Digest 06/06/2022

The Washington Post found itself embroiled in online drama where trolls and misogyny were on broad display. Why does legacy media routinely fail female journalists? 

MEDIA FAILS WOMEN, AGAIN

The Washington Post remains embroiled in Twitter drama that began late last week with its star columnist Taylor Lorenz and national reporter Felicia Sonmez each drawing attention to how women in media are often blamed for errors outside of their control or forced into silence. 

On Thursday, the Post received criticism when it published an “incorrect statement” in an article by Lorenz, leaving the tech journalist to defend herself against critics and trolls online. Lorenz’s story, posted the day after a Virginia civil court sided with Hollywood entertainer Johnny Depp in his defamation suit against his ex-wife, actress Amber Heard, follows a handful of YouTube content creators covering the trial, including two who claimed they did not receive Lorenz’s requests for comment, triggering the corrections. The story also included a quote that was wrongly attributed to Depp’s lawyer, Adam Waldman. In an updated version, the newspaper wrote that it had violated its own corrections policy when it removed the incorrect information without acknowledging the change.

As Lorenz wrote in her thread, her media trend story is among a batch published in the past month that explain how some YouTube and TikTok users, including many lawyers, accrued thousands of followers and sometimes earned five-figure sums while making content about the highly publicized legal skirmish. (Anecdotal reports in these stories also suggest that creators championing Depp received more attention and followers.) Focusing on the errors introduced by her editor, she said, misses her article’s larger point that the trial and its online intermediaries should rouse deep suspicion about “the creator-driven news ecosystem” and its influence on public opinion. While Lorenz didn’t focus on online misogyny in her reporting, Jessica Lucas, who broke the story about the YouTube lawyers, was clear about how that influence impacts women. “Sentiment toward Heard is so poor that her testimony on abuse is being mocked on a mass scale — and more often than not, it’s being done by women,” she wrote.  

Then, on Friday, Post reporters Sonmez and Jose Del Real sparred over their colleague David Weigel’s sexist retweet, leading the newspaper’s executive editor Sally Buzbee to issue an internal memo that New York Times reporter Ben Mullin later leaked via Twitter. Weigel has since deleted his retweet and apologized. Del Real temporarily deactivated his account, but defended his intentions in a new thread. “As the only Mexican American reporter on the national desk, I know the sting of discriminatory systems firsthand,” he wrote. “We can all be better. I certainly will continue trying to be.”

Lorenz, who took her account private on Sunday, and Sonmez both wrote lengthy threads in response to the criticism they received online. In each case, the reporters attempted to clarify how online clashes distract from more meaningful stories and usually end with online trolls piling on women. “Bad actors recognize the Washington Post’s earnest desire to hear and incorporate feedback, and they exploit that,” wrote Lorenz, whose detractors included numerous anonymous troll accounts. Meanwhile, Sonmez, responding to her colleagues at the Post and elsewhere, said, “When women stand up for themselves, some people respond with even more vitriol.” She added, “Retaliation against a colleague for speaking out against sexism is never okay. I hope Washington Post leaders treat this as the serious issue that it is.”

Sonmez has a contentious relationship with the Post, her employer, and this isn’t the first time she has criticized the newspaper’s social media policy. After the Post in 2019 barred her from covering stories related to #MeToo due to her public statements about sexual assault, including allegations she made against another journalist, Sonmez filed a discrimination suit against the Post that was dismissed earlier this year. In January, she pointed out how her colleague Post business editor Lori Montgomery’s complaints about sexual assault allegations in a column about former NFL quarterback Ben Roethlisberger undermined what the Post itself had reported.

Lorenz and Sonmez each have ample reasons to respond to the seemingly endless parade of online trolls and unsupportive colleagues. Lorenz built her reputation as an expert in online culture writing for the New York Times. Her reporting has landed her at the center of a few online dustups, which ultimately led her to depart the Times for her columnist position at the Post. At the same time, Sonmez has repeatedly challenged her superiors at the Post for clearer standards and fair treatment, and has demonstrated her willingness to start uneasy conversations about gender inequity, taking the brunt of online harassment each time. 

More difficult to examine is the backdrop against which these controversies are occuring. In May, an unprecedented leak of a Supreme Court opinion draft that sought to undo nationally provided abortion rights sparked outrage across the country, and mass shootings in Buffalo, New York and Uvalde, Texas have put online radicalization, gun rights, and patriachal culture in the spotlight. Journalists, swept up in keeping track of the routine violence, are trying to connect the violence exploding in the news to the far-right online forums where it is being expressed and premeditated. Left out of Lorenz’s column, for example, are the many anonymous and malicious attacks at her person implied or explicitly present in responses to her work on Twitter. Currently under an aggressive acquisition drive by less-than-feminist Elon Musk, Twitter is itself a crucial frontier in the cultural war between left- and right-wing media, with legacy media continually siding with the myth of “objectivity” instead of holding itself accountable for perpetuating distracting, cyclical disputes about editorial standards and practices. 

But for female journalists, double standards exist that make perfect reporting and perfect behavior the bar for entry, empathy, and support. “Journalists, like Sonmez, have their social media activity policed and scrutinized by current and prospective managers, many facing punishment under social media policies — even when they make simple, factually accurate statements in posts,” wrote Study Hall contributor Juwan J. Holmes about the Roethlisberger spat at the Post. “Meanwhile, others working in the same newsroom or organization — even managers who enforce the social media policies — do not always get held to the same standard.” The “others” Holmes refers to are more often than not women, racial and ethnic minorities, queer people, and workers with disabilities. If online skirmishes at the Post are any indication, media has not reached a point where policy is enough to change an unfair, heavily biased industry with a storied history of misogyny. Moreover, if journalists aren’t careful, they risk ignoring that they, too, are content creators subject to the whims of popular opinion, user clicks, and online audiences. If coverage of the Depp v. Heard trial and the online fights between Sonmez and her colleagues at the Post are any indication, what is serious politics for some audiences is only online entertainment and fodder for trolling to others. 

 

POLYAMAROUS FREELANCING

Study Hall co-founder Kyle Chayka offers insight about balancing editorial relationships for freelancers building long-term careers.  

Freelance journalism is by nature editorially polyamorous. If one relationship isn’t working, you can cut it off without worrying too much about your career. There are always a dozen more possibilities, and other editors who will take the kind of stuff your ex was commissioning. New editors get hired at publications all the time, but good editor relationships are the key to long-term freelancing. 

Even for the simplest, most superficial article there is an intellectual exchange between writer and editor. First, you want them to accept your pitch, to agree with what you think is interesting. But you also need to be on the same page about what that story will eventually look like, a similar enough shared hallucination of a nonexistent piece of writing. That vision will be molded by the voice of the writer, the taste of the editor, and the brand of the publication. All three matter — not just one. You both need to be communicative and patient through editing, avoiding the email equivalent of stomping out of the room and slamming the door. Finally, you share in the success or failure of the published article, with whatever attendant public reaction that might entail. (Even though the editor’s name might not appear on the story they absolutely share responsibility for it.)

All of these things get easier over time and can eventually become unspoken, the way that I imagine teammates on a sports team work together. In curling, the person who throws works with the sweepers moving the rock toward the target — they need to know exactly what to expect from the other. A relationship can start off with a small story. A quick undertaking that goes well for both parties then builds trust and familiarity for the next one, which might be more complicated or more ambitious. It grows organically, and can continue when an editor gets promoted or hired elsewhere. It’s often more worthwhile developing a rapport with an editor — perhaps similar to you in age or point in their career — who understands what you want to achieve rather than constantly shooting for the moon with a dream byline. Odds are that you and the editor can grow together.

I had written a few pieces for the New York Times Magazine when I pitched the idea for what became my feature-length essay on the pandemic-era appeal of nothingness. My original focus, which began in 2019, was just the business of sensory deprivation (a concept that came out of a conversation with my editor, when some of my other ideas fell flat). But the editing process extended well into the quarantine period. We landed on the idea of a more conceptual piece, talking about why sensory deprivation seemed like such a potent symbol of mid-to-late 2020. There were still months of rewrites and revisions; I had to trust that my editor, as well as the editor-in-chief of the magazine, still even cared about this strange and meandering piece (a fact that I doubted until it was literally printed). My editor and I went down the rabbit hole together; the end result was nothing I could have imagined or achieved alone. 

I was pretty happily freelancing for many years, drifting between various publications and deriving inspiration from the constant adjustments needed to work with new editors in new formats. But I liked working with my editor at The New Yorker, as well as the entire fact-checking and copy-editing staff, so I did everything I could to make that relationship more permanent. I started a staff contract there in 2021, but I still draw on every previous editor interaction I’ve had when I write a new draft, maintaining a little bit of all of their voices in my head. — Kyle Chayka 

 

COMINGS AND GOINGS

— Freelance journalist Reina Sultan joins The Newsette as editor.

— Jennifer Kho, former managing editor of the HuffPost and Guardian US joins the Chicago Sun-Times as executive editor.

 

EVERYTHING ELSE

— Bloomberg reports layoffs at Clubhouse, the social audio app that gained pandemic popularity. According to internal sources, while some positions were eliminated, others chose to leave on their own.

— A new Anna Wintour biography, “Anna: The Biography,” was reviewed at CJR, claiming it to be as close to definitive as an ‘unauthorized’ biography can be.”

— The Information reports Vice Media is slowing hiring and pursuing cost-cutting measures as it prepares to sell its studio. This follows a larger trend as all media companies are losing ad revenue in an uncertain market.

— New York State Assembly passes the Freelance Isn’t Free Act. Congrats to the Freelance Solidarity Project, which championed the legislation.

— After Tucker Carlson mocked the president for inviting BTS to discuss anti-Asian hate, fans struck back, unleashing their infamous online soldiers on the Fox News host (bless them). 

— Meta (née Facebook) COO Sheryl Sandberg announced she’s stepping down in a post to her own personal Facebook page. 

— Netflix struggles to regain its footing after its stock prices dropped, triggering numerous layoffs. The media company’s recovery plans include a “focus on making bigger movies, making better movies, and releasing fewer than it previously did.”