Study Hall Digest 12/16/2019

By Study Hall staff writer Allegra Hobbs (@allegraehobbs)

Out Still Owes Freelancers (And It’s Firing Its Own Staff)

Back in June, Vice reported that Out editor-in-chief Phillip Picardi was threatening to leave the publication he’d been hired away from Teen Vogue to run unless parent company Pride Media paid out the hundreds of thousands of dollars it owed to contributors, vendors, and partners. The piece also detailed the greed and mismanagement of Pride Media’s new owner, the private equity firm Oreva Capital. The purchase of the titles in the fall of 2017 prompted reasonable anxieties over owner Adam Levin’s actual interest in bolstering LGBTQ media. Levin, who is straight, had never read Out before the purchase. That seemed weird, right? How invested was he, really, in the publication’s mission and ultimate success?

Picardi and other staffers stayed on after the necessary cash for contributors came in from Levin and other investors, but it hardly resolved the larger questions about the magazine and its fate. This past week, Picardi was one of at least 11 staffers who were let go, bringing the number of full-time staffers at the magazine to five (there were 15 in January).

And Pride Media is still failing to pay its contributors, even after the drama of a social media campaign and a public mea culpa from Levin in that Vice article this summer. John Paul Brammer, author of Out’s popular advice column ¡Hola Papi!, tweeted shortly before the news of last week’s firings that he was still owed for invoices dating back to September. (Accounts payable told him they don’t have a date for those payments, but they’ll “bring it up” at an upcoming meeting like it’s an idea for a new podcast, lol.)

“hola papi is a lot of fun and I love doing it and I’ve worked with so many incredible people on it but I sure am tired of having to navigate it through cishet-owned LGBT media like it’s my child and I’m the dad in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road,” Brammer tweeted. And that’s ultimately the problem — private equity firms like Oreva Capital aren’t really interested in the sustainable success of LGBTQ media, but they will still try to capitalize on the culture they represent. Digital traffic under Picardi had nearly doubled; to echo Megan Greenwell’s Deadspin autopsy, this is not a case of private equity making cuts at an unsuccessfully run website, but instead ruining a title that’s gaining momentum. The Oreva overlords tossed the editor out with other staffers who made the magazine what it was, and still refuse to pay the contributors who did the same.

The Unethical Female Journalist Trope That Just Refuses to Die

When HBO’s Sharp Objects premiered in 2018, Amy Adams’s depiction of a female journalist who drinks heavily on the job and sleeps with her primary police source led to the re-examination of the trope of the unethical woman journalist, or what New York Magazine’s Marin Cogan called “slutty ambition monsters” (see: the women journalists of House of Cards). I personally did not mind Amy Adams’ character, who was (1) not so much a “slutty ambition monster” as a traumatized person whose sexual habits were contextualized within a pattern of substance abuse and self-harm; (2) a fictional person. But the persistence and spread of the trope is worth examining. It can be traced back to Sally Field’s 1981 portrayal of a journalist who sleeps with the subject of her story in Absence of Malice and has popped up in films such as Never Been Kissed and Thank You for Smoking — and, more recently, in Rory Gilmore’s evolution into a sloppy journalist who sleeps with her sources.

But this time, the trope of the unethical female journalist is smearing the name of an actual, nonfictional person who died in 2001 and is thus unable to defend herself. Clint Eastwood’s new movie Richard Jewell shows reporter Kathy Scruggs (played by Olivia Wilde) exchanging sex for information — a depiction her former employer, the Atlanta-Journal Constitution, has called “false,” “malicious” and “extremely defamatory.” The paper has demanded a response from Eastwood, but any sort of apology seems unlikely given that the screenwriter Billy Ray has defended the film. Wilde, for her part, defended her portrayal and implied that the criticism is sexist because it has not been equally applied to John Hamm’s character, the FBI agent in a relationship with Scruggs. What Wilde is refusing to recognize is that female journalists already have to contend with the trope, and that women are more likely to be actually harmed by it than their male counterparts.

Chabon and Waldman Abandon Ghost Ship Project

CBS announced last week that famous author couple Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman had signed a production deal with CBS that would include a TV series or movie about the Oakland Ghost Ship tragedy, provoking shock and outrage from the affected community. (The related court cases are ongoing and survivors have not received any semblance of closure.) Chabon and Waldman listened to the criticism and ultimately bailed on the project. Still, what does this mean for the current demand for IP in Hollywood? Chabon and co. were not just planning to make a show or film about the Ghost Ship fire — they optioned the New York Times Magazine article about the tragedy. Will prospective subjects approached by journalists for these big features start considering the possibility of the worst moments of their life being optioned without their consent? NOT EVERYTHING NEEDS TO BE PRESTIGE TV.

Bernie Sanders Seems Like a Cool Dad, Honestly

Bernie Sanders (before age 40): UChicago grad, unemployed, dad at 29, and… “made a few filmstrips.” If you live in the hyper-simplified, watered-down world of Political Twitter where Everything Matters A Lot but simultaneously doesn’t matter at all once you log off, a beautifully deranged meme has arisen courtesy of M. Mendoza Ferrer that encapsulates the challenge of having a deep thought in 280 characters or less:

Setting aside the history of Ferrer trying to attack Sanders (she’s previously uncovered video of him scandalously declaring himself a socialist in 1986 and teaching kids about the dangers of stereotyping), her argument that he was a deadbeat dad stems from a newspaper clipping from 1974 quoting the mother of his child, Susan Mott, saying that “she is refused apartments because she is on welfare and has one child, [Levi].”

The truth is that Sanders was around for his son while also working on political campaigns and activism. Levi was photographed perched on Sanders’ lap in 1971 at a political meeting; before that, Bernie made the move to Burlington to be closer to his son after Susan moved to the city. If anything, Sanders as a dad sounds exactly like what I would expect: Levi called him “Bernard” rather than dad because he thought “dad” was childish; Bernie included him in conversations about the state of the world, took him to play basketball, and brought him to the library.

Ferrer’s argument that Sanders “owes his ENTIRE political career to the woman who raised his son on welfare while he was running for office” is disingenuous and, frankly, irresponsible. Yes, Sanders spent his 30s using his son’s toys as sound effects for his educational films on people like Eugene V. Debs, and wrote freelance articles to scrape together a living (sound familiar?). But that sounds more like a life spent devoted to activism than being a bad dad, especially since he juggled custody with Susan while campaigning — a move Beto O’Rourke could’ve taken a lesson from during his Senate run. Decades later, Levi has still shown up to his dad’s campaign events and when asked about Bernie, said that “he is someone who gives hope that things can change.”

Beneath the absurdity of the cursed “Made A Few Filmstrips” meme is a lesson: context matters. There are plenty of legitimate ways to critique a presidential candidate (see: their policy positions), but trying to dig decades into their personal life for a golden nugget of outrage ain’t it. Let’s let this one die and relive the glory days of when the “candidate comparison” meme was reserved for hard-hitting arguments over whether ketamine is strictly for horses. — Chris Erik Thomas

Longread of the Week: Ash Sanders explored the psychological toll of climate change for The Believer and the shrugging response from those in denial: “When I talked about how I really felt, environmental leaders cautioned me. ‘The key is to be positive,’ they said. ‘Nobody likes doom and gloom.’ For me, though, eight years of overwork, stress, and anxiety had taken a toll. My partner and I fought constantly. I had nightmares when I fell asleep and daymares when I read the news. I was sick all the time. I came to hate humankind, its happiness and calm. I went to therapists who stared at me quizzically. I was sad about what? ‘The end of the world,’ I said, again and again. Finally, at a loss, they diagnosed me with depression.”

Everything Else

— The New Yorker sent a non-Muslim woman to test out a swimsuit with a hijab head covering, which went about as well as you would expect. Writer Christina Binkley called the garment “bothersome” and complained it made her feel “claustrophobic.” But worse still was her response to criticism from Muslim, hijab-wearing women, who rightly questioned the publication’s decision to choose her in the first place. She gave a dismissive “sorry you were offended” remark and offered to put Sarah Hagi in touch with Nike if she wanted to write about it too (Hagi was already writing about it, and surely does not need help getting in touch with Nike).

— Bloomberg Media has purchased CityLab, an Atlantic publication that covers urban issues such as development and transit, and there will be layoffs. Apparently only seven of CityLab‘s staff of 16 employees will make the move over to the new publication when the sale goes through at the end of the month. CityLab senior reporter Amanda Kolson Hurley has clarified on Twitter that The Atlantic is laying off the staffers as part of the deal, and that Bloomberg is expected to make job offers to about half of them; they are expected to interview for the positions.

— Josh Topolsky’s new website Input has launched; it’s a tech-focused companion to The Outline (both of which are owned by Bustle Digital Group). The site has gadget reviews and a whole section called BUY THIS STUFF. Topolsky originally announced the site’s development last January with the critique that “tech news as we know it has become obvious and predictable,” which remains true.

— Business Insider did a round-up of media jobs lost so far in 2019 and it’s pretty grim: a whopping 7,800 layoffs, the latest being Gannett and Highsnobiety.