Study Hall Digest 6/12/2017
One of these people had a good week.
Hi
We seem to be coming out of the media industry volatility of a few years ago when it wasn’t clear which websites would survive and which would die. HuffPost is doing well, hiring away people from Texas Monthly, Guardian US, and Mic, among others. Their longform section, Highline, is also growing. Mic, Vox, and BuzzFeed all seem to be on relatively stable footing too (tell me if I’m wrong). Of course, there’s a difference between solid finances and solid journalism. Highline is great, but Mic, Vox, and BuzzFeed are sorely lacking good, in-depth reporting, especially after BuzzFeed killed its longform desk a few months back.
WaPo also is doing well, but, uhhh, there seems to be some resentment building there lol.
Last week, I mentioned how Teen Vogue, for all its commitment to social justice, can’t commit to paying its writers reasonably or treating them with respect. Now comes news that Bustle, another site targeted at The Woke®, is essentially stealing product ideas from smaller publications. I guess there’s no such thing as ethical capitalism, whoops.
Final Thoughts
Is the media getting more out-of-step with young people? This week, after the Labour Party’s historic gains in the British election, all sorts of papers railed against the win as a sign of dark times to come: The LA Times (too much democracy!), the New York Times (socialists are the same as Nazis!), the British tabloids (Jeremy Corbyn will kill us all!), used their platforms to espouse the idea that the only correct path forward for Western civilization is right-leaning centrism. Who are these papers preaching to? Does anyone on this listserv identify with their message? Besides the class of 40-something men who wear button-up shirts even on weekends, I’m not really sure who this message is for. I’m not interested in a moral argument here, but an economic one: is this a sustainable business model—yelling about how everyone except the center is wrong? What kind of readers will these storied publications attract if they keep this up?
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