Study Hall Digest 4/29/2019

By Study Hall staff writer Allegra Hobbs (@allegraehobbs)

Olivia Munn and Ariana Grande Show Social Media’s Impact on Criticism

It was a big week for celebrities whining about criticism on social media:

— First, the singer Lizzo went after music critics, claiming only those who create music themselves should be permitted to write criticism (she later deleted the tweet and seems to have recanted).

— Ariana Grande, in response to an E! Host’s snarky comments about her Coachella performance with Justin Bieber, took to Twitter to deride the profession of bloggers (?), criticizing their work as meaningless and needlessly negative. (She is apparently under the impression that underpaid internet writers could easily drop their jobs for more other, more creative pursuits but just love talking about her, Ariana Grande.)

— Olivia Munn posted a self-righteous “essay” calling out fashion bloggers the Fug Girls, who are known for their lack of mean-spiritedness in criticizing celebrities’ fashion choices, never resorting to body-shaming.

These disproportionate meltdowns are especially striking since celebrity criticism has never been more humane — long gone are the early days of Perez Hilton, who officially pivoted to niceness in 2012. But a confluence of cultural phenomena have now laid the groundwork for celebrities to hit back, explain veteran fashion bloggers Tom Fitzgerald and Lorenzo Marquez of Tom + Lorenzo, who broke it down on their podcast Pop Style Opinionfest and spoke to Study Hall about the episodes. They noted a few major shifts in celebrity coverage:

• Trump’s anti-press rhetoric has trickled down to infect even those who don’t spout his “fake news” talking points. “There is this general sense people who work in the press are not reliable, and it’s very easy to turn crowds against them,” said Fitzgerald.
• The rise of access journalism has ensured more ass-kissing from major publications that otherwise wouldn’t get sit-down interviews, and are kept on a tight leash at junkets. This has led to a generally kinder approach to covering celebrities.
• Celebrities are interviewing other celebrities with increasing regularity, and…well, remember when Jennifer Lawrence interviewed Emma Stone for Elle and rather than an actual interview it was just two friends complimenting each other? “This all combines to make the celebrities more insulated than they used to be from any criticism from the press,” said Fitzgerald.
• Social media gives celebrities direct access to their fans, who constantly praise them — this has led to the rise of stan culture. “They have tons of fans following them and just praising them left and right, saying these wonderful things about them,” said Marquez. “When they’re faced with criticism they just can’t take it.” They are also able to weaponize their following when faced with criticism, essentially directing their fans to harass critics.
• On the other hand, the public is “smarter,” said Marquez — they understand how follower counts can tip the scales in a celebrity’s favor and they’re fatigued by the obvious power differential. Munn’s “essay,” for instance, received some support but drew mostly criticism and eye rolls. Managers and PR representatives are likely having some talks with their celebrity clients about reigning in online meltdowns to protect their public image.

The Markup Falls Apart

What the hell is going on at the highly anticipated, Craig Newmark-funded non-profit publication The Markup, which was supposed to critique tech companies, not fall apart itself under scrutiny?

The story behind the site’s meltdown this past week, which saw the Editor in Chief fired and the majority of the editorial staff walk out in protest, varies wildly depending on who is asked, but it seems to partially come down to a fundamental disagreement about how tech should be covered. CJR laid out a great tick-tock of the chaos here, underscoring tensions between EIC Julia Angwin and Chief Executive Sue Gardner.

Gardner was miffed that Angwin wouldn’t take her directions on management and team-building (including taking a Myers-Briggs test, lol) and Angwin felt that Gardner was pushing too hard for anti-tech advocacy rather than straight reportage.

Managing editor Jeff Larson (who took over as EIC), meanwhile, attributed the trouble to Angwin’s failure to grow the company quickly enough. In any case, it seems increasingly likely Angwin will be reinstated in some way, as employees have overwhelmingly taken her side and funders (including Newmark) are investigating her ousting.

Twitter Maintains its Dangerous Neutrality

Jack Dorsey, who still refuses to ban white supremacists from Twitter, had a meeting with Trump this past week. It mostly focused on the president’s concerns that Twitter is “shadow-banning” conservatives, which is a myth! The meeting apparently sparked concern from Twitter employees, but it was a pretty predictable move from their leader, who has previously attempted to assuage far-right pundits’ fears of censorship as a means of bolstering an image of neutrality.

Of course, that presume neutrality is the real problem with Twitter. A Twitter employee told Motherboard that Twitter is declining to treat white supremacy on the platform as it would ISIS because such an algorithm would also punish Republican lawmakers — and that would spell disaster for Twitter, the guiding principle of which is “impartiality,” according to Jack.

Longread of the Week: I couldn’t look away from this insane story in The Cut about a psychopathic master manipulator who brought a group of Sarah Lawrence College students under his control.

EVERYTHING ELSE

— Vanity Fair published a profile of “provocateur” Bari Weiss, which you’ll notice spends a lot of words gushing about how nice she is, how petite she is, how she looks like a schoolteacher (??), how adorable she is, how large her glasses are on her “cherubic” (CHERUBIC) face. As noted by Tom Scocca at Hmmdaily, “No one pointed to a brilliant passage or sentence Weiss had written, because she has no style or even merit as a writer.” Anyway, after the recent synagogue shooting, Weiss pointed to an “anti-Zionist cartoon” published in the Times as indicative of a far-left anti-Semitism fueling violence. But look at her cute little cherubic face!!!

— As part of a “restructuring,” Vice is collapsing several of its sites — Noisey, Broadly, Tonic and Waypoint — making them a part of Vice.com rather than independent sites. “This sucks!” tweeted former Noisey editor Kim Kelly, who was let go during the mass layoffs at Vice a few months ago, noting part of what had made the site “special” was its editorial independence, allowing her to cover underground music scenes on a mainstream website. It remains to be seen if that outlaw spirit will persist.

— What a week for exploitative job postings! Here’s Newsweek looking to hire “fellows” to write 4-5 stories a day for $15 an hour! And here’s a new site called OK WHATEVER (?!) looking to pay some lucky freelancer $20 for a reported piece. “Ok Whatever” is right!!!

— Jonah Peretti, who has been uncooperative with the BuzzFeed News union, told the LA Times that “it feels like there’s better ways for direct communication to more flexibly and directly deal with some of the things unions can address in companies.” Cute! Now show you value your employees and meet with them at the bargaining table!

— LA Times journalist Matt Pearce conducted a reader survey to gauge opinions on primary coverage, an interesting approach in line with audience-centric trends. His resultsshowed respondents feel the biggest issue overlooked in their communities is — surprise! — affordable housing.

— Shortly after its launch, podcast startup Luminary has lost a bunch of major shows, which jumped ship over the startup’s business practices. Luminary offers free access to shows in hopes of eventually wrangling paying users, and also withholds valuable user data from podcasters (similar concerns have been raised over Apple News, which would keep user data from participating publications). Luminary seems to have ironed out at least this second concern, but the blowback raises bigger questions about the business practices of media startups and whether services like Luminary are necessarily great for publishers.