Study Hall Digest 3/19/2018

Study Hall Digest is periodically renamed Media Hell Week when things are particularly bad ;[

Tronc! Meredith! Elon Musk! And More!

Tronc, which I’m still not convinced isn’t a performance art piece about the ridiculousness of corporate culture under late capitalism, is apparently extremely good at making nonsensical PowerPoint presentations about “adjacent diversification” and whatever-the-fuck. Unfortunately it is not-so-good at running media companies. After the sale of the L.A. Times to California biotech billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong, Michael Ferro, chairman of Tronc, is stepping down. He’ll likely receive a big bonus before he leaves even though he helped Tronc’s newspapers lose tons of value and staff during his tenure. Meanwhile Tronc is laying off an unknown number of staffers at the Chicago Tribune, and forcing many to reapply for their jobs, which staffers are calling the Tronc Hunger Games. This is the kind of thing a union would prevent. The newly-independent and recently-unionized L.A. Times has so far been spared the shitshow hitting the Chicago Tribune, and their newsroom has also been spared being moved to Playa Vista, which executives wanted because it was closer to their houses, lol.

Meredith, the new, Iowa-based owner of Time Inc, is cutting 200 to 300 staffers, and trying to trim up to half-a-billion dollars from the company (didn’t know Time Inc had half-a-billion dollars worth of stuff to trim!).

The Denver Post is losing dozens of journalists and other newsroom positions. And it’s not because it’s failing, but because the paper’s hedge-fund-backed owners took millions of dollars from the company, invested it in Greek debt and a bankrupt pharmacy chain, and lost most of it.

Elon Musk is buying up Onion staffers a̶n̶d̶ ̶h̶a̶r̶v̶e̶s̶t̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶i̶r̶ ̶o̶r̶g̶a̶n̶s̶ ̶s̶o̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶h̶e̶ ̶c̶a̶n̶ ̶l̶i̶v̶e̶ ̶f̶o̶r̶e̶v̶e̶r̶ launching a new comedy media company. Can’t imagine anything less funny than something run by Elon Musk.

Is it wrong to mourn the loss of so much talent from media companies because of the decisions of incompetent rich people, but still root for the complete destruction of another media company (Facebook)?

It’s still unclear whether the new public-radio-backed -ist sites are a good thing or a ploy to restore the reputations of their owners, Jake Dobkin and Jen Chung.

Hey some good news: Sludge, a new investigative site on the cryptocurrency-backed Civil platform, has hired a bunch of good people.

And some more good news: Elle.com has poached Jessica Roy from The Cut, where she oversaw turning the site from a good but kind-of-run-of-the-mill fashion blog into a longform powerhouse.

And some mayyyybe good news: Apple bought Texture, which has been called the Netflix of Magazines (i.e. a subscription service). Who knows what Apple will do with it, but it’s a sign big companies are starting to understand that subscriptions are here to stay, and that we need to get away from ad revenue ASAP.