Digest 05/16/2022

Staying the course on the crypto beat, sex toy content mill buys beloved magazine, and more.

KEEPING UP WITH CRYPTO

Anyone can see that crypto is floundering. Bitcoin recently plunged to 50 percent of its highest value, threatening to throw El Salvador, which made the digital currency legal tender last year, into default. Then, Luna, a cryptocurrency that backpacked off of the so-called “stablecoin” Terra, started to crash last week. (Stablecoins are tied to the dollar and used to convert their sibling cryptocurrencies into cash.) Luna investors began openly contemplating suicide on Reddit as the crypto fell from $82 to its current $0 value. In light of May’s low lows, the community’s excitability and misplaced wishful thinking has made me understand how essential critical crypto journalism is.

Earlier this month, I wrote about some Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT fans that lost millions in a scam , then Bitcoin hit its lowest point since 2020 , and crypto billionaires’ net worths shrunk to not-so-billionaire sizes. These events might sound like inevitable outcomes of believing in aimless new technology, but regardless of your own crypto opinions, it’s inarguable that this sequence of events alone laid waste to real people’s lives, affecting even those who do not participate in risky trading. Through the devastation, the WAGMI-touting crypto community (WAGMI stands for “we’re all gonna make it,” by the way, real camp counselor stuff) maintains a public face that is equal parts enthusiasm and defense.

Because of the crypto community’s zealousness and because of the extent of its wreckage, journalists reporting on crypto must deliver their audience unfettered truth. Even Ben McKenzie, who once played my beloved Ryan Atwood on Cali drama The O.C. , has recognized the import of sober journalism in the crypto sphere — the former teen idol now allocates a chunk of his Hollywood time to reporting hard-to-swallow crypto news and analysis alongside tech reporter Jacob Silverman.

“Do you really think the big money will rush in now as crypto crashes, AND the broader markets are correcting as well?” McKenzie tweeted on May 13. “If so, I have some ocean front property in South Dakota I’d like to sell you.”

Crypto journalists don’t need to have a hit TV show to depuff the smoke-filled industry, though. Brady Dale, a crypto reporter at Axios who got his start with an article about blockchain for The Observer in 2015, spoke with Study Hall about the importance of reporting on crypto without illusions.

“Broadly speaking, I try to write about projects with credible supporters or good signals,” he said. “As many years as I’ve been in this, I’ve got pretty good instincts. The cheat code is just, ‘Are reputable non-anonymous people actively involved?’ It’s more complicated than that, but it’s a good place to start.”

Dale said he doesn’t make recommendations. Then, he cuts through some of the crypto community’s hype by maintaining focus on how things actually work over the promises they make.

“I also tend to focus on stories I find rather than the ones that are pitched to me by PR teams,” he said. “PR teams are a negative signal in my experience. Projects that aren’t pounding on your door are usually the better projects because they think they have fundamental value rather than living and dying on buzz.”

The problem is that not every publication’s message is as focused as industry veterans or teen heartthrobs-turned-crypto-reporters, two positions that require a decent amount of bullshit-raking. And even after this ruinous month, some publications are still trying to appeal to the hope plaguing crypto’s loyal but misguided disciples.

“Readers will remember me gushing over the Luna Foundation Guard (LFG) – the nonprofit aimed at promoting and stabilizing the Terra ecosystem,” CoinDesk research analyst George Kaloudis wrote in an opinion column. Kaloudis recognized that investors were devastated by Luna’s crash, but still assured readers that “money isn’t everything, [though] losing a lot of it sure does feel like it. If you or someone you know lost money in the LUNA/UST crash, know that life is always worth living.”

The line feels way too casual, like nodding at a grease fire you helped spark and calling it a candle. It’s unempathetic and uncritical. And it’s not what readers — stubbornly hopeful as they may be — need. In the house-of-cards crypto community, readers need honesty and accountability.

“It’s not just a crypto … remember,” a popular Shiba Inu coin Twitter account wrote on May 12. “Journalists, please do not publish sensational headlines and distorted truths that can damage lives.”

“It’s honestly pretty galling to see how many bankers, journalists and other ‘experts’ participated in legitimizing blatant crypto scams and are now going to walk away from the mountain of ruined lives with no consequences whatsoever,” wrote another Twitter user.

Trust in media is indeed dipping in the US, in no small part due to inconsistencies in mainstream media reports that prioritize unchecked, extravagant claims over unpleasant realities. As video game developer Briana Wu wrote in a Twitter thread last week, “disillusioned young men that will lose everything in the upcoming cryptocrash will turn to fascism, not socialism, as they look for someone to blame.” Wu added, “They’ll blame it on media. […] And they will support anyone that taps into that anger and promises them the status they feel entitled to.” Crypto reporters should avoid write-ups that recommend coins or seek to thrill crypto believers, or they risk losing their audience to harmful alternatives. Thrills are best left to TV and Imogen Heap backing tracks.

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COMINGS AND GOINGS

— Jelani Cobb, The New Yorker staff writer and Columbia Journalism School faculty member since 2016, will become dean of the school on August 1.

— Former HuffPost executive editor Hillary Frey is Slate ’s new editor-in-chief.

— Willy Blackmore left his senior editor position at Curbed.

— Victoria Benning left The Washington Post and will become national managing editor of Bloomberg News.

— Pippa Crerar is rejoining The Guardian as political editor. Heather Stewart is leaving that role but remaining at The Guardian as special correspondent.

— Jordain Carney is now a congressional reporter at Politico.

— Andrew Moore will become a videographer and video editor at Warner Media and Bleacher Report.

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EVERYTHING ELSE

— University of Nevada, Las Vegas’ literary magazine The Believer was recently sold to Sex Toy Collective, a collective for sex toys. Though we might bristle at the idea of UNLV selling a beloved magazine to a content mill, at least Sex Toy Collective had the courtesy to make an offer in the first place — McSweeney’s , The Believer ’s publisher from 2003 to 2015 made a pass at acquiring the magazine, but requested that UNLV pay them for it.

— Jon Peltz and Kate Gallagher, journalists for local watchdog journalism site Knock LA , are suing the City of LA and the Los Angeles Police Department. The site alleges the city and the LAPD violated Peltz and Gallagher’s constitutional rights by arresting them during a March 2021 protest to protect homeless encampments in Echo Park Lake despite their identifying as members of the press. “The LAPD’s official statement that night was that journalists and members of the media must disperse during unlawful assemblies,” writes Knock LA . “But the lawsuit alleges that by arresting journalists for failure to disperse, the City unlawfully prevented them from engaging in their First Amendment–protected activity.”

— Yessenia Mollinedo Falconi, director of news website El Veraz , and Sheila Johana García Olivera, a reporter at the site, were fatally shot outside a convenience store in the Mexican port city Veracruz. Including their deaths, 11 journalists were killed in Mexico this year.

— Al Jazeera broadcast journalist and Palestinian-American Shireen Abu Akleh, who reported on the State for over 20 years, was shot and killed by the Israeli army. According to Al Jazeera , Israeli forces shot Abu Akleh while she was wearing a press vest and filming them.

— In an article reporting the deadly shooting, Forbes used disingenuously passive phrasing, writing that Abu Akleh “died after being hit in the head by a bullet.” On Twitter, the Associated Press used its own inaccurate phrasing and referred to pallbearers at Abu Akleh’s funeral — who Israeli police clubbed and targeted with stun grenades — as “demonstrators.”

— Twitter executives Bruce Falck and Kayvon Beykpour, revenue product lead and general consumer manager, respectively, were fired to cut costs as the company anticipates Elon Musk’s leadership. Until all of the libs are owned, though, Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal told employees that the company began “pausing most hiring and backfills.”

— Bloomberg will no longer style the abbreviations “US” and “UK” with periods . Congrats, B.l.o.o.m.b.e.r.g.!