Study Hall Digest 9/9/2019

By Study Hall staff writer Allegra Hobbs (@allegraehobbs)

ICYMI: Check out our report from Thursday about how freelancers are increasingly struggling to navigate social media at a time when a lively Twitter presence seems necessary to success AND more traditional publications continue to enforce rigid and often outdated social media standards. “[Social media is] like a very ornate sword,” Kim Kelly told me, reflecting on her experience of losing a gig at NPR after her tweets ended up on Tucker Carlson Tonight. “If you know how to wield it, it can be useful in certain situations — but you can just end up stabbing yourself.”

Succession Media Watch [SPOILERS]: Everyone’s favorite business chamber drama is basically a running commentary on the media industry, from the Roys’ Fox-equivalent ATN News on down. Yesterday’s episode featured the gang trying to acquire PGM, a liberal news media company owned by the Pierces, a WASPy old-money family. Is there a real-world equivalent? The Sulzbergers are still the owners and dynasts of the New York Times, sending various sons and nephews to company posts. George Bradley owned The Atlantic until he sold it to Laurene Powell Jobs, whose Apple money arrives with indeterminate morals. Different McCormacks now own The New Republic, Tin House, and The Baffler, though those titles are more leftist. The episode mostly left me wishing this fictional $20 billion company and vaguely respectable family were real. — Kyle Chayka

A Brief Recent History of Brand-Sponsored Magazines

(…and why Netflix’s new magazine is different.)

• Nov. 2014: Airbnb launches Pineapple (it shutters in Dec. 2015)
• June 2015: Mattress company Casper launches digital publication Van Winkle’s, headed by Elizabeth Spiers, formerly of Gawker and the Observer
• Nov. 2015: Dollar Shave Club launches Mel Magazine — it started as a twice-weekly newsletter and has grown into a highly-trafficked online magazine with a print edition
• June 2016: Snapchat launches Real Life, a magazine “about living with technology” headed by Nathan Jurgenson, a contributing editor at The New Inquiry (just one in an impressive masthead and list of contributors)
• Nov. 2016: Airbnb launches Airbnb magazine in partnership with Hearst
• July 2017: Luggage company Away launches Here Magazine
• Nov. 2017: Casper pivots to print, replacing Van Winkle’s with “bespoke” print magazine Woolly, headed by New York Post alum John Devore (it now exists solely online)
• April 2018: Coffee company Califa Farms launches Pour Over to cover the coffee industry
• June 2018: Uber launches Vehicle, a magazine about “people, place and community”
• June 2019: REI launches Uncommon Path in partnership with Hearst; the first issue is slated to publish this month
• Sept. 2019: Netflix launches Queue, a “print journal” showcasing Netflix shows and talent created with design studio Pentagram

You get the idea — more and more brands are funding magazines as the prestige print market continues to crumble. (Though airlines pioneered the practice before it was a trend with inflight magazines — American Way, the American Airlines magazine, launched in 1966!) One impetus for these forays into media seems to be a desire by brands to dominate conversation within their given industries. When Casper first launched Van Winkle, CEO Philip Krim told the Wall Street Journal that Casper sought “to become the dedicated brand for all things sleep, and part of owning that category is owning the best content related to it.”

And brands seem to emphasize print over online, because there’s a perceived authority to print — it is undeniably a better consumer experience than visiting a website, and it boosts credibility for the brand itself. In other words, it makes for better advertising. “With all the fake news going on, consumers believe that if a company invests in the printed word it’s more valuable,” Joe Pulizzi, founder of the Content Marketing Institute, told Folio. (Oof.)

The trend has prompted discussion around the increased influence of tech startups on media. In late 2017, even before the launch of roughly half of the above list, Alyssa Bereznak wrote about the phenomenon for The Ringer, suggesting that tech companies might be the new media moguls. She also dove into the requisite discussion around editorial independence, and found that staff at these magazines for the most part felt less burdened by economic pressures than they had at traditional outlets where incentives for ad sales often leak into editorial incentives.

It feels more honest this way, Bereznak said: “there’s no longer even a smoke-and-mirrors pretense that capital-J journalism is separate from a brand’s financial influence.” Most companies dealt with conflict-of-interest concerns by avoiding direct coverage of the brand’s product — Van Winkle’s and Woolly, for example, have never covered mattresses, nor has Mel ever reviewed razors. Instead, they’re tasked with embodying the core spirit of the brand, which may in turn benefit sales, rather than selling anything directly, and that’s a meaningful distinction.

This is why Netflix’s new project, glossy print journal Queue, is different from its predecessors. Queue is not covering the film industry, the streaming wars, or celebrities; Queue is covering Netflix. To its credit, it doesn’t pretend to be anything it’s not — Pentagram’s description of the project makes it abundantly clear that the intent is to further engage the Netflix audience by highlighting Netflix content and talent, and it is straightforward about Netflix’s direct involvement. But it still toes the line between sponsored content and journalism.

Netflix brought on recognizable journalistic talent to help shape the project — Krista Smith, formerly of Vanity Fair, was brought on as a consultant and conducted the interview with cover star Eddie Murphy (currently starring in a Netflix biopic). The table of contents features the names of entertainment journalists alongside Netflix talent (my favorite: Natasha Lyonne interviewing Natasha Lyonne, a seeming parody of the ongoing trend of celebrities interviewing celebrities). (An earlier iteration of the Netflix magazine project boasted a slew of well-known young writers, but it was scrapped by the company.)

The participation of journalists in what is essentially a marketing campaign for a tech giant feels like a step towards blurring the lines between the two, while previous iterations of the Brand Magazine made a show of resisting those trappings. This is not a value judgment so much a statement of fact regarding the state of the industry — brands have print money, and lots of it, while traditional media companies do not, and there is already so much cross-pollination between tech and media (publications already partner with streaming services) that it feels like an organic progression.

As a freelancer, I have to applaud fellow media workers taking money where they can get it. But I also have to wonder what impact the evolving trend will have on how we cover industries that increasingly hold the keys to our own.

***

ThinkProgress is shutting down, the Daily Beast reports, just months following reports the progressive commentary site was in financial trouble with a $3 million gap between revenue and expenses. It’s worth noting the editorial staff went to great pains to establish independence from the Center for American Progress — their unionization was part of that effort. According to Navin Nayak, the executive director of the Center for American Progress Action Fund, the site will be folded “back into CAP’s broader online presence” and will contain analysis directly in line with CAP interests. In short, a bunch of real journalists are being fired and any shred of independent journalism at the site disbanded because CAP would rather focus on furthering its own interests.

ThinkProgress founder Judd Legum noted that the decision “underscores that this was ultimately about control, not money.” Because let’s face it, donors could’ve kept it going if they really wanted to. (Legum now runs his own very popular and profitable Substack newsletter.)

Longread of the Week: This Ronan Farrow investigation in The New Yorker exposed the degree to which Joi Ito, the director of MIT’s Media Lab — a research center dedicated to cross-disciplinary research but with a focus on tech and science — solicited and concealed donations from Jeffrey Epstein and allowed Epstein to direct funding. Joi Ito resigned as director of the MIT Media Lab almost immediately after the story’s publication. Ito was on the board of the New York Times Company, and has stepped down from that position as well.

EVERYTHING ELSE

— Is the celebrity editor becoming extinct? The New York Times profiled Carine Rotfield of CR Fashion Book about the passing of the age of editors like Anna Wintour, who have been replaced by Instagram influencers. “On Instagram, these people say what they want, show what they want, without any culture or judgment,” she mourns.

— Some mild Media Twitter controversy erupted when Jay Rosen, journalism professor and director of the Studio 20 program at NYU, suggested the New York Times had waited on the Ito story because the Media Lab director was on the board. Times reporters demanded a correction and apology and asked that he delete the original tweet — he did both (Aron Pilhofer of Klein College defended Rosen’s tweet, saying he was asking legitimate questions).

— The Gannett-owned Arizona Republic is weathering an aggressive union-busting campaign. The paper’s executive editor sent an email to staff accusing them of spying on staff who are not unionizing and comparing the unionizing staff to “crackpots and criminals.” More recently, a Republic reporter said an HR rep with Gannett interrogated her about unionizing efforts and confiscated her work phone. All extremely illegal shit btw!

— Patreon says it is exploring ways to better support creators, and that may include giving out loans. Idk, I may be a cynic but I can’t help but think of how this could easily become predatory and a nightmare for self-publishing artists!

— Man, it sure seems like everything is eventually destined to become a podcast these days! The Jeffrey Epstein saga is already being turned into one, called “Broken: Jeffrey Epstein,” headed by film director Adam McKay. It will be a weekly show hosted by The New Yorker’s Ariel Levy and will seek to probe the “unanswered questions” of the Epstein story and his connections to the rich and powerful.