Digest 5/17/2021

The Substack ouroboros of drama, TayTok, Wendy Williams' wigs, and more.

This week’s Study Hall Digest has been handed over to digital media veteran (and paying Study Hall member!) Foster Kamer, content director at Futurism, a freelancer for magazines like Gossamer; and proprietor of his own intermittent media newsletter, Fostertalk. 

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Hello, Study Hall People — 

The single most pressing item in media news this week, the question on everyone’s minds: Yes, my newsletter FOSTERTALK will, in fact, be returning. One day. Maybe at some point after its publisher stops doing things like filling in for STUDY HALL PRAVDA for fun. Until then, enter, stage right:

HELTER STELTER?

 I have no idea where, exactly, former TV Newser blogger Brian Stelter gets off telling an entire CNN audience that “Many media workers want to get back to their desks ASAP.” (Even if he caveats it with the following line: “Many others want to keep working at home or otherwise take advantage of newfound flexibility. It’s complicated.”) I don’t know anybody who wants to get back to their desks, though Stelter’s rejoinder on Twitter to the Washington Post’s Jeremy Barr making the same point as I just did was, “A majority of the journalists don’t Tweet.” and “I think this wonderful site presents a very distorted image of ‘journalism’ sometimes.” 

Brian, please report back with detailed polling numbers (also acceptable: your apartment’s square footage). This is the classic “Twitter isn’t real life” tweet which most of the time I agree with, but journalists making broad, sweeping generalizations about journalism should always be excepted from any rule and only be trusted as far as you can throw said journalists into any general direction. Stelter, for the record, is not someone I imagine easily defenestrated.

TAYTOK 

Here’s the Jane Mayer of TikTok, Taylor Lorenz, attempting to go viral on TikTok, by asking: What’s the dumbest thing you’ve gone viral for? (For her: That time she Tweeted about ordering a $22 avocado toast.) Taylor understands TikTok more than anyone on the planet, I think — to that end, I think she deserves some kind of special award for not selling out journalism entirely, merging with the algorithm, and exploiting her knowledge for shameless amounts of money. Somebody with that knowledge can not be long for The New York Times. 

TRIVIA ABOUT ACTUAL BEN SMITH TRIVIA! 

From the same NYT Media Decoder columnist who told us about his upstate pandemic escape pad, friendship with Maggie Haberman, and previous attempt to hire the publisher of the New York Times at Buzzfeed (lmao) comes: My brother is a PhD who once got his azz beat on ‘Jeopardy!’ The column is ostensibly about ‘Jeopardy!’ contestant Kelly Donohue, the guy who was mobbed online by an unhinged ‘Jeopardy!’ alumni Facebook group after he supposedly threw up a white power sign on the show. Spoiler alert: he didn’t, people have brain worms. But better than all of that is this classic Ben Smith Disclosure Trivia Parenthetical: 

When my brother, Emlen, lost valiantly [on ‘Jeopardy!’] in 2017, it generated more familial excitement than his Ph.D.

Nevermind that near the end of the story we learn from Ben that the ‘Jeopardy!’ Facebook group has started to conspiratorially accuse his brother of leaking the group’s posts to the New York Times (again: lmao). There’s a glaring omission in Smith’s reporting for those of us longtime ‘Jeopardy!’ heads in the room, which is: 

Exactly how he lost, how much he lost by, and any answers he got embarrassingly wrong. Via the greatest website in the known universe, J!-Archive, respectively: 

• Emlen screwed the pooch on a Final Jeopardy going in with a $3,400 lead where the painfully obvious answer (sorry man) was “What is Baskin Robbins?” and Emlen’s answer was “What is the 31 Club?” There is only one Google result for “31 Club,” and it’s…  “Buffalo’s Premier Rustic Dining & Steaks.” The other two contestants got Final right. Disgraceful.
• Emlen lost by $9,501. The shame brought onto the Smith family could have been worse — he at least came in second place. 
• See above. Also: Got a question about My Morning Jacket correct, did not ring in on a “Friday Night Lights” clue.

Writing a column about your brother getting shellacked on “Jeopardy!” while getting him accused of snitching on the “Jeopardy!” Facebook group to the New York Times is truly next-level sibling pranksterism torture. Incredible work.

THE SWEET 😤 OF SUCCESS? 

Here’s a quotable from Politico Playbook’s Rachel Bade from a recent podcast appearance: “Good and effective journalism means you’re going to piss off the right sometimes, it means you’re going to piss off the left sometimes. I take it as a metric of success that we’re driving the conversation.” One line later, Ryan Lizza also extols the virtue of pissing off “pod bros” which, LOL. Talk about setting bait. Part of me wants to object to the simplistic idea that pissing people off drives a conversation, but uh, I can’t. Because it’s true! This deeply crass, dumb observation is true. Mostly this item exists so I can point to the SPIKE TV’S MOD SQUAD 2021-esque press photo used at every available opportunity to promote Politico Playbook. Freelancers, at least you don’t have to participate in something this dumb. 

Bade’s note above resonates more than ever, lately, and here’s why: I’ve had this enduring mystery, this question that won’t leave my head for weeks. It’s almost taken on a tinnital proportion, and I say this as someone who has actual tinnitus:

Why does anybody give a shit about what Freddie deBoer has to say? Why get riled up?

Freddie is just a name. You can substitute anyone’s — Try mine, it works! We seem to have forgotten the internet truism that if you never want to hear about someone again, just unfollow, mute, log off. 

OBLIGATORY OVER-EXTENDED WORDAGE ON NEWSLETTERS

Yes folks, I know — it’s more Newsletter News. It’s a tired subject, and yet, it’s: Facebook, Twitter, the New York Times, all of them launching Substack competitors. There’s also one-time New York Observer editor and Conde Nast six-figure pensioneer Graydon Carter, raising subscription prices on Air Mail, the in-flight newsletter of the Lolita Express, after leasing a parlor floor of a Greenwich Village townhouse for this “office” (note the Ellie on the table, even though they….never won one?), and is looking to raise another $20 million in investment. Newsletters are the new newsletters! He also had some absolute words in a Business Insider interview for The Substack Crowd: 

A couple of things I’ve read on Substack, I thought, “Oh my God, this person needs an editor.” Editors serve very little function in this world, but they do tend to create order out of chaos. 

LOL, go off king. One of my favorite “killer features” of Substack is the way it exposes the mediocrity of many a ballyhooed writer’s raw copy for what it is: Big garbage! What I’d really be interested to know? Which papered-up Substackers are using their HamishDollars for editors, and whomst these editors are, because god help some of them if some of that stuff is actually edited. Name names! 

I know, for a fact, some halfway decent editors have been courted for this kind of thing, and I’ve heard of the supposed discretionary funds earmarked in these writers’ Substack packages for the express purpose of hiring editors. Whether or not they’re being used, or used in that way: Who knows? (You couldn’t tell by reading some of it.) Completely related: I’ll forever carry the torch for the RUN EDITORS’ BYLINES (AND EMAIL ADDRESSES) movement, and you should, too. Fun fact: The New York Times Magazine actually briefly did this during the Hugo Lindgren era (the case against this practice, at the time, basically boils down to “only one of us gets to be a narcissist”). I say this not as an editor, but as a writer who wants to spread the blame for my terrible copy. [Kyle Chayka can be reached at [email protected], and he will never let me do this again.] (Ed. Foster has complained to me many times about the distinct possibility that your favorite writer’s unedited copy is terrible, that their editor is really responsible for that great voice, and it is something of an unspoken constant possibility.)

Meanwhile, Substack, for their part, announced this week that they acquired/acqui-hired a company called, uh, let’s see here *checks notes* ah yes, People & Company (but, lmao, actually!). What do they do, exactly? “Community building,” they say! What does that mean? According to their site: 

“…Our approach is to be your Strategy Partner—a go-to brain trust for leaders and teams to uncover regular clarity and confidence.”

So they’re like a….consultancy?….Armed with…communities? Who bring them together with the power of….euphemism? Substack co-founder Hamish McKenzie was more clear in his note, describing it as the building out of “workshops, meetups, office hours, training sessions, parties, and a hell of a lot more.” And: “Programs for legal support, health insurance, image libraries, and design. While these programs are starting off as pilots, we will make them more available and accessible to many more writers over time.” 

Counterpoint, via Sydette Harry: “Substack continues to spend millions building the mythos that marginalized writers and others are underskilled than fixing their lopsided racist editorial decisions. Now under the cover and advice of all the ‘critics’ who have no critiques now that they are paid.” Do with that what you will! Also, it reminds me: Hey Hamish *makes ‘phone’ with thumb and pinky* *raises to side of head* 

For his part, the case McKenzie continues to make for Substack is that it is not a place for pre-established writers with massive 15K+ followings on Twitter to export their audience into cults of personality backed by Substack’s money, but something more akin to, say, Tumblr in the early days, where small communities of writers will create a cream-rises-to-the-top system benefitting relative unknowns. In theory, I love this idea! And I want to believe in the meritocracy of (where one can find it) good writing (don’t we all!). 

In practice, Substack is going to have to do a hell of a lot better at:

• Promoting said home-grown burgeoning talent to the world, with something more robust than Substack Reader, which absolutely nobody I know uses. 
• Scouting new home-grown burgeoning talent. 
• Scouting from a group of people who exist outside of the space of Professional Persecution Complexes on both sides of the political spectrum, who are either constantly kvetching about wokeness, or constantly kvetching about the people constantly kvetching about wokeness, or just about how absolutely hard it is to keep churning out Substack content (truly, the lowest of these forms). 
• Scouting new talent who bring ideas of actual utility to the table! 

I’m serious about that last point! And: There are these Substacks! In fact, while I have absolutely zero data in front of me to back this, I’m pretty sure the majority of Substack revenue comes from people who aren’t constantly involved in Substack flame wars, or who are not part of what, in a hysterical piece from last week, The Atlantic’s Helen Lewis hysterically characterized as the “Substack Cinematic Universe.” 

Lewis contends that Substack drama is good for Substack business, so Jude Doyle and Glenn Greenwald and Grace Lavery and Freddie deBoer and Charlie Warzel and Andrew Sullivan and Matt Yglesies and Jesse Singal all get name-checked, and what you’re supposed to walk away from that piece with is 

• (A) The understanding the the conflicts between all these boring kvetchy white people are ultimately good for one another’s business — Warzel saw his subscriptions go up by about $14K after being flamed by Greenwald, for example, and, 
• (B) These incentives will drive all these people to their own worst instincts, because people love the flame wars.

I’m herein reminded of the Tupac couplet: We ain’t singing, we bringing drama — fuck you and your motherfuckin’ mama. This is quickly becoming the dominant business model behind many of those aforementioned Substacks, and their collective dogma. 

I once was charged with developing a beat at the Village Voice — the beat was whatever I wanted it to be, so long as people were reading it. I chose the media beat not because of any particular interest in it, but because media people were are not only hysterically and reliably self-interested, but utterly incapable of containing themselves if talked about, and would undoubtedly write about (ergo: promote) whatever I was writing about if it involved them, let alone invited any kind of rejoinder at all. I covered them like one might recap an episode of American Gladiators. I left that job in ten months with Esquire forking over another $20K than I was making at the Voice (it was shameless, and it worked).

To that end, if you hate any of the aforementioned people (hell, if you hate me), heed these words: The best way to oppress — yes, oppress — a single person on the Internet is just to ignore them. You shut them out without even acknowledging their existence. Even the Block button implicitly acknowledges that they’re a human being capable of provoking a reaction out of you. Don’t do that. Just let them burn out on their own. 

These people, they’re like that old expression, about opinions being like assholes: They’re all on Substack. But truly: The more I hear about inner-Substack drama, the more I’ve felt, deep in my bones, the theory that none of them could succeed in a vacuum, let alone write their way out of a paper bag. They need the people who despise them. Unless you’re reading a newsletter with a good conceit, or that’s narrowly useful in some way (think: style advice, recipes, legible media commentary, or something like WTD), apply this grading rubric to whatever you’re reading on Substack. Ask yourself: Is there any other aim to this besides getting the people who despise them riled up? This part of Substack, the one that gets all the attention, it is a hotbed of bullshit. 

Another fine point that will eventually come home to roost: These people can fabricate anonymous sources and will suffer zero punitive consequences. They have no editors to answer to, no getting put on leave or disciplined for a major error. Substack, you’ll recall, is a platform, not a publisher. They enable publishers. Publishers who can gin up or manipulate data — and no public editor will rake them over the coals, no union will have to come to their defense, because they can’t be fired. If any of them, ever, spew their persecution complex about not being able to get a “mainstream” job, or the issues with being “independent,” just recall the simple fact that jobs carry potential consequences as handed down by people responsible for an entire organization (freelancers are especially vulnerable to these consequences). I imagine Substack’s rejoinder would be that the consequence is a free market of level-headed humans able to determine the value of the information they’re getting. Lemme tell you: That worked out real well for Facebook in 2016. Can’t wait to see what happens here.

All of which is to say: The Drama Substackers should be taken with a grain of salt. In fact, most of them, right now, should be read with the burden of proof on them. No matter how well-established they are. And if you have a halfway good idea that doesn’t involve arguing with all the other assholes on there, and can transcend the threshold of what constitutes “good” writing on Substack right now (low bar), I suggest you just pillory Hamish’s inbox with emails until he gives you money. Take it from someone born in Las Vegas: Like a slot machine, if you pull it enough, eventually, it’ll do something fun. The same probably goes for you starting a Substack yourself. Just use someone else’s quarters, I guess. That remains the only surefire way to win, or at least, not lose.

Thanks for having me BYE. 

xoxo, -f. — By Foster Kamer

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LONGREAD OF THE WEEK  I’m gonna read everything there is to read about Wendy Williams until the end of time and well after that too. The New Yorker’s profile of gossip queen Wendy Williams delivers largely because Wendy always comes through. After a long stint in radio, including a shoving match with radio icon Angie Martinez(!), television kept calling but she would never stop being Wendy: “…TV people usually asked her to wear flat-front khakis and to limit her wigs to three. “I’m, like, No! There’s a wig for every occasion,” Williams said.” While The View dabbles in barely-restrained arguments, the Wendy Williams Show opts for exposing all the messiness, led by a connoisseur – and practitioner – of messiness. – Vicky Mochama

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COMINGS AND GOINGS

— The Washington Post announced that former Associated Press executive editor Sally Buzbee is becoming their executive editor. 

— The Atlantic contributing writer Alexis C. Madrigal is taking on a radio call-in show, co-hosting with Mina Kim. 

— Jenée Desmond Harris is leaving the NYT to join Slate as the new advice-haver Dear Prudence. Daniel M. Lavery is leaving the gig, but not Slate altogether, as he takes on a new podcast. 

— Another high profile departure from the NYT is Liz Bruenig who is heading over to The Atlantic.

— Rest of World is bringing on two new hires: Lagos-based Abubakar Idris will cover Africa, and Mexico-based Leo Schwarts will cover Latin America

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EVERYTHING ELSE

— Media outlets, including AP and Al-Jazeera, in Gaza City lost their offices (and many families who lived in the building also lost their homes, it should be noted) after an Israeli air strike destroyed the building. – Vicky 

— ‘Succession’ executive producer Will Ferrell (and apparently less famous “other stars”) sold humor site Funny or Die to philanthropist Henry R. Munoz for an untold amount, per Bloomberg. – Vicky 

— The already-cursed biography of Philip Roth has become more cursed after Skyhorse Publishing picked up the rights to paperback. After Blake Bailey, the author of Roth’s biography, was accused of sexual impropriety by his former students, W.W. Norton pulled the book from circulation. Skyhorse has made a cottage industry publishing the books of sexual harassers and assaulters, including Woody Allen and Garrison Keillor. Now a man obsessed with his own legacy will have one more stain on to add to it. A fitting end for an author as known for his maltreatment of women as he is for his writing. -P.E. Moskowitz

— It begins (again).