Study Hall Digest 10/1/2018

By Study Hall staff writer Allegra Hobbs (@allegraehobbs)

The Very Online Terror of the Kavanaugh Hearings

It’s impossible to turn away from something awful when it’s happening right in front of you, and when you have an Internet connection or certain social media apps on your phone, every awful thing happens right in front of you, all the time. People like to distinguish between Online™ and Real Life™, but the fact of the matter is our experience of reality can’t reasonably be divorced from the digital anymore — experiencing something entirely online does not make the experience less “real” in any meaningful sense.

On Thursday my entire Twitter feed was filled with blow-by-blow accounts of the Kavanaugh hearings. It was brutal. It was maddening to watch a woman with absolutely no reason to lie speak with clarity and certainty about a terrible trauma, then to watch a man with every reason to lie sputter defensively and obfuscate and… well, lie, and then to watch commentators go, “Well idk they’re both so passionate!” But I wasn’t just experiencing the hearing itself in real time — I was also experiencing all accompanying commentary in real time. For much of the day, the hearing was in my headphones while I refreshed Twitter, skimmed timely articles and essays that had just been published, and absorbed newly-released or newly-revisited bits of pertinent information on what was playing out on the screen. The never-ending tweets were raw, at times devastating, their immediacy palpable. Watchers, mostly women, were documenting their emotional reactions to the hearing as it unfolded, some disclosing their personal traumas in the process. Twitter was a news source and a chat room and a therapist’s office all at once, but above all else, it was very much a real place — as real as the Starbucks where I sat watching it unfold, feeling increasingly claustrophobic.

I had gone to bed the night before intent on not immersing myself in what was about to happen. But the next day, as someone whose livelihood is linked to being online, the intense degree of my immersion felt somewhat beyond my control. After hours of exposure, all spent on the verge of tears, I wondered whether keeping my eyes on the screen was self-flagellating. When Ford said during her testimony that she feared she was throwing herself in front of a train that would get where it was going, but would leave her annihilated, I got the distinct feeling, in watching, we were doing exactly that.

Local Newsrooms During National Crisis

The reality of the immersive media experience means that even those in media who are not professionally covering the Awful Thing are immersed, to some degree, and have to keep working. Amy Plitt, editor at the urbanism website Curbed, took to Twitter to speak to the difficulty of turning out unrelated content during the omnipresent reminder of our country’s rampant misogyny.

“There was about an hour on Thursday when I couldn’t get any work done,” Plitt told Study Hall, though she recognized she was lucky to have the option of tuning out, unlike women who had to cover the hearings. “I wasn’t even watching the hearing live, I was just watching everything as it unfolded on Twitter — Twitter is something I have to pay attention to for my actual job.”

Curbed covers local matters related to homes and development in a handful of cities — Plitt works in New York. And local issues can seem hopelessly small when overshadowed by a heart-wrenching national story.

“I know that the work I do on a regular basis covering New York City — land use issues and transportation and stuff like that — they’re really important and I know that intellectually,” she said. “But when days like Thursday and Friday happen, it’s really hard to know that emotionally, because it feels like the world is a dumpster fire and who cares if the subway isn’t working?”

Plitt noted she was working from home Thursday and Friday for unrelated reasons. But several staffers took personal days or chose to work from home, knowing the events of the day would make them emotional, she said.

But local coverage still matters — in fact, it’s important to help readers channel their emotions into local matters where they may have some influence by attending community meetings or speaking to their local council member, noted Plitt. I had to consistently remind myself of this as I spent Nov. 9, 2016 writing about local races as a DNAinfo reporter covering the Lower East Side — races that mattered very much to my readers, though they seemed small compared to the surrounding national panic — and I had to remind myself of this again on Thursday while I reached out to city and state agencies for answers on lead content in NYC tap water. The world keeps spinning, and what happens in our backyards continues to matter.

NYC News Site ‘The City’ Launches with New York Magazine

NOW, GOOD NEWS. Jere Hester, former city editor of the Daily News, ALSO hopes to encourage local civic engagement with news coverage — that’s part of why he’s helming local news site The City in partnership with New York Magazine! News of the site’s launch came Wednesday, so I had a few hours to be thrilled about this before being plunged into hell!! It’s a dark time for local news here in NYC — DNAinfo went up in flames last year, then the Daily News cut half its staff, then the Village Voice was shuttered. And of course, amidst all that, Gothamist came back. So it’s been rough! Hester plans to hire 15 journalists and start publishing in January. Important to note: the site is financially independent from NYMag. It has raised $8.5 million in funding from a handful of donors, including Craig Newmark of Craigslist. Anyway FUCK YEAH LOCAL NEWS!!!! It’ll be interesting to see which new-wave local sites become influential. Several years ago, CUNY had staffed a New York Times-sponsored site with their J-School students, but the Times shuttered them when they couldn’t figure out how to monetize local news.

Jack Smith IV Firing Moves #MeToo Into the Gray Areas

The above was a nice interlude, but let’s go back to shitty men for a second. I can’t fucking believe this also happened last week (how long is a week again?), but it did: A meticulous Jezebel report exposed Mic.com reporter Jack Smith IV as a serial emotional abuser, known to use manipulative and coercive tactics on women. The story was published on Monday, and by Tuesday he had been fired. The piece is noteworthy in that it identifies Smith’s abuse as falling into something of a gray area — not illegal, not explicitly assault, but still very wrong. And that is noteworthy in a world in which we are often told of lesser offenses, “Well, it wasn’t rape,” as if that is the only way to harm someone. The piece emphasizes that women absolutely differentiate between assault and less obvious tactics like Smith’s, but that they “would like the tentpoles to be moved permanently toward the expectation of equitable sexual encounters.” Also, Smith’s actions are made more egregious, in my opinion and in the opinion of a woman interviewed for the story, as Smith benefited from a “woke,” “feminist,” “leftist” image as a journalist. Smith’s behavior was well-known at Mic and in media circles, so it’s unclear why it took an exposé for Mic to seriously look into it. But regardless, good riddance. And general advice for shitty men: leave your baggage in therapy.

The Gender Divide on Pitching: Men are Worse but Still More Successful!

The majority of science journalism students and National Association of Science Writing (NASW) members are women — but men have more bylines, more newsroom jobs, and are more likely to win prestigious awards. Is this because they are more experienced or work harder? Nope! Not according to the results of a survey published by science journalism site The Open Notebook.

The survey also delved into the pitching habits of science writers and discovered women are more likely to cold-approach editors than men, and are just as likely to push back against rejections. But while men tend to just… tell the editor they’re wrong, women are more likely to massage their pitch in an attempt to make it work. So men are more thin-skinned, reactive and sure of their rightness? Shocking! Yet DESPITE that, men still statistically have better luck when pushing back — so women should just be more obnoxious, right? Well, no, because decades of research show women are more likely to be punished for aggressive behavior than men. So I guess we’ll just keep being polite and earning less! Smile ladies!!!

Study Hall’s Daisy Alioto Asks: Are You Not Explained!?

Alioto watched the new set of streaming shows devoted to the art of infotainment — Explained from Vox.com and Follow This from BuzzFeed News. The first, she notes, tackles subjective topics that are not really explained so much as superficially summarized. “The show scratches the same synaptic itch as Quora or Yahoo Answers — spaces of self-soothing inquiry rather than critical investigation,” writes Alioto. And of BuzzFeed’s show: “Follow This is a show about journalists, but without the voices of their subjects predominating, journalists aren’t that interesting.”

Longread of the Week: The Movie Assassin, a fantastic essay from Popula’s Sarah Miller on writing, self-invention, and the absurdity of swallowing bullshit as a sign of maturity.

SHORT LINKS:

— A bunch of NYRB contributors think Ian Buruma’s departure is unfair, demonstrating a profound misunderstanding of what transpired in an embarrassing open letter.

— The Outline, months after gutting its Future section, is now hiring an intern FOR THAT SECTION. Am I laughing or crying?

— Edith Zimmerman, founding editor of The Hairpin and currently Medium’s comics and illustration site Spiralbound, is joining The Cut as senior health writer. Congrats Edith! And congrats NYMag on the A+ hire!

— The Washington Post’s Arc publishing and advertising platform is seeking to spread, take over every newsroom, become the media industry standard, then presumably take over the world (much like Amazon).

— In October, Gimlet will launch a podcast with The Cut about the “lived experiences of women.” The teaser features a sound bite on pubic hair maintenance, so should be educational!

— After BuzzFeed reporters had taken to Twitter to share some details of an on-the-record all-hands meeting regarding the recent podcast layoffs, audio footage of that meeting has now been released — some employees could be heard crying, according to Splinter, which reported on the audio.

— In taking over British socialist magazine The Tribune, lefty fave Jacobin’s publisher apparently promised staffers future work if they took a percentage of back wages owed, then backed out. Not very socialist!

— It doesn’t look like Civil is going to meet the required goal to go ahead with their sale of bespoke journalism cryptocurrency, barring a wild uptick, but that’s ok, says Maria Bustillos, co-founder of the Civil-based blog Popula. Really! It’s fine!! Popula is legally independent from Civil so maybe it’ll survive anyway.