Study Hall Digest 1/13/2020

By Study Hall staff writer Allegra Hobbs (@allegraehobbs)

Is the IP War Ruining Journalism?

This past week, The Baffler published an essay from James Pogue linking the explosive IP market with “the decline of nonfiction” — basically, he argues, Hollywood’s lust for exciting romps based on true stories has incentivized writers to churn out plot-based, apolitical “trash” with no literary merit. Plenty of writers agreed and praised the piece for identifying the forces responsible for killing journalism.

But plenty of others took issue with the piece. Some vehemently contested the notion that “trash” is what gets optioned and/or turned into streamable content. Some even attributed Pogue’s hatred of the IP machine to bitterness at his work not being optioned. Reyhan Harmanci, formerly an editor at Topic, tweeted that she “personally loved the IP chase as an excuse to spend more money on complicated stories” and further disputed that it was a driving force behind her editorial decisions. Rachel Morris, the executive editor at Highline, argued the stories that get optioned are of a far broader range than formulaic narrative stories.

Harmanci, now deputy head of programming at Gimlet Media, told Study Hall that despite Topic having been an entertainment studio as well as a magazine, the hope of an option “didn’t dictate any story decisions.” More generally, she argued the IP market isn’t the journalistic doomsday Pogue seems to think it is, though there is a bit of truth to his argument as well. “I think there is a certain kind of platonic ideal of IP-driven narrative that does tend to strip the politics out of it in the interest of being a universal story, and there is a feeling that the more bonkers the better,” she said. “But I don’t think that IP having a market is necessarily bad for writers. I don’t see it distracting that many writers from what they’re doing in general. I think that it’s only a thin sliver of the creative writing world that’s actively trying to gauge the market for IP — and good for them, writing is really hard.”

Pogue, in an email to Study Hall, said he’s gotten an enormous amount of positive feedback on the piece and that he hasn’t really kept up with the criticism on Media Twitter. “It would take a very disingenuous reader to argue that I said that Hollywood was the only culprit in this, and in fact most of what I saw of criticism before I checked out was some pretty hacky people who were mad that I called out how the industry encourages and rewards people for being hacky, which is hardly a surprise,” he said. “I would say that whatever criticisms people might direct personally at me would be well worth having had a chance to just open up this wider conversation, because it obviously struck a chord, even with the haters.”

It certainly did strike a chord — the question of exactly how the thirst for IP impacts journalism has been in the air for a while now, and it’s good that it’s being discussed openly. I wrote a series of reported pieces for Study Hall last year around the question, most recently exploring how the “platonic ideal of IP-driven narrative” Harmanci referenced may create troubling incentives for journalists. For that piece, writer Rachel Monroe told me about how she turned down a producer who wanted her to write a magazine story he could adapt into a movie because the ethical implications made her uncomfortable.

I disagree with Pogue on the degree to which those incentives are wrecking the industry; I’d argue that he’s overlooking a lot of great journalism being produced right now, some of which is facilitated in part by the IP drive. But I also think it would be pointless to pretend these incentives aren’t more pronounced than they have been in the past thanks to the streaming wars and the podcasting boom (made worse by the fact that IP provides an opportunity for monetization no longer provided by ads and subscriptions). Whether this is a bad thing depends on the story. The most troubling part about all this, as I’ve written before, is the ways it has harmed writers more than helped them by incentivizing publications to retain IP.

Teen Vogue Publishes — Then Deletes — Weird Facebook Sponcon

Last Wednesday, Teen Vogue briefly published a piece titled “How Facebook Is Helping Ensure the Integrity of the 2020 Election” spotlighting five high-ranking women at the tech company. It pretty much reads like PR for Facebook (which, turns out, it is): “Social media is a fertile space for civic participation, and Facebook is at the forefront of encouraging civil discourse,” reads the un-bylined introduction. The article has since been deleted (you can find it on the Wayback Machine here), but it gave some bizarrely uncritical praise to the company partially responsible for the ongoing destruction of the media industry and the fuckery of American elections. Vice traced the piece’s journey from publication to deletion: it was initially not labeled sponsored content, then it was, then Facebook said it wasn’t, then they said it actually was. I think the Teen Vogue Twitter account speaks for us all when it said in a since-deleted tweet: “literally idk.”

It’s unclear what went on behind the scenes prior to the piece’s publication and whether editorial was clued in (a Teen Vogue writer’s name briefly appeared on the piece, she said she had nothing to do with it, and it was removed). But it’s not unheard of for the marketing side of a publication to force its agenda onto editorial, which is why some unionized newsrooms are getting a barrier between the two sides written into their contracts. Kim Kelly, a Teen Vogue contributor, noted that the Vice union had such a clause put in its contract because the sales team tended to overstep its bounds, and that such content was published by bosses without the knowledge of staffers.

Bernie Sanders, Sixth Member of Terrace House Cast, Reappears

There is a famous Project Runway quote from Heidi Klum: “One day you’re in and the next day you’re out.” It’s true of fashion, of reality TV show cast members, and sometimes politics. This past week, the world of political media suddenly realized that Bernie Sanders is a real person who could become the Democratic nominee. Since he began his run last year, Sanders has been swept aside by the media like an uninteresting cast member on Terrace House: Definitely in the opening credits but with less screen time than anyone else.

Despite Sanders consistently polling in the top tier of candidates and outpacing all other candidates in terms of quarterly fundraising and individual donors, his narrative is being written like a reality show also-ran: Sure, he’s a fan favorite but…really? THIS guy is going to get the final rose from America? When CNN gets caught showing old polls with Bernie in 4th place to avoid admitting he’s in 1st or 2nd, and newspapers like the L.A. Times skip out on reporting on 14K-strong Bernie rallies in the city, there’s a reason the #BernieBlackout hashtag persists.

With only 21 days left until the Iowa caucus, and a fresh poll from the Des Moines Register putting him in the lead with 20% support from Iowa voters, we’ve officially entered the Bernie is Back chapter of the election. CNN has declared “Democrats slept on Bernie Sanders. Now he’s surging as Iowa approaches.” Politico asked “What Would the Bernie Presidency Really Look Like?” and, a couple weeks later, asserted that “Democratic insiders” believe “Sanders could win the nomination.”

I never thought I’d come full circle on a Project Runway quote but, alas, here we are. We’re deep in the Bernie is Back narrative, but it could all change in the next three weeks before the Iowa primary. The Iowa race has been a close contest between Biden, Sanders, Warren, and Buttigieg for months. Polling can only do so much and, as we saw in 2016, it can also be dead wrong, which is why the discourse around “frontrunners” should always be taken with a handful of salt. Yes, Bernie might be in, but just like fashion designers creating clothing out of lettuce, the next day he might just be out. The only real way to know who voters want to be president is to wait until polls open next month. —By Chris Erik Thomas

Remembering Elizabeth Wurtzel

Has any writer had a more profound impact on the development of confessional internet writing than Elizabeth Wurtzel? When the Prozac Nation author died this past week at age 52, an outpouring of obituaries and remembrances underscored her influence as a writer who wrote frankly about her pain — an influence felt by women writers, especially.

“[Wurtzel’s work] made it okay — even fashionable — to write ‘ouch,’ something many of us in the trenches of publishing memoir and personal essays now see as valid and valuable,” wrote Sari Botton at Longreads, noting that Wurtzel rewrote the rules previously laid out by the white men who dominated the literary world. “This is how readers with similar experiences have their pain validated; this is how readers with different experiences develop empathy toward others.”

Wurtzel was also remembered, however lovingly, as a “difficult person” — someone difficult to know, difficult to be close to, and difficult to work with. But this, in itself, was important as well, because she was difficult at a time when only men were allowed to be (and venerated for being) difficult. “She was everything a girl was not supposed to be: She was ambitious, she was selfish, she was self-absorbed — and have you heard, she has slept with men?” wrote Nancy Jo Sales.

Longread(s) of the Week: Medium’s GEN posthumously published Elizabeth Wurtzel’s final piece of writing, on the current political moment, the months leading up to her death, and her dissolving marriage. At the New York Times, Gina Bellafante wrote about Wurtzel and the illusion of Gen X success: “I knew Elizabeth only in passing and not when she was young. What seemed striking was the disparity between her self-perception as an outlier — someone who had proudly refused to build a middle-aged life around the bourgeois goal posts of home-ownership, Viking appliances and managed investment accounts — and the reality of how elusive that kind of stability had become to a whole generation of her gifted, imaginative peers.”

Everything Else

— After half the newsroom was laid off and one of its three owners, The Maven, embarked on a quest to turn it into a content mill using underpaid labor, the staff of Sports Illustrated is unionizing! And Bernie tweeted his congratulations.

— Here’s a depressing real estate story from the Wall Street Journal that is also a real-life heavy-handed metaphor for the state of the news industry: Developers are buying up former newspaper headquarters to turn them into luxury apartments and condos.

— Exciting opportunity posted in the CUNY grad school Facebook group for someone who went to J school and would like to stand in the cold before the crack of dawn for the chance to chat briefly with The New Yorker writer Ken Auletta! Auletta is writing a Harvey Weinstein biography but doesn’t want to wait in line to get into the New York City courtroom where Weinstein’s trial is taking place, so would like to pay you $20 to wait for him. Tag yourself — I’m “To be clear, there would be no journalistic work associated with this gig.”

— Forbes broke down metrics on viewership of Netflix’s “The Witcher” and Disney Plus’s “The Mandalorian,” and in the process illustrated the difference between the competing streaming services. “The Mandalorian,” which releases episodes serially, has spikes when a new episode is released and has sustained interest from viewers, but “The Witcher” still has more viewers even after the drop-off following its initial release (when it had a massive spike). This is likely because Netflix’s binge-dump strategy is what audiences want, and the service currently has way more subscribers than Disney Plus.