Study Hall Digest 8/6/2018

By Study Hall staff writer Allegra Hobbs (@allegraehobbs)

Movement at Vogue Amidst Rumors of Wintour’s Departure

Two high-profile talents at Vogue are leaving the magazine for the luxurious freelance life many of us enjoy — and who can blame them? Hello, it’s THE BEST. (They will remain contributing editors at Vogue). The departures fuel whispers of Anna Wintour’s exit, which have been circulating for several months now, though Condé Nast strenuously denies the rumors (like a robot, Wintour will continue “indefinitely”).

Conde’s finances are ailing: the company lost $120 million last year, and even after making cuts across its glossies — axing Details and print versions of Self and Teen Vogue — it now plans to sell W, Golf Digest, and Brides. The Times notes these changes aren’t as jarring as those facing other publications, but “are unsettling to veterans at a company where top editors once had roomy offices designed to their own specifications, the everyday use of chauffeured cars and, for a favored few, no-interest loans to ease the purchases of Manhattan brownstones and even second homes.” Now I’m unsettled.

Upworthy Continues to Go Downhill

31 Upworthy staffers were laid off this past week, with the company citing “an increasingly challenging media environment.” Editor-in-Chief Liz Heron noted on Twitter the cuts included nearly her entire team and that she herself had resigned along with president Eli Pariser. This is just the latest in a series of blows to the site over the past few years. Upworthy at the start of last year merged with Good Worldwide, losing 20 staffers in the process. The year before that, Upworthy axed 14 staffers to focus on video. Previous downsizing has seemingly coincided with a severe drop in readership — the site at the end of 2013 attracted 85 million viewers in a month, and by 2015 that figure had dipped to 20 million. It points to the failure of viral video producers to gain the traction they might have expected only a year or two ago, now that Facebook keeps rejiggering its algorithm, and curating and producing its own content that gets pushed above the content of its competitors.

The Times Cowers to the Mob

The problem of the “both sides” approach to controversy seems to be a theme of the week. It’s what happened when the New York Times failed to distinguish between a legitimate concern and a faux-outrage campaign launched by alt-right trolls in reaction to their hiring of the well-respected technology journalist and former staffer of The Verge Sarah Jeong for their editorial board.

The New York Times siphoned a sort of apology (or at least admission of fault) from Jeong, an Asian-American woman subjected to racist attacks online whose only sin was making caustic (and, in my opinion, funny) jokes about white people. The Times stood by the hire but not without tisk-tisking the jokes, calling the rhetoric unacceptable. The Verge released an excellent statement calling out the naked disingenuousness of the attacks and unequivocally backing Jeong’s method of retaliation against racist ghouls. Publications should not and must not feel the need to bow to the demands of every stripe of potential consumer, especially the alt-right.

Some outlets in their coverage stubbornly peddled the “both sides” approach, including Gothamist, which in an initial headline called Jeong’s tweets “anti-white” — didn’t they raise $200,000 to save local journalism or something? How many hundreds of thousands of dollars would buy some common-sense editorial judgment?)

I find it difficult to believe anyone was actually offended by Jeong’s tweets, but even so, in seeing lazy accusations of racism against white people — published even in the pages of New York Magazine by in-house troll Andrew Sullivan. This is just the latest incident to show that white people are quick to dismiss racism as a bogeyman contrived by minorities to get ahead. They’ll dismiss a collective outcry of black voices in favor of the possibility that maybe, just maybe, there’s another factor that isn’t racism that hasn’t been considered. They’ll court a hypothesis over a thesis so long as it doesn’t implicate white supremacy. You see this in coverage carefully favoring phrases such as “racially charged” over the more straightforward “racist.” And yet here is a young woman of color dispensing what are clearly jokes that are clearly in response to real spiritual ugliness, and the word “racism” slides right off the tongue.

For Study Hall subscribers Kaila Philo wrote a longer piece about the controversy, tackling the issue in light of what it means for the future of public shaming.

Platforms Start Standing Up to Alex Jones

Well, that only took…far longer than it should have. Audio platform Stitcher removed all episodes of Alex Jones’ podcast, while Spotify only removed “specific episodes.” And on Sunday, Apple removed nearly every piece of content from Jones — all but one episode — both from iTunes and its podcasting service. Facebook, which had previously just suspended the man who claims Sandy Hook was a hoax and perpetuates harassment against parents of the victims, followed suit, no doubt in light of pressure created by the bolder platforms. Honestly, is it so hard to shut your doors on these pieces of shit?

Newseum Backpedals on Fake News Shirts

Hahaha! Ha. Oh, that’s funny. Sorry, I was just thinking about how the president of the United States and his cronies and his legion of followers constantly vilify journalists, demean their profession, and brand them liars for doing their jobs, a vile and dangerous rhetorical tactic that seems to have led to an uptick in threats and violence against journalists. A belly full of laughs, right? Well, that explains why the Newseum, a DC museum dedicated to the press and the first amendment, decided to hawk “You Are Very Fake News” shirts in its gift shops — a choice some described as satirical and “tongue-in-cheek.” That’s cute. Ultimately, though, the museum yanked the shirts when people noticed — you know, because of the threats and violence and all. In a statement, the museum confirmed that, indeed, the press “is not the enemy of the people.” Brave stuff, guys!

A spokesperson for the museum seemed deadly serious in issuing a “gotta hear both sides” defense, which seems to rest on the premise that if some visitors to the museum believe journalists are enemies of the people it makes sense to sell shirts catering to that worldview.

SHORT LINKS:

— Newsroom employment has dropped nearly a quarter in the last ten years. 🙁

— Is Netflix, like Moviepass, a long con? Content Ponzi schemes!

— Google is helping to develop a censored search engine in China, after shutting down its own product in 2010.

— Warner Music Group buys Uproxx, leading to concerns about the site’s ability to cover music without bias (though they were already pretty bad about covering things without bias!).

— The Times does a little explainer on how journalists talk to sources: What does “off the record” actually mean?

— Azi Paybarah explains why he left the grind of daily news to focus on one local story per week in a new podcast (it’s supported by the crypto-startup Civil, btw).

— In some positive Vogue news: the mag got Beyoncé on their September issue cover, shot by Tyler Mitchell, who is only 23 and (shockingly) the first black photographer to shoot a Vogue cover.