Study Hall Digest 10/14/2019

By Study Hall staff writer Allegra Hobbs (@allegraehobbs)

G/O Media has shut down Splinter, the biting politics site that was the heir to Gawker. G/O editorial director Paul Maidment said in a staff-wide email the decision was due to the difficulty of “establishing a steady and sustainable audience for a relatively young site.” But does anyone buy that explanation?

Ever since private equity group Great Hill Partners bought what was formerly Gizmodo Media Group from Univision, the new management has consistently demonstrated an almost comedic inability to understand the spirit of the sites it had purchased (suggesting journalists bring someone from the sales department to interviews for example), and has butted heads with the journalists under its purview. Despite attempts by management to halt its publication, Deadspin put out a lengthy, detailed look at the grim state of things inside G/O under CEO Jim Spanfeller, and Deadspin editor-in-chief Megan Greenwell quit shortly thereafter, claiming she had been “repeatedly undermined, lied to, and gaslit” while trying to do her job.

Great Hills only purchased the bundle of former Gizmodo sites in April with the stated mission of making them profitable — throwing in the towel on the politics site so soon and right on the cusp of an election year wouldn’t make much sense. The higher-ups at G/O likely sensed Splinter wasn’t worth the internal trouble if it wasn’t bringing in enough revenue right off the bat. It’s hard not to feel they actively fear the journalists they employ — take Maidment’s email to staff following the Splinter closure, which forbids any of the sites from covering the closure in very severe language (ostensibly out of respect for their laid-off colleagues, which, lol).

Though Maidment said Splinter staffers would be redistributed among other G/O sites, the GMG Union has said seven staffers lost their jobs — among them well-known labor reporter Hamilton Nolan. My prediction is that we’ll see a few more independent newsletters pop up in the near future.

Speaking of which! While private equity firms are leveling news sites, the once-small newsletter business is getting bigger. Here’s a bit of (I think) underreported media biz news from the past week: Substack, which in July took in $15 million from venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, is now hosting its first media company, a conservative news venture called The Dispatch from prominent right-of-center media figures Stephen Hayes of the now-defunct Weekly Standard and Jonah Goldberg of the National Review. The site went live last Tuesday, pledging to provide “fact-based news and commentary that doesn’t come either through the filter of the mainstream media or the increasingly boosterish media on the right.” Translation: conservative news sites (like Breitbart) tend to pretty much be vehicles for white supremacy and Trump worship, but we’re not like that…we’re cool conservatives.

The venture, which has raised $6 million from investors, is so milquetoast it’s hard to imagine it thriving in the land of hot takes. It is not anti-Trump but “Trump-skeptical,” Hayes told Axios. “We are not launching The Dispatch as an indictment of anyone or anything,” reads the introductory letter from Hayes and Goldberg. Imagine these statements coming out of your mouth as you launch a political news venture with a perspective in this day and age. It boggles the mind. But it might be what a certain strain of self-styled intellectual conservative reader wants, so they can feel reasonable and superior to people who angrily condemn things.

The launch seems to mark another shift in the newsletter industry, which has slowly but surely become an alternative to larger traditional media structures. Of course, now Substack has VC money, and its first publication has taken money from investors as well, so hard to say how that utopian vision of independence will shake out. At the very least, these dispatches are no longer necessarily small and intimate.

Did you hear a writer for Vogue didn’t have a list of questions prepared for Rihanna? Abby Aguirre got ripped to shreds on Twitter for her admission that she was “winging it” while profiling Rihanna, claiming in her defense it was a last-minute request and she didn’t have time to draft a list of questions for the pop star. What ensued was a lot of posturing from writers about HOW PREPARED they would be if a Rihanna profile ever came knocking — they’ve been researching their whole lives! Their notes app is filled with questions! Rihanna, for her part, called Aguirre “gangster” when asked about the controversy at an event.

Still, Darcie Wilder had the only correct take over at The Outline: “Celebrity profiles are not journalism, they do not seek to uncover the unspoken and controversial ills of our society. They are not opportunities for muckraking: they are business partnerships parlaying products, put forth for a braying audience to swoon over and then buy said products (in Rihanna’s case, her lines of clothing and cosmetics).” Yes.

Entries & Exits

— Twitter icon and voice of a generation Dril is getting a show on Adult Swim. A lot of people are defending his right to cash in on Twitter fame, but I don’t see anyone actually mad about his pivot to TV?

— n+1 writer and editor Nikil Saval is…running for state senate in Philly?? He is also co-founder of a left-wing group in Philadelphia championing working class people. This is what we call praxis. Praaaaxisssss.

Longread of the Week: Kaitlyn Tiffany for The Atlantic dissects the history of email newsletters which seem newly discovered and monetized by Silicon Valley tech bros but were pioneered by women writers who wrote free and intimate dispatches for smaller audiences. Tiffany notes that Substack as a company seems like “it can only thrive in a world where newsletters have no past, and can be declared a hot new alternative medium. Silicon Valley has always preferred a revolution to a ‘cleaner version of an existing service.’” Remember, technology always has a history.

Everything Else

— Under a proposed settlement, Facebook will pay $40 million to advertising agencies accusing it of having knowingly inflated viewership metrics on its videos, metrics that made media companies hire and fire whole teams and waste everyone’s time.

— Politico is a studiously objective news organization whose newsletter is sponsored by the Coalition Against Socialized Medicine and whose Energy Podcast is sponsored by Chevron…totally normal stuff.

— The Correspondent published a piece on Greta Thunberg then removed it after her family “raised concerns around sensitivities within the piece,” which seems like an odd choice as opposed to simply removing the parts that raised concern, or running a correction. The site also notes the family had not read the piece before publication (seems like a weird thing to note, since that would be against just about nearly every publication’s editorial standards).

— Group Nine Media, which owns animal-focused site The Dodo, is acquiring women’s fashion and culture site PopSugar in an all-stock deal…which values PopSugar at $300 million?!?! Where do these numbers come from? It’s another merger in the NYmag/Vox, Vice/R29 lane.

— Travel media site / content farm Culture Trip has taken in over $100 million in funding, and yet as of last year has generated just around $659,000 in revenue. It’s experienced growth from the previous year, but still not nearly enough to justify such a massive investment. (Will investors give vast quantities of cash to literally anyone?? Just a theory…)

— Despite 80% of workers at public media station WHYY stating their support of unionizing efforts with SAG-AFTRA, WHYY has refused to voluntarily recognize the union. WHYY said it plans to hold meetings in the coming weeks — but don’t worry, they’re not union-busting meetings!! “These meetings will not try to dissuade employees from voting for or against forming the union but are designed to educate employees about what forming a union would mean now and in the future.” Seems legit!

— A bit of advice for anyone starting out in the media industry (SPOILERS BELOW DON’T SCROLL PAST THE TWEET IF YOU DON’T WANT TO):

SUCCESSION FINALE BULLETIN — WARNING SPOILERS!!!

People say the monoculture is dead and no one will watch the same shows because of streaming, but HBO’s Succession managed to fully saturate one demographic: media people on Twitter. Partly out of narcissism, the show obsessed us, from the sniping characters to the media-biz commentary (BuzzFeed-as-Vaulter), fashion choices, and memes. The finale was a perfect cap on the season. The Fox-equivalent Waystar Royco is finally, ultimately out of options: It can’t make acquisitions, can’t go private, can’t ignore its problems, and can’t even keep a new CEO. With Kendall’s ending betrayal (pre-planned and based on Greg’s disclosure of the cruise problems many episodes ago, in my mind), the company will lose its figurehead and charismatic founder. I feel like a Ken-Stewy detente is coming, along with a Rome-Ken alliance, Daddy Roy planning revenge from the shadows, and a major Vaulter reboot. Pivot to video!!! — Kyle Chayka