may be no local newspapers by 2020, but the Times will surely hit its digital revenue goal! But could the Times’ continued subscriptions-based success — in which it keeps scoring both readers and writers in a competitive marketplace — edge out its competitors in what this Intelligencer piece calls a “winner takes all” scenario? For the sake of the industry, let’s hope not.
• Brands: they’re just like us! Horny and depressed. The dominant social media strategy right now seems to be just replicating the same exhibitionist weirdness we get up to on Twitter.
• The Newseum, a museum dedicated to an industry fractured by mismanagement and corporate greed, is now failing due to mismanagement and corporate greed. The real Newseum was every media site we shuttered along the way.
• Writer Anand Giridharadas recapped the uncomfortable experience of attending a literary event hosted by PEN America and being berated by the good liberal host for BEING MEAN TO DAVID KOCH. “Never underestimate the defensiveness of very rich people who believe they’re progressive and who are willing to give back in any way they can — except by surrendering any of their privileges, advantages, or immunities,” writes Giridharadas. The author says he has since received an apology and has asked PEN America to let him perform the story of the confrontation at an awards ceremony later this month. COME ON, PEN AMERICA!!
• More people are pirating shows via BitTorrent because there are too many streaming services with exclusive content, forcing consumers to shell out money on multiple subscriptions. Relatable! I’m currently stuck in a cycle of realizing how much I pay per month for streaming, deleting my Hulu account in a panic, and then reviving it when The Good Place comes back (which reminds me, I need to delete it again).
• In a since-deleted series of Tweets, writer Rob Tannenbaum recounted how Adam Levine got him fired from Rolling Stone — he was mad because Tannenbaum asked him silly questions instead of serious questions, and that made Jann Wenner mad. But lol imagine asking Adam Levine about his “craft”??
• Here’s an interesting piece on the massively popular video game Fortnite, which already serves as a kind of social network among players, and how it may be poised as a jumping off point into the establishment of the Metaverse, the next version of the Internet. Remember, even if the natural world crumbles around us, we can still occupy virtual spaces!