Study Hall Digest 4/16/2018

Fusion Media Group was always a cobbled-together and mismatched beast — it includes all the former Gawker properties, plus Fusion (which is a TV station), plus Splinter (which used to be called Fusion), plus the Onion, AV Club and more. So it was only a matter of time before changes started happening. Some of those changes were good (axing Felix Salmon, who was making $400k to do absolutely nothing, for example). Now come some not-so-good, though maybe inevitable ones: Univision is cutting up to 35 percent of costs from FMG. Every cut so far has come from the ad and operations side of things, but editorial employees think they’re next. If I were in charge of the cuts, I’d just close the entire Fusion TV operation (did you know Fusion was a TV station?? Neither do most people!), and reinvest that money in digital. Splinter and the other sites are actually putting out good stuff these days, and seem to be building a bigger and bigger following. But Univision is run by TV people, and that means FMG digital employees are probably, unfortunately, screwed.

Sally Kohn, the TV commentator, has a new book out that has generated a bunch of controversy after the writer and podcaster Aminatou Sow said that Kohn quoted her without permission, and in doing so misquoted her and mischaracterized their relationship. Kohn has apologized, somewhat ham-handedly. The incident has brought up lots of opinions about fact-checking (or, lack thereof) in the publishing industry, the use of black women’s words and ideas by white people to increase their credibility, and at least one predictably idiotic take. To me, it seems a long time coming for books like Kohn’s, which are journalistically flimsy to begin with. I’m sure if someone dug into Thomas Friedman’s, David Brooks’, or many other media personalities’ books, they’d find many similarly unsourced anecdotes. Maybe stop giving big book deals about overly broad and semi-meaningless subject matter to overpaid TV commentators and op-ed columnists!

AlterNet, the lefty news site, was purchased by Raw Story. AlterNet was a bit of a shitshow, and kind of an aggregation mill, but it also produced some true lefty original journalism. Raw Story on the other hand is a complete shitshow and basically a clickbait factory, so this can’t be good news.

GQ is launching a version of itself in the Middle East which will be filled with, “columns sourced from locally respected influential men.” Sounds like a blast.

Google Chrome Suggestions is the new Facebook for news publishers, apparently. Hopefully news companies hire a bunch of people just to work on getting their stories onto more Google Chrome tabs, pivot their entire publishing strategy to increase Google Chrome traffic, and then act surprised and indignant when Google makes a tweak that ruins it all. ;l

And all those publishers completely reliant on SnapChat are now, apparently, fucked. Stop relying on tech companies to provide all your traffic!!!!

Berkeleyside, a local news site, raised $1 million in a “direct public offering” — meaning that a few hundred locals are now direct owners of the publication, instead of a bunch of random shareholders. Seems like a cool, potentially new way to fund news.

Employees at The Chicago Tribune, which historically has been pretty anti-union, have decided to push for unionization. Good for them. It’ll likely make Tronc even more of a mess than it already is.

And The New Republic has also decided to form a union. Woo! Unions!