Study Hall Digest: 7/2/2018

By Study Hall staff writer Allegra Hobbs (@allegraehobbs)

Where Will Apple Stream its Many Shows??

Apple’s feverish show-ordering streak reminds me of….me, ordering things I don’t need at 2 a.m. in a state of anxiety-induced insomnia only to be surprised when they arrive in the mail five days later. Apple has at least TEN shows lined up so far, of such a wide variety and boasting enviable names — OPRAH, REESE, JENNIFER (Aniston) — it is truly ridiculous (do you really need all those, Apple??). But where will they all be available for streaming? There are already too many streaming services. Will we be asked to subscribe to yet another one? Will I refuse to subscribe, then impulsively do so at 2 a.m., then cancel my subscription six months later, then re-subscribe again when a new season of The Reese and Jennifer Show (a title I just made up) drops? Who’s to say?

Dozens of Gizmodo Staffers Take Buyouts, Thwart Layoffs

44 Gizmodo employees are leaving the company after taking buyouts that include 18 weeks of pay and healthcare coverage. The relatively generous buyout is the result of months of negotiating between Gizmodo, parent company Univision, and the editorial union. One of the staffers told Study Hall they all learned of Univision’s plan to cut 35-percent of Fusion Media Group through a Wall Street Journal report in March, igniting anger among staff, who convened with union reps to talk strategy. A more militant response of demanding no layoffs was voted off the table, said the staffer, and so conversations began around who would volunteer to leave.

“I think there were a lot of people who had either been at the company for a long time or decided, ‘This is just not a place that I want to be,’ even if they were told ‘You’re not at risk of getting laid off,’” said the staffer. “And so those people were able to avail themselves of this opportunity that would otherwise not be there for them.”

Ultimately, union representatives were able to negotiate the 35 percent figure down to 15 percent. Staffers were told no layoffs would occur this time around, but there are no guarantees for the future.

The employees taking buyouts must sign a non-disparagement agreement that expires after 18 weeks, the staffer added — so be sure to check Twitter in…mid-November.

The list of those who took buyouts so far includes some big names, now all free agents. Here’s who we know of, either because they were named in the Daily Beast article or because they announced their departures on Twitter:

— Alex Pareene

— J.K. Trotter

— David Uberti

— Nona Willis Aronowitz

— Emma Roller

— Brendan O’Connor

— Clio Chang

Slate Union Now Facing Down Anti-Union Management

The Gizmodo news, however disheartening, underscores the importance of organizing workplaces and the power of collective bargaining — making it doubly disheartening to see anti-union measures coming from media companies. The Slate Union, which is in the midst of bargaining its contract, says management has rejected its request for union security. The measure would allow union members to opt out of paying dues (as opposed to being required to pay dues, as they are in virtually every other union), diluting the power of the union — a move the union says is “at heart, a union-busting measure,” — kind of like what the Supreme Court just did in Janus.

Jesse Singal Cries Into a Cis Echo Chamber

It’s been a long, eventful few weeks, but hey, remember that transphobic Atlantic piece? Harron Walker of Jezebel, who first posed the great philosophical question of our time, “What’s Jesse Singal’s Fucking Deal?,” has now unearthed a private, ostensibly off-the-record listserv of roughly 400 left-leaning journalists in which Singal, a member of said listserv, bemoans criticism of his work and attributes it to trans “groupthink.” Walker astutely points out this opinion is being shared in what is essentially a massive cloistered echo chamber of cis people, allowing them to keep trans folks at a comfortable, anthropological distance rather than engaging with them directly. Reading through these emails, I couldn’t help but wonder…what’s Jesse Singal’s fucking deal?

A Political Upset Upsets the Times

I think it’s fair to say when DSA-member Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez defeated a 19-year incumbent in the Democratic primary for the 14th Congressional District, everyone was pretty surprised, including Ocasio-Cortez. But some took it step further and were like “I don’t know her,” including the New York Times — which, ok, you missed this one. Just admit you goofed. It’s ok. Instead, the Times made the odd decision to pretend as though she were newly “catapulted” to the “front of the political conversation” after previously getting attention only from such outlets as Refinery 29, Mic and Elite Daily — outlet’s “associated with millenials and female readers” rather than national readerships, according to the Times. This is both a weirdly dismissive aside (millennials and women vote and are engaged in politics yet continue to be branded as chronically unserious) and also incorrect, as those outlets do in fact have a national reach. Refinery 29’s news and politics writer Andrea González-Ramírez‏ laid this out on Twitter and the Times ultimately issued a correction. (A Q&A with González-Ramírez‏ is forthcoming from Study Hall).

RELATEDLY, Jill Abramson, former executive editor of the New York Times, eviscerated her former place of work for missing the Ocasio-Cortez campaign — trust me, I hate to throw around the word “eviscerate,” but it seems appropriate here. “Kind of pisses me off that @nytimes is still asking Who Is Ocasio-Cortez? when it should have covered her campaign,” she tweeted. She further elaborated in an email to a Daily Beast reporter that the Times needs a “course correction” because “this shit is bad,” then went on to lay out all the ways, in her opinion, the Times has fucked up recently. Like I said. Eviscerated.

Threats to Journalists Take On a New Heaviness

After a disgruntled reader with a history of harassment shot and killed five staffers at the Capital Gazette, writers have been coming forward to speak frankly about the disconcerting amount of threats and harassment they receive on a regular basis. Allure Deputy Director Sam Escobar asked for a show of hands from people who either had received a death threat in the last year or knew someone who had, and the responses are horrifying. The Capital Gazette story hit so devastatingly close to home because, as many have pointed out, just about every newspaper has a disgruntled reader who harasses its reporters. It’s expected. We accept it as normal. But the direct threats are getting worse, by some reporters’ accounts — some took to Twitter to say the number of death threats they recieve has risen this past year. I find it infuriating conservatives have the gall to say we’re being hysterical when we point to the dangerous rhetoric of right-wing trolls, which falls in line with that of the fucking President, when these threats are clearly on the rise and now carry significantly more weight following the actual deaths of reporters.

Short Links:

— Uber launches a magazine called “Vehicle” aaand I’m going back to bed.

— That amazing Taffy Brodesser-Akner profile of Jonathan Franzen contains some depressing figures reflective of the state of the publishing industry, as pointed out by New Republic writer Alex Shephard.

— More sobering statistics: fewer women and people of color worked at radio stations in 2017 than in 2016, a survey shows.