Study Hall Digest 10/23/2017

Hi

The fallout from #metoo continues. Lockhart Steele, Vox’s editorial director was fired this week after being outed as a sexual harasser. Are there any other firings going on in the media? There were many many names on that not-so-secret list, but as Silvia Killingsworth points out, new media companies, and Vox in particular, seemed underrepresented. All these outlets that present themselves as #woke #baes (Splinter, Mic, BuzzFeed, Vox, etc.) have just as much bullshit going on at them, but tend to avoid the spotlight when it comes to harassment and shitty labor practices. And Vox has some really shitty practices!

Speaking of shitty men and shitty media, you should probably never work for Surface Mag, where the CEO has said things like “You work for me 365 days a year. I give you the weekends off to be nice.” Lol.

And of better labor practices: Women at all Dow Jones companies, including the Wall Street Journal, get 20 weeks of maternity leave with full pay now. That seems cool. I mean not as cool as universal, federally-mandated parental leave but still better than most media companies. (Remember when Mic fired EJ Dickson when she was pregnant? :/)

LinkedIn is considering developing more original content and possibly even TV shows. Now there’s even more reason for me never to go on LinkedIn! Seriously, does anyone here use LinkedIn? It’s such a joke there’s not even really a joke to make about it at this point.

People are finally starting to get mad at platforms like Facebook and Twitter, seeing them for ultra-influential monopolies they are. Former Google Ventures CEO Bill Maris said it’s likely we’ll hear more calls for regulating or even breaking up the internet’s behemoths in the near future. Hopefully! Meanwhile, the platforms are as clueless as ever. Facebook employees portrayed themselves to BuzzFeed as the true victims of people’s anger about Russian bots and undisclosed political ads. And Twitter just keeps fucking up, giving platforms to Nazis banning good people.

Here are some big takeaways from working at The Guardian for six years, the main one being that the media operates like a chicken with its head cut off, running from strategy to strategy, platform to platform.

The NYTimes (and lots of other media orgs) started its week reporting on the CIA’s complicity of mass murder in Indonesia and ended it profiling the fun, hapless dog that the CIA fired. Awwwwww ;). How’s it feel to be so easily manipulated @NYTimes?

That Milo-infiltrates-the-media story took years of reporting and source building. Props to Joseph Bernstein, the reporter behind it.

Fox News rots conservatives’ brains. But MSNBC does the same for liberals.

Does the media really think people are so stupid that they don’t understand what facts are? They just don’t care….

Final Thoughts

From a quick Google News search for “North Korea,” seems like the media really wants us to go to war. ;[