Study Hall Digest 1/14/2019

By Study Hall staff writer Allegra Hobbs (@allegraehobbs)

Good morning! And welcome to the dawn of a new era! Last night, we went to sleep in a world where Kylie Jenner had the most-liked photo on Instagram — this morning, we awaken to a world where the egg is supreme. An Instagram account by the name of EGG GANG launched a campaign to overtake Jenner’s record like-count of 18 million, and on Sunday evening it achieved its goal. As of this morning it had Jenner beat by 10 million.

Taylor Lorenz, the Atlantic’s writer covering the internet, documented the incredible journey on Twitter and noted the concept of racking up tons of followers and likes by posting one image (often repeatedly) of a mundane object is actually a trend among teens on the internet.

Youths like the absurdist humor of being insanely dedicated to something utterly meaningless (reminds me of my last relationship! —Enav) — I was going to say “for no discernable reason” but I think there is a reason!: It manages to (a) unite millions under a common goal in a culture characterized by isolation and (b) find humor in absurdity, in a world wherein these kids are still expected to care about school and get respectable jobs in marketing or something despite knowing the planet will be increasingly ravaged by climate change in the coming years. ;/

Automattic Inc, the parent company of WordPress, announced this morning it is launching a new journalism platform. The platform, Newspack, will take off in the coming months with hefty contributions from a handful of investors — Google has made by far the largest contribution at $1.2 million. The goal is to give small-to-medium-sized sites, and particularly local sites, the technical support they need to become sustainable and bring in revenue. Automattic is now accepting applications for the beta launch in July 2019 — a list of requirements and a questionnaire for interested parties to fill out can be found here.

How exactly will Newspack work to provide technical support and to monetize sites? What sorts of revenue streams will these sites use? Well, it depends. The team will work with each site individually to try and custom-fit a solution, according to the president of WordPress Kinsey Wilson.

“Individual publishers will have the freedom to craft their own business model,” said Wilson in a statement to Study Hall. “Our goal is to give them a variety of tested tools and techniques to support advertising, subscription, membership models and more.”

A lot of newsrooms already use WordPress, noted Wilson, leading the company to look for ways to aid smaller operations with technical and business challenges they encounter while trying to put out good content. “The idea for Newspack is to make it much easier to set up and use WordPress in ways that are tailored to the editorial and business needs of news organizations,” he said. It’s a good recognition that there may be more than one grand monetization solution for media. But Google’s role also feels a bit like too little, too late: if you’re going to be nearly solely responsible for the decimation of the journalism industry, maybe you can pony up more than a million bucks to save it.

Fact-checking sounds like it should be clear-cut, but…it’s not, as we were reminded yet again this past week. AP chose to fact-check the Democrats’ blaming Trump for the government shutdown, noting it “takes two to tango” and that the Democrats refused to approve the funding for the racist wall. The bizarre tweet was rightfully mocked on Twitter, but it also prompted a discussion on the role of fact-checking in our current political climate.

It seems fairly obvious fact-checking should stick to the realm of what is strictly measurable — did this person actually, in the past, do or say this thing? Is this figure correct? But in the interest of “both sides”-ism it’s unsurprising outlets would want to appear “fair” by checking, well, both sides. I asked AP about their fact-checking process and how they determine what to fact-check — I’ll let you know if I hear back.

To the surprise of no one, Vox seems to be moving toward a freelance-based model. There has been a sharp spike in job openings since September of last year. On the one hand, notes Thinknum, the company is hiring, which is a positive in an industry where media companies seem to be mostly firing. But the majority of those new positions aren’t full-time staff jobs, but contract and freelance jobs. Thinknum also notes this is taking place after the company recognized the Vox Union. In addition to all the usual benefits of skimping on staff positions in favor of freelancers, it may be worth considering with the recent wave of newsroom unionization that media companies may also try to avoid new union memberships this way.

Significant layoffs last week hit two local publications — The Dallas Morning News, my hometown paper, lost 43 staffers, half of which were in editorial. Several of those laid off were culture and arts writers — this is alarming, given the ever-growing gaps in culture coverage (layoffs across publications in the past seem to hit culture and arts the hardest, while publications specifically dedicated to culture coverage seem to be waning).

The alt-weekly East Bay Express, meanwhile, laid off nearly its entire editorial staff. Its existing financial woes were exacerbated by a twisted legal battle in which a disgruntled employee claimed he was owed hundreds of thousands in overtime pay. It’s another blow to alt-weeklies, which do important work nationwide beyond the purview of big national outlets. Still, the Express, in covering its own layoffs, said it will persist.

In GOOD LOCAL/ALT-WEEKLY NEWS: The LAnd is putting out its inaugural issue, now available for pre-order at $20. In New York, non-profit The City, helmed by Jere Hester and newly stocked with immense local talent (including quite a few DNAinfo alumni!), is getting off the ground.

Who can afford to be a New York Times travel writer? I explored the question for Study Hall, speaking to freelancers impacted by the Times’ uniquely rigid no-freebies policy — including a writer who wrote for the Times for over a decade and spoke to the policy’s inherent financial difficulties — as well as Times travel editor Amy Virshup herself, who seemed to think the concerns expressed by freelancers were much ado about nothing.

THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE NEW:

• GQ’s new editor Will Welch ushers in a new era for the men’s magazine in his introductory letter, noting GQ will focus more sharply on style. Chris Gayomali is the new editor of GQ.com.
• Ryan Schreiber, founder of Pitchfork, has stepped down after 22 years.
• An exhaustive post-mortem on the sports media start-up The Cauldron, particularly showing how acquisition deals fall through all the time.
• Study Hall’s Kyle Chayka on the future of the content management system and publications taking back control from Google & Facebook.
• And finally, Cookie Monster shows us how not to negotiate raises and benefits. Cookie Monster, get to work forming a union in your workplace!!!