Study Hall Digest 7/8/2019

By Study Hall staff writer Allegra Hobbs (@allegraehobbs)

What went wrong with political and social commentary blog Hmmdaily? It’s hard to develop a system for people giving money to journalism online, said editor Tom Scocca, and people don’t understand cryptocurrency. “Getting ordinary people into the crypto was always the trickiest part of the whole proposition,” Scocca told Study Hall. “And both the way that the development unfolded and the way the climate around crypto projects was shaping up, we never achieved that sort of frictionless entry for people to get in and start spending money.”

The Civil blockchain experiment that funded Hmmdaily has been fraught with difficulties and delays, and that means publications founded on the concept have been left to figure out funding or shutter. Hmmdaily launched in September, purposely in line with the initial Civil Token launch — but that token launch failed, netting only a small fraction of the fundraising goal, and a re-launch didn’t take place until the following March. Even then, the CVL token was only being used for membership and not for reader donations. Popula, which is having financial difficulties of its own, had by that point implemented a crypto tipping system, but that was a totally independent move that editor Maria Bustillos took out of the site’s budget.

“The original premise was this was going to be all one integrated thing and from day one we’d be doing proof-of-concept,” said Scocca. “And we didn’t have the thing to do proof-of-concept with from the beginning, which not only made the timetable for monetization come faster than it otherwise would have but it also put the sites on divergent paths and sort of left them raising funds and operating themselves on their own terms.”

In other words, the outlets were forced to carve out paths to financial sustainability on their own, rather than as a part of a network buoyed by shared blockchain technology.

For Hmmdaily at least, the crypto aspect was a “barrier of entry” rather than an incentive for people to give money — because, well…most readers don’t understand it. “I think when you are not yourself crypto evangelists and your editorial message does not have that much to do with blockchain technology, the crypto aspect is probably more of an obstacle,” said Scocca.

But also, a lot went right with Hmmdaily. It was able to produce compelling work for nine months and pay freelancers fairly thanks to Civil’s generous grant, said Scoccca. The Civil experiment represents a stab at making journalism work without billionaires or ad dollars. “My approach to this all along was: Nobody else has a scheme that works,” said Scocca.

That’s true in that there isn’t a model proven to be largely replicable, and some degree of growing pains is to be expected. It also makes sense that publications like Block Club Chicago, which existed before it was reborn on the Civil platform, or the Colorado Sun, which is a straightforward news concept people recognize as valuable, will have an easier time drawing funding. Hmmdaily was itself an experiment within an experiment (“we’re just people writing stuff on the internet to get it out of our own heads,” said Scocca). But roughly a year in, the blockchain concept still seems more a source of confusion than anything.

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The Center for American Progress is putting its progressive news site ThinkProgress, which made a name for itself during the Bush years, up for sale. Navin Nayak, executive director of the Center for American Progress Action Fund, gave The Daily Beast two reasons for the impending closure: Severe financial strain (the site is apparently a few million dollars short of breaking even) but also, apparently, ideological differences. “…Events over the last few years have underscored the divergent missions of American Progress and ThinkProgress,” said Nayak. As the Daily Beast points out, ThinkProgress has never been profitable and has always made up the difference with funds from CAP or CAP donors, so it’s pretty clear the think tank just wants to offload it because they view it as a burden! (Bernie Sanders blasted the site a few months ago for its corporate donations after it published a video about his millionaire status, which sparked some internal controversy.)

CAP saw a roughly $10 million spike in contributions from 2016 to 2017 (from roughly $41 million to $51 million) which its leaders have maintained were one-time post-election contributions. Where does that money go? The most recent tax documents made publicly available are from 2017, but at that time the majority of expenses were salaries at nearly $26 million — President Neera Tanden in 2017 made upwards of $348,000 — followed by grants at around $10 million. By far the largest grants chunk, upwards of $5 million, goes to its own advocacy work at the Center for American Progress Action Fund, which publishes experts on progressive causes, followed by $1 million to legal services non-profit Democracy Forward. Among the largest grant recipients, at upwards of $613,000 is Georgetown Law, followed by a bunch of law and policy centers.

Anyway, even that paltry pre-2016 $41 million is a lot of money, and CAP could keep ThinkProgress running if it wanted to — but since it’s become more of a liability than anything and they’re likely trying to get their donations up. The Sanders controversy put corporate donations in the spotlight, and who needs that! Bryan Goldberg is probably putting in an offer as I type this.

Longread of the Week: Here’s a strange and moving piece about a British man who devoted his life to collecting Britney Spears memorabilia and donated it all to the Kentwood Museum in Britney’s hometown before he died: “When a collector dies, all the stuff that’s left behind can, by itself, appear to outsiders like so much junk: piles of heavy records and tapes and CDs taking up space and collecting dust. The intimacy of it, the life story hidden in the songs, might be lost. But it’s not quite so with Keith Collins’s collection. He made sure the music and memorabilia that meant so much to him would make it to a place where they could be appreciated.” This is the kind of content we’ll miss when Topic closes.

EVERYTHING ELSE

— Confirming what we already knew to be true: Journalism is currently suffering the worst job cuts since the recession. The industry saw 7,914 job cuts in the first few months of 2009, which is far more dire than the roughly 3,000 so far this year, except WE’RE NOT IN A RECESSION. Honestly surprised my parents haven’t emailed me this article yet with a gentle suggestion that I consider marketing.

— Graydon Carter is gearing up to launch his newsletter for the “young, urbane and worldly,” but I wonder if his subscriber numbers will be hampered by the revelation in The Daily Beast that he declined to publish allegations against Jeffrey Epstein in 2003. “I believe him…I’m Canadian,” he said, according to Vicky Ward, who was profiling Epstein for Vanity Fair at the time.

— Speaking of money making schemes that don’t work: Apple News+ is not going well! (Not totally surprising, since they didn’t really make a push for it.) The app was supposed to make it seamless for readers to subscribe to an array of paywalled publications, but apparently it isn’t intuitive for users. One publisher told Business Insider they were making ONE TWENTIETH of the revenue Apple had projected.

— After 67 years, Mad Magazine will effectively shutter later this year. The magazine will continue to be available at comic book shops and to subscribers as old content is recycled, but new issues will cease. The publication has been struggling for some time — Smithsonian Magazine noted last year that subscriptions had dropped from 2 million in its heyday of the 70s to 140,000 in 2017.

— Ogilvy, a feel-good ad agency that recently did Pride work for ostensibly progressive brands, apparently has a $12 million contract with U.S. Customs & Border Protection. But look at these very woke ads of gay couples kissing! Love is love!