Rage Against The Machine

Daniel Spielberger ponders why media workers should stay optimistic even in the midst of a brutal landscape.

With the recent layoffs at Insider and the shuttering of BuzzFeed News, it may seem as if digital media is destined to join the prestigious ranks of Blockbuster or Pets.com only to be remembered as another victim of the boom and bust cycles of capitalism. I can already envision the sensationalist, retrospective documentary about the halcyon years of VC-backed publishers, featuring a segment devoted to how BuzzFeed had a froyo machine and office visits from none other than Sir Patrick Stewart. But, hear me out, what if instead of raising our hands from our keyboards in agony, we, as media workers, find ways to take on the tech behemoths that are clobbering up all the online advertising revenue and endangering news outlets? What if we simply logged off? What could collective action look like? 

State legislators in California are working on one possible solution. On March 20, California State Assemblymember Buffy Wicks introduced the California Journalism Competition and Preservation Act — a piece of legislation that would force tech companies like Meta Platforms, Facebook’s parent company, and Google to pay a “journalism usage fee” to publishers for the ads they run alongside news content. It also requires that publishers invest 70 percent of profits derived from that fee back into the newsroom. More like Buffy the Tech Overlord Slayer! The legislation has the support of the News/Media Alliance, as well as Media Guild of the West and Pacific Media Workers Guild. 

According to Los Angeles Times reporter Matt Pearce, who is president of the Media Guild of the West, a local of the NewsGuild-CWA, it will take more than a single policy to fix the state of the industry (he gave shoutouts to nonprofit media and publicly-funded media), but he believes that if the bill is successful, it would be “incredibly significant.” 

“As much as we are yelling at the hedge funds and the private equity shitheads, who have taken over our industry, we do have to look at the bigger picture, too,” he told Study Hall. “Commercial investment in journalism does have to be more rational. It needs to make more sense for a journalist to be able to set out on their own, create a digital newsroom or form a co-op.” 

Though the guilds are throwing their support behind legislation that’s also backed by publishers, Pearce stressed that he still views the struggle between newsroom staff and management as important, and was hesitant to call their joint support an alliance. Rather, staff and management are on the same team in this particular struggle because they depend on the same source of revenue. 

“Publishers and journalists are stuck in this business with each other, and our criticism of a lot of publishers is that they don’t really want to accept that fact,” he said, adding that the legislation raises “some bigger issues for the ecosystem that we’re all a part of.” 

But building a digital media industry that centers workers will take more than just passing legislation. The movement will require a diversity of tactics, including stronger unions and collective action that protect journalists from having their livelihoods abruptly cut in a last ditch effort to save the executives’ bottom line. 

Soon after Insider said it would lay off 10 percent of its team last week, 250 Insider Union members organized a one-day walkout starting at 9AM on Monday morning. The union said the plan to cut staff came as it was still bargaining for a first contract. And if that wasn’t enough, the layoff notice came a week after editor-in-chief Nicholas Carlson said the company had started experimenting with using AI for editorial. Though there’s no confirmation that Insider’s staff cuts are connected to this venture into automation, the close timing of the two struck some as suspicious.

Media workers are at the forefront of both reporting on and dealing with tech’s impact on labor: we’ve seen it in our own industry. While we might sometimes feel as if these forces are too menacing and powerful to take on — doom-scrolling is always tempting — we shouldn’t resign ourselves to accepting the ChatGPT takeover as a predetermined fate.

Whether it’s through walkouts or pushing for comprehensive legislation, or a secret, more complex third thing, media workers can continue choosing optimism despite all odds. 

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TWO AWFUL MEN DISCOVER THERE IS LIFE AFTER MEDIA  

Well, this week certainly started off with a bang. Fox News’ Tucker Carlson, a frozen food heir who became the most horrendous sentient being on TV, and CNN’s Don Lemon, a guy who somehow made people feel sympathy for Nikki Haley, were fired from their respective cable news gigs. There are many unresolved questions: Was Lemon really not informed about this decision via CNN? Also, did he literally print a Microsoft Paint rendering of his announcement statement, scan the page at a Kinko’s, and then tweet it? What can we learn from Carlson eating pizza on air Friday night, blissfully unaware that it was his last supper? Though we don’t have all the answers, we do have some updates on Carlson and Lemon’s recent activities. 

According to a source, instead of immediately updating his LinkedIn profile and adding #funemployed to his Bumble bio, Carlson is taking a page from his favorite film, “Into The Wild,” and is currently on a walkabout in the Alaskan wilderness armed with nothing but a machete and three Cliff bars. He will be back in a year, if and only if he throws his Apple Watch into the river and overcomes his fear of harrowing solitude, realizing that true peace stems from within. Lemon, on the other hand, has decided to lean into his proclivity for having absolutely no filter and will continue the tradition of CNN anchors hosting events with Andy Cohen. In this case, the former CNN personality will help moderate Real Housewives on the BravoCon stage in Vegas this November. Watch this space for more updates.

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COMINGS AND GOINGS 

—Lindsay Schrupp, who was most recently the executive editor of Mel Magazine (RIP) is now Thrillist’s new editor-in-chief.
—Ben Kesslen is now a reporter covering “a little bit of everything” at The Messenger, which is “launching soon.”
—Sophie Culpepper is leaving the local news site, Lexington Observer, to become a staff writer at Nieman Lab.
—Chris Cohen has been promoted to deputy editor of GQ. He will still be running the website’s wellness vertical.

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EVERYTHING ELSE

—Meta laid off most of its 50-person misinformation engineering team last week, and some employees questioned how the company would continue that work without them, The Verge reported. I guess they’re taking a page from Twitter’s book. Who needs facts, anyway?
—Two Asheville, North Carolina journalists were convicted of trespassing last week for recording police evicting homeless people from a public park. According to Freedom of the Press Foundation, bodycam footage showed the officers made the arrests “because they’re videotaping.” The journalists intend to appeal their sentencing.
—Data breach at NBC News! Reporters of the media outlet had their sensitive information leaked in a recent data breach, including social security numbers and addresses. Their personal information was exposed after the mental healthcare provider, Brightline, was hacked. Liz Lemon was not affected.
—Jeff Shell was fired as CEO of NBCUniversal after Comcast conducted an investigation into a CNBC correspondent’s allegations of sexual harassment, the company said in a securities filing. The reporter’s identity was revealed over the weekend. Her attorney, Suzanne McKie, said in a statement to NPR that “it is very disappointing that my client’s name has been released and her privacy violated.”
—Nate Silver will be leaving FiveThirtyEight, a website he founded in 2008. Over the years, the data analysis outlet, famous for its statistical models predicting elections and sports games, was passed around various media companies going from The New York Times to Disney’s ESPN and eventually landing at ABC News, which is also owned by Mickey Mouse. The news comes as Disney is expected to layoff 4,000 employees this week as part of a broader restructuring. “I am sad and disappointed to a degree that’s kind of hard to express right now,” Silver wrote in a tweet. “We’ve been at Disney almost 10 years. My contract is up soon and I expect that I’ll be leaving at the end of it.”
—Over 450 Washington Post Guild members are conducting a “lunch out” today to pressure the Post to come to the bargaining table with a “thorough and fair wage proposal.” After nine months of negotiations, the WPG is bargaining to raise minimum salaries to a higher standard than “modest living wage” in DC, ensure a 2 percent annual increase, and “institute a cost of living adjustment to ease the pinch of record inflation.” Thus far, the WPG has been unsatisfied with the company’s proposals and said this is one of the “biggest actions” in their history. “It’s a testament to the solidarity of our union and the strength of our demands for change,” the WPG said in a Twitter thread.