Study Hall Digest 6/10/2019

By Study Hall staff writer Allegra Hobbs (@allegraehobbs)

Should the Study Hall Digests be 10,000 Words Long?

• In an interview with Nieman Lab, The Atlantic editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg touted his efforts to recruit more women and people of color and lamented the industry hurdles that have heretofore landed most extravagantly long cover stories in the hands of white male writers. It is “really, really hard” to write a 10,000-word cover story, he claims, and most of the writers who have proven they can do it are white men. In short, that proven experience leads to more opportunities, and it is incumbent upon editors to give writers who have written only 1,200-word stories opportunities for longer work.
• Unsurprisingly, Goldberg’s reasoning — and apparent defense of the fact that 11 of The Atlantic’s 15 cover stories since the start of 2018 are by men — angered a lot of people! He felt the reaction was unfair, and even initially claimed he was misquoted. The “really, really hard” comment and the glorification of the 10,000-word cover story didn’t do him any favors, but even aside from that, to imply there are not many women or writers of color who have demonstrated an ability to go long (if that’s the goal) reveals a significant blind spot that Goldberg, for all his well-meaning attempts to ramp up diversity, has yet to overcome.
• It should be noted that the The Atlantic last year hired and fired conservative columnist Kevin Williamson, who had once argued women who get abortions should be hanged. Since then, a handful of women reporters have left the magazine, along with Ta-Nehisi Coates, who left without a position lined up elsewhere (but is worth millions of dollars, so he’ll be fine). The problems facing The Atlantic, and establishment publications more broadly, can’t be solved simply by hiring more diverse writers. Magazines have to foster an environment that encourages those writers to stay. Not jumping to accuse female reporters of misquoting you may be a good start.

The Mass Misreporting of a Translated Story

• How does a mass misreporting happen? This past week, the tragic story of a severely depressed Dutch girl who died after refusing food and water, became a case study in the phenomenon. Originally reported by a Dutch news outlet, the story was picked up by English-language international publications that misreported the girl had been granted death by euthanasia at an end-of-life clinic in The Netherlands (in reality, she had requested the procedure and been denied, and so resorted to suicide).
• The false reports became a lightning rod for those who oppose assisted suicide, even garnering a tweeted response from the Pope.
• It was only when Politico reporter Naomi O’Leary pointed out the false reports, having spoken to the Dutch reporter of the original story, that English-language outlets, including the Daily Beast, issued corrections.
• As far as mistakes go, it’s a bad one, but it’s also easy to see how the mistake could be made in a scramble to churn out content (the Daily Beast story was written by a breaking news reporter). But it also brings to light how journalists will generally trust previous reports from other outlets when laying the foundations of their own — an inclination that can lead to a pile-up of false reportage.

According to Critics, There is a Lot of Wife Content

A thing about modern life is that if something dumb becomes a trend on Twitter, eventually a famous cultural critic will be forced to write very serious and straightforward commentary about it. Such is the case with the glut of Wife Guy content, the origins and rise of which were also expertly traced by The New Yorker’s Jia Tolentino.

First there was an avalanche of jokes, then an avalanche of very funny coverage (all the Curvy Wife Guy articles, which were very good!), and now there are think pieces about that coverage. And now here I am, writing about those think pieces. Such is the hamster wheel of meme culture. It makes sense, to some extent, since the popularity of a meme generally reveals something about the way we think. Tolentino makes a convincing case for how Wife Guy content shows how we approach marriage these days, i.e. ironic and self-deprecating. But these memes don’t seem to travel very far outside the realm of the Very Online. The Twitter world, though very much a part of real life, is a remarkably small sampling of the population and can become a joke echo chamber.

In short, I’m not sure how culturally significant the prevalence of a single meme really is…that being said, I’d like to point out that Meghan McCain’s husband, the publisher of right wing rag The Federalist, is a Wife Guy:

https://twitter.com/bdomenech/status/1126144440316366848?s=20

As Long As Platforms Cater to Conservatives, Nothing Will Change

Remember when YouTube and social media platforms banned Alex Jones? This has been pointed to as an example of YouTube demonstrating it is capable of enforcing its own policies, which it struggled to do in the case of Vox reporter Carlos Maza, a victim of harassment. The key distinction is that Alex Jones, with very few exceptions, is equally reviled on the right and the left as a crazed grifter who pedals conspiracy theories about dead children. No one is really willing to defend him, so his ousting didn’t encounter much pushback.

Maza’s harasser Steven Crowder, on the other hand, is a bully held up by the right as a free speech warrior, and his repeated racist and homophobic taunts are only seen as mean words incapable of causing real harm. The Huffington Post’s Andy Campbell is right that YouTube’s new show of enforcing anti-harassment policies through demonetization won’t really do much. It certainly won’t deter harassment.

De-platforming is the only action that could make a dent, but YouTube would never go that far because it relies on a conservative viewership. Just as Twitter has bent over backwards to appease conservatives complaining about “censorship,” YouTube will do whatever is necessary to avoid similar accusations.

Longread of the Week: Amid the new public fixation with the Central Park Five spurred by the Netflix dramatization “When They See Us,” Sarah Weinman (a woman who writes longform!!) turns her attention to the victims of the real attacker, who are speaking out for the first time. (And we’re supposed to feel bad for Linda Fairstein?)

EVERYTHING ELSE

— Don’t mind me, I’ll just be SCREAMING at this profile of male feminist and publication-carcass scavenger Bryan Goldberg in Bloomberg Businessweek and its accompanying GQ-esque photoshoot. Here’s a sentence: “On the wall of his office, he had hung framed photos of women he admires: Madonna, Margaret Thatcher, Marie Curie, and Shirley Chisholm.” MARGARET THATCHER!!!!

— Speaking of Goldberg: Mic, which first started rehiring in March for its new Bustle-owned operation after firing its entire unionizing staff, has new job postings for editorial positions: a culture editor and politics editor. Hmmm no staff reporting positions though.

— I loved this piece in Mel Magazine on anxiety reads, or “Klonocore,” a trend of novels featuring clinically anxious protagonists. One of those novels is Ottessa Moshfegh’s “My Year of Rest and Relaxation,” which I deeply loved and my non-anxious friends hated. (WHO would want to be unconscious for a year, they wonder! I’m sorry but WHO WOULDN’T??)

— Entertainment Weekly in August will start publishing monthly as former People deputy editor JD Heyman takes the reins. I can only assume they’ll change the name?

— The New York Times reported on a study from the News Media Alliance claiming Google made $4.7 billion off the news industry and news publishers should get a cut of that money. It’s a shocking figure. But critics and journalism professors on Twitter are pointing out the article’s dubious methodology — it seems to uncritically cite the study while not explaining how the alliance arrived at that figure.

— Should adults wear backpacks? Obviously, if you want to, why not? New York Magazine writer Chris Black, however, says no, because “you look like a child.” There was a revolt! Honestly, as someone who carries a lot of stuff around on public transportation, it’s simply the most practical and comfortable way of doing so. Is this a staff writer vs. freelancer thing?? I imagine if you work in an office, you can leave things there, and so don’t need to carry as much stuff?

— I think we can all relate to this chart about the writing process, and I’d like to point out that the “story runs” high point lasts about 10 minutes.

— Finally, if you work at The Intercept and would like to share screenshots of your Slack channel…please do.

https://twitter.com/_grendan/status/1136645346971521030?s=20