Study Hall Digest 10/28/2019

By Study Hall staff writer Allegra Hobbs (@allegraehobbs)

Who will be the first to actually save local news?? Media analyst Ken Doctor of Nieman Lab announced that next year he will launch a company called Lookout committed to doing just that. The post contains more premature self-congratulating than actual details, though Doctor pledges he will say more about the venture very soon. As far as I can tell, it is a company — a for-profit public-benefit corporation — that will provide a platform and prescribe a redeeming business model for ailing local news outlets. Again, the announcement is scant on details, but two arguments made within the sneak peek did jump out at me:

1. Print is dead. It’s just not financially feasible for local operations, Doctor argues: “The print-based daily model — with presses, newsprint, trucks, big office buildings, and more to pay for — can only afford 12 to 20 percent on content.” Lookout, meanwhile, will be able to devote 70 percent of its revenue to content. We all love print, but this is a fair assessment, especially considering most Americans prefer to get their local news online anyway.
2. Ditch philanthropy for self-sustaining business models: “We believe that new news institutions must stand on their own, earning and growing their own reader and local advertiser revenue. We don’t believe that many local news institutions — as compared to national, state, or regional ones — can do the scale of high-quality work required if they are dependent on ongoing philanthropy.”

This is basically the inverse of the non-profit model that has emerged over the last year as the potential savior of local news, most recently exemplified by the emergence of Jere Hester’s The City — the local NYC news site that is backed by $10 million in donations, including a generous boost from Craig Newmark, who also enjoys seeing his name on J-schools. But the model’s rise in popularity is partly due to a belief that for-profit models aren’t enough. “There’s an increasing awareness that the for-profit market is not going to supply journalism at the level we need it,” ProPublica President Richard Tofel told Bloomberg. In the end, no one model will work for every outlet — probably not Lookout, either.

The only thing I love more than grand and vague declarations of plans to save local news? Self-righteous declarations about the state of local news from journalists who have built their careers covering national issues for big publications. Tanzina Vega, who has gone from the New York Times to CNN to WNYC, where she now hosts The Takeaway, declared on Twitter: “Everyone wants to be an ace star reporter but no one wants to cover city council meetings etc.” She then accused others of “focus[ing] on fantasy,” including New York Times docuseries The Weekly (prompting a transit reporter for the Times to point out The Weekly actually shows her covering a city council meeting).

I wasn’t the only one to respond that this is very much not the case. It’s pretty insulting to blame the state of local news on reporter apathy when in fact reporters who would love to cover local meetings are being laid off en masse for reasons utterly outside of their control. I’m curious, has Vega herself ever covered a community board meeting? A community council meeting at a local police precinct? A tenant association meeting at a housing development?

I noticed three categories of response to my Writer as Influencer essay, which enjoyed a…new life on Media Twitter after being syndicated by The Guardian: (1) “This is good and I relate to it” (thank you), (2) very fair and smart criticism (thank you), and (3) “I clearly didn’t read the piece but I’m mad” (also thank you; I have gathered this is an important rite of passage). Queen of the third category is Lauren Duca, who went on a totally normal and chill Twitter rampage suggesting I “pull [my] head out of [my] own ass,” retweeting someone comparing me to Tucker Carlson (lol), and demanding to know what I have done to improve the world. I could probably do more, but at least I’m not notorious within my industry for being cruel.

WHAT A WEEK for book deals:

— The anonymous Trump administration official who wrote that Times op-ed is essentially writing a book-length version of the op-ed, called A Warning.

— Kelsey McKinney of Deadspin is writing a novel that takes place within the megachurch subculture of North Texas.

— Allison Davis of The Cut and New York Magazine is writing a nonfiction book about female horniness.

Longread(s) of the Week: Study Hall’s own Kyle Chayka traces the history of the aspirational magazine publisher Condé Nast to the present day in a review of Susan Ronald’s new biography of its founder, Condé Nast: The Man and His Empire. There’s a whiff of the writer as influencer in his conclusion that The New Yorker is closest to Nast’s original vision: “Its new cohort of contributors — including Jia Tolentino, Isaac Chotiner, and Helen Rosner — drives conversation on the internet the way Dorothy Parker once must have whispered into Manhattan’s ear at the original Vanity Fair. These writers leverage their individual online presences in tandem with their publishing perch, defining the memes, delights, and scandals of the week with articles that convert into organic marketing and profit for the title.”

Chayka’s article was followed up today by a deep investigation into Condé Nast by New York magazine’s Reeves Weidemann. The feature has many entertaining reported anecdotes, but Weidemann largely finds an empire ruled by Vogue’s Anna Wintour in her own image, still trying to pivot to video and seek out niche advertising. Not exactly inspiring of confidence.

Everything Else

— Writers as Influencers news: Cat Marnell is into basketball now and there’s a Vanity Fair piece about it (also NBA Twitter needs to LEAVE HER ALONE); Alison Roman is promoting her new cookbook, so only a matter of time until we get her latest skincare tips.

— Esquire went long on the attempted relaunch and dissolution of Gawker 2.0, a stunning portrait of Bryan Goldberg’s incompetence which also includes a BDG spokesperson lying about Maya Kosoff’s departure in an attempt to smear her.

— Here’s Christopher Beha, the new editor at Harper’s set to take over after James Marcus left following that controversial Katie Roiphe piece. It seems like a cursed position with improbably high turnover due to clashes with internet-unfriendly publisher John MacArthur.

— The Harvard Crimson’s editors are in hot water after they followed journalistic protocol and requested comment from ICE following an ICE protest (a normal thing to do). Anxiety from undocumented students over any contact with ICE is entirely understandable, but the Crimson said it shared no personal information with the agency and didn’t reach out until the protest had concluded, in which case the request for comment would be no more potentially harmful than the existence of the published article.

— Overlapping writer cliques within Media Twitter are very interesting to me. For example, Meghan Daum, once heralded as an heir to Joan Didion, is now part of the intellectual dark web and buds with Bari Weiss. Taffy Brodesser-Akner is buds with them both and has publicly praised their work. Brodesser-Akner is seemingly friends with pretty much everyone. Maybe she’s just friendly?