Digest 11/02/2022

Elon Musk gentrifies the internet.

***THE MEDIA CLASSIFIED ADS***

>> The Classified Ads are back and better than ever. We’ve expanded our Ad model to include placement in our two weekly newsletters: Tuesday’s Digest and Thursday’s Opportunities newsletters. We also offer add-on placement for Slack and Listserv posts. Want to promote your job opening / pitch call / new project / ecommerce brand? Click through for rates, testimonials, and to get in touch. <<

---

TAKE THE MONEY AND RUN
Evan Kleekamp 

Welcome, beloveds, to the new era of private equity in media. Twitter’s $44 billion sale to Elon Musk, inaugurated with a high-risk loan based primarily on the imaginary value of Tesla stock, marks the first time a publicly traded, global social media company has been privatized. And now that Musk has dissolved Twitter’s board of directors, the social media platform that apparently gives journalists mental illness is solely under his control — and theoretically that includes all of its data. 

If, like me, you owned Twitter stock and received a payout sometime this week that effectively ended your voting rights with the company, now is also an opportune time to consider ending the relationship entirely and deleting your account while the ledger is black and you can still download your archive. Even if you didn’t formally invest in Twitter, hosting your personal or professional life on the site is a risky choice because moving forward all your tweets and DMs are belong to Elon.

I first purchased Twitter stock in February 2021, and ramped up my automated investments that April when Musk first announced his plans to buy the company. Crucial to this decision was my understanding of the specific performance clause in the merger agreement between Musk and Twitter that all but eliminated his ability to walk away from the deal — at least not without handing Twitter $1 billion. Foreseeing that his primary strategy for leaving the deal would be expensive litigation, I bet against Musk by purchasing more stock whenever its value fell below the $54.20-per-share purchase price. This experience taught me that Elon Musk is a mark and that marks make for good investments. 

And I think the banks who loaned him money agree, which is why they have gone into debt to finance the deal. The billionaire now has an outstanding obligation to pay back the money he borrowed to purchase a company that has historically underperformed, which will likely mean making the social media platform cater to large corporations with hefty advertising budgets. 

Judging by the cost-cutting measures that have already begun at Twitter HQ, which range from strategic layoffs — which Musk denied — meant to reduce severance payouts and block some employees’ stock options from vesting, as well as get-rich-quick maneuvers like charging $8 per month for verified status, it’s clear that Musk has to make Twitter profitable in ways it never was before while keeping users on the site. While he may be able to turn the microblogging platform into a breadwinner, the question remains: what will be sacrificed in the process? There is also the terrifying prospect of Musk failing to repay the loan, which could end with his lenders owning Twitter or forcing another merger or sale. 

In a situation where Twitter was still a publicly owned company, I might look positively at some of Musk’s Hail Mary tactics. There would at least be records that enable minority shareholders like myself to assess if they worked and to judge, too, if they were aligned with our vision of Twitter. When I originally invested in Twitter, it was because I had faith in its underdog status among other, more profitable social media networks. But now that it’s just one man’s very expensive toy, I feel like it’s time to walk away while the going is still good and begin building community elsewhere.

 

MUSK WATCHERS
Jane Drinkard

Elon Musk is by no means a new figure in Silicon Valley, having been on the tech scene since the 1990s. But between his aspirations to terraform Mars, electrify the automotive industry, and dig tunnels under cities, he’s more newly the tech industry’s top iconoclast and/or supervillain — a role that has often made Musk himself the center of the story. 

In the will-he, won’t-he run up to his acquisition of Twitter, it’s been more apparent than ever that Musk has become a beat unto himself, with a small cohort of journalists tasked with following every shitpost and reply-guy moment: Bloomberg’s Matt Levine and Dana Hull; Puck’s William D. Cohan; Kate Conger, Ryan Mac, and Cade Metz at the Times; and Jessica Lessin and co. at The Information, among others. The Musk beat tends to fall either under tech or business desks, but with stories drifting into areas like a “shitposting peace proposal” for Ukraine or Musk’s texts with his ex-wife, the coverage is as broad as it is consequential. 

“The thing that I find appealing about him as a journalist is that he can be fun,” said Liz Lopatto, who’s on Musk duty as a senior writer at The Verge, and approaches the task with a sense of humor. Along with the $44 billion acquisition news, she recently covered Musk sabotaging fellow Musk-watcher Levine’s vacation days with his constant pot-stirring. “I feel like people who are critical of Musk are a little scolding and just as someone who doesn’t like being scolded even when the person agrees with me, that was something I really wanted to steer clear of.” Still, following Musk’s every unpredictable move has its costs. “There are certain parts of my brain that are fried now,” Lopatto said. “I just don’t experience, like, necessarily, emotions anymore.”

With the spikes in hate-speech, the 84-hour work weeks, and the layoffs that have all been reported in the days since the Twitter deal closed, it’s a beat that seems certain to lose a bit of the fun — but, like Twitter itself, we probably won’t be able to stop paying attention.

 

Salary Range? “$15/hour to $125,000”

As of November 1, listings for New York City-based jobs are required to include salary range information under a new ordinance. Judging by early compliance efforts, many employers have a tortured understanding of what constitutes a “good faith” range. NiemanLab is keeping tabs on who is and isn’t complying with the new law. But even an exhaustive list like this isn’t exactly helpful when the salary for some gigs, like a sports reporter position at the New York Post (which, of course) ranges from just over minimum wage to more than double the city’s median income.

 

EVERYTHING ELSE

— Sick burn alert! Journalist Soledad O’Brien tells The Information’s Jessica Lessin she is “not smart” after Lessin tweeted positively about Elon Musk’s restructuring at Twitter. 

— Should newsrooms pay for Twitter verification for their reporters? Some outlets, like CNN, say it’s “highly unlikely.” But news startups like Puck see it as an extension of their marketing budget.  

— Business Insider will prioritize traffic over subscriptions. The news outlet sent out a memo to staff that it will move about 60 journalists on its subscription team in front of the paywall, and is working with the union to make the move. “There will be no layoffs associated with this plan,” the memo noted. 

— The New York Post employee who “hacked” the website last week and published racist headlines came forward to apologize for his “emotional tantrum,” The Daily Beast reported. Twenty-five-year-old Miguel Gonzalez has since been fired, but still hopes to continue his career in journalism. 

— Would you still love Study Hall if it was a worm?