Study Hall Digest 6/3/2019

By Study Hall staff writer Allegra Hobbs (@allegraehobbs)

As Gannett and Gatehouse Media engage in merger talks, journalists wonder what such a massive alliance could mean for the disastrously shrinking local news landscape. Both companies, the largest newspaper companies in the country by circulation, have implemented mass layoffs this year in an attempt to cut costs: Gannett has fired close to 400. Andrew Pantazi, a reporter with the Florida Times-Union (owned by Gatehouse) and president of the newspaper’s union, has been tracking Gatehouse layoffsin a spreadsheet and so far has counted 162.

Pantazi speculates that the only reason the Florida Times-Union, a newsroom of 30, has been spared is that its union remains in ongoing negotiations with management. Gatehouse has indicated they want to negotiate layoffs at the next bargaining meeting, scheduled for mid-June. He plans to fight the company’s cut-and-consolidate approach.

“One of the concerns we have is that they want to regionalize [and] outsource to cheaper employees based elsewhere, whether it’s the editing or reporting,” Pantazi said.

Gatehouse’s strategy is to aggressively consolidate its many titles, and in the process, Pantazi fears, de-emphasize local coverage in favor of regional. In an internal memo, Gatehouse leadership outlined its plan to consolidate 50 small weekly papers into 18 regional titles; they also provided a list of all the papers being shuttered in the consolidation (though the memo emphasizes they are NOT “closing newspapers” but rather “merging 50 publications into 18 new newspapers”).

Bill Church, Gatehouse’s senior vice president of news, had emphasized to Ken Doctor at Nieman Lab that the layoffs largely impacted “non-content creators” — so, not reporters, but local editors. Gatehouse CEO Kirk Davis had previously touted a plan to create a 30-person national investigative team whose members would be planted in local newsrooms.

“They don’t have an understanding of what’s important locally, and if you’re just farming out the investigative work to this national team you’re going to miss what makes local newspapers worthwhile,” said Pantazi.

This concern can get lost in the financial benefits of such a merger (talks of which are still preliminary), noted Ken Doctor. Gatehouse’s cost-cutting move of aggressive consolidation has likely made it more attractive in striking a deal for merger. But cutting local coverage in favor of regional is unambiguously bad for local news, as Pantazi points out.

A de facto national organizer — Pantazi tells me he’s not afraid to speak out because his newsroom is unionized, which can’t be said of most other Gatehouse publications — he’s getting dispatches from newsrooms with no local editors. “Reporters [in one newsroom] tell me they come to work and there’s no management in the building…they’re not getting assignments from anyone,” he said.

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For days now, YouTube has refused to enforce its own harassment policy in what is a pretty straightforward case of harassment. Vox journalist Carlos Maza has been repeatedly targeted by far-right troll Steven Crowder, which he detailed in a thorough tweet thread imploring YouTube to take some sort of action. “These videos makes me a target of ridiculous harassment, and it makes life sort of miserable,” wrote Maza. “I waste a lot of time blocking abusive Crowder fanboys, and this shit derails your mental health.” (Maza was also doxxed last year, and his phone was flooded with texts from Crowder fans).

YouTube, as Maza points out, has a pretty explicit anti-harassment and cyberbullying policy that prohibits hurtful and negative content, and content designed to humiliate or harass. Crowder’s videos are riddled with racist and homophobic commentary, and have directly led to harassment from his fans.

YouTube said it would “investigate,” but four days later nothing has been done. During that time, the harassment against Maza has escalated. YouTube, which benefits from Crowder’s millions of views, is sending a clear message: It will not enforce its own anti-harassment policy if doing so will hurt the bottom line.

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Journalist Talia Lavin was also subjected to harassment this past week, thanks to the dedication of enterprising The Wrap reporter Jon Levine, who won’t rest until Lavin’s every movement is documented for a rabid right-wing audience. Levine in this instance wrote a whole news story about how NYU dropped Lavin’s class because only two students enrolled, which isn’t “news” so much as “information about NYU’s course offerings relevant to maybe a handful of people.”

Levine tried to tenuously connect this non-news to some trumped-up, Fox-manufactured controversy around her initial hiring (oh, she did a mistakenly inaccurate tweet one time which she quickly deleted and apologized for), but the connection isn’t even there. Levine and his ilk just delight in unleashing abuse on Lavin. He has done so in the past, and The Wrap has defended that salivating coverage of, uhh, a non-famous former fact checker with zero institutional power. Keep up the good work, dweebs.

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IN NON-HARASSMENT NEWS: The Jumpsuit. My Twitter feed this past week was filled with women enthusiastically purchasing, or longing for, the perfect black jumpsuit worn by Phoebe Waller-Bridge in season 2 of Fleabag (which is also perfect). Vulture writer Kathryn VanArendonk documented her quest for the jumpsuit, and the frenzy garnered a write-up in Slate noting that the jumpsuit was selling out. I wondered on Twitter about comparable instances of TV directly impacting fashion consumer choices. Blair Waldorf’s headbands and Carrie Bradshaw’s nameplate necklace were mentioned. Does Rachel Green’s hair count? TV is certainly still monocultural enough to drive these IRL memes.

Longread of the Week: What is a “beach read”? Vulture did a deep dive on the history of the concept and questions some core assumptions about the seasonal genre, which tends to be seen as “fun” and “indulgent” over more difficult texts. And what’s wrong with that?

EVERYTHING ELSE

— Here’s a sign of life in the decaying media industry: a new online food magazine called Crust Magazine has launched, emphasizing a narrative approach to food journalism, focusing on our individual and collective relationships to food. It includes writers like Soleil Ho, Wei Tchou, and John Birdsall, so check it out.

— CJR wrote about Valeria Sistrunk, a former television reporter who created a “Rate my Professor” for newsrooms called RateMyStation.com to help workers document poor working conditions. Freelancer Luke O’Neil noted that Study Hall serves a similar function in that “if you fuck one of us over it is being shared” (it’s true and it’s glorious!!). There is a broader industry trend of freelancers becoming less tentative about speaking out against bad treatment at the hands of publications, and that is partly because they are able to act as a collective — there’s power in numbers.

— Poynter did a great story about journalists dealing with trauma as a result of covering traumatic events. About 20 reporters shared their tips for dealing with the aftermath, which include seeking out a therapist and making time for yourself outside work.

— You hate to see it (or do you?): Business Insider editor in chief Nicholas Carlsonrevealed on Twitter that he had just learned members of the House of Representatives are up for reelection every two years. Naturally, he got the Splinter treatment for openly admitting he didn’t understand how the US government works. We’re all dumbasses, of course, but I personally (especially were I the EIC of…anything) would never announce in public the specific ways in which I am a dumbass.