Study Hall Digest 7/30/2018

By Study Hall staff writer Allegra Hobbs (@allegraehobbs)

Mags Bail on Writers Who Dare Ask for More

Taffy Brodesser-Akner kicked off a riveting Twitter thread on some seemingly gendered fuckery in the magazine world: publications pulling writers off assignments who dare ask for more money. By her account, this is happening at predominantly women’s publications, and at print magazines — further down in the thread she notes these are ostensibly “feminist” publications (“Exploiting a feminist as she writes your feminist copy for peanuts is not feminism! Be better!”). Teen Vogue was named more than once as an offender, which is especially striking given the #resistance #feminism #socialjustice brand they’ve worked so hard to cultivate.

Who’s the Worst Fictional Reporter?

Is it Amy Adams in HBO’s Sharp Objects? This guy thinks so. Because she doesn’t take notes and gets too close to her sources! I mean, ok. But I feel like it’s kind of… integral to the character of Camille that she plays a little fast and loose with the “rules,” no? Hello, she straight-up lied to her editor about obtaining a source’s permission to use something. It’s who she is, Brian. If I had to select a few overarching themes within the show I wouldn’t go with “journalistic ethics” or “professionalism.” And anyway, if we’re going to be nitpicky, her most glaring sin as a journalist is NOT IDENTIFYING HERSELF AS A JOURNALIST when talking to people, pretty much ever!! Forget taking notes, Brian! She’s just wheeling around, going “So how about that murder?” Wrong!

Anyway, I thought we all decided the answer is “Rory Gilmore.”

Gordon Ramsay Does the Opposite of Bourdain

Anthony Bourdain was celebrated for his respectful deference to the cultures whose cuisines he highlighted on television. So,what if we filled the hole left by his tragic absence with — hear me out — a known asshole parachuting into various places foreign to him, where he then challenges the locals to culinary competitions to see who is better at producing the indigenous dishes? Gordon Ramsay plans to do exactly that in Uncharted, to air next year on National Geographic. Lucky us.

Trump V. The Times Episode One Billion

The publisher of the New York Times, A.G. Sulzberger, walked into a meeting with Donald Trump in hopes of appealing to… whatever part of him might stop disparaging journalists (his rationality? his empathy?? I’m truly at a loss!), and unsurprisingly two very different accounts emerged. The meeting was supposed to be off-the-record, at the request of the White House no less, but I guess no one explained what that means to the president because he shat out a dumbass tweet about how they discussed the “Sad!” state of the “fake news” media. This prompted Sulzberger to provide his own statement on what transpired, disputing the fake news label and warning of the very real dangers of vilifying journalists around the world.

Love Letters to Local Journalism

The Daily News staff cuts left us all reeling. As Deadspin pointed out, it is some kind of class warfare to axe half a newsroom after paying your predatory chairman $15 million (the bundling of a three-month consulting contract). Tronc clearly doesn’t give a shit about the well-being or functioning of the newsroom, or about journalism more broadly, even admitting to surviving staffers’ faces they have no editorial strategy for NYDN moving forward, per the Daily Beast. Such naked indifference and incompetence shown showcased while destroying people’s livelihoods and gutting a vitally important institution is nothing short of infuriating.

Local news is so much more than the sinking ship it’s made out to be, and it’s not a disposable tool to be sold off to line the pockets of rich assholes. The failure of such publications creates “local news deserts,” which now even New York City risks becoming.

Because local news is so much more than the sinking ship it’s made out to be, and more than a disposable tool with which rich assholes can cushion their debt or line their pockets — and now we have even more reason to fear New York will become a local news “desert.” The beautiful thing about local news is that if the story matters to locals, it also matters to the journalists on the ground — big or small, quiet or loud, if it touches lives it merits time and attention. Those of us who have done it know this. We also know it is grueling, unglamorous work requiring long hours, modest pay, and equal parts empathy and tenacity.

On one of my last days at DNAinfo, I staked out a murder scene for hours in the freezing cold, hoping I could get one of the detectives to talk to me. Not glamorous. A routine part of the job is to knock on door after stranger’s door following a tragedy, a death, or an arrest, never knowing what kind of reception waits on the other side. I knocked on doors while my hands shook — but I always knocked. And I routinely spent late nights at lengthy community meetings, absorbing details about new property developments, new bike lanes, liquor license applications, and noise complaints. These things may seem inconsequential, but they’re huge to the people living among them. With no eyes on the ground like this, key developments and concerns go unreported and unaddressed.

The Daily News isn’t community board-level granular in its reporting, but it has diligently brought attention to local issues — notably, if it weren’t for the News, de Blasio would still be denying the presence of lead paint in NYCHA developments. With the demise of DNAinfo and now the significant slashing of the News, we have reason to worry about the dearth of local coverage.

So go forth and support local news in your city! Here in New York I recommend Patch and the Brooklyn Paper! And if you happen to own a media company DON’T SELL IT TO FUCKING TRONC.

Longread of the Week: What else? This unbelievable piece from Taffy B-A again on Gwyneth Paltrow, Goop, and wellness culture. Come for the celebrity home voyeurism, stay for the airport dash scene.

SHORT LINKS

— Leah Finnegan, in a delightfully scathing Leah Letter, explains the “urgent earnestness” (“Urn”) characterizing this cultural moment and makes a case for irony (this piece comes with a TW for Kierkegaard).

— Ex-Gawker employees weigh in on the upcoming Hollywood version of the beloved outlet’s demise: the caricatures are “really good for owning my friends,” one former staffer said.

— Uber whistleblower Susan Fowler Rigetti joins the New York Times’ Opinion section as the technology editor.

— Final tally: Gothamist raised $200,000 through its Kickstarter campaign. That’s not bad, but doesn’t touch the estimated “low seven figures” it got when its owners sold it to Joe Ricketts last year. Did all that money go towards paying staff and contributors well?

— Bust Magazine pens apology after publishing a plagiarized story (still confused how the fuck this happens with fact checkers??)