Study Hall Year in Review: 2018

By Study Hall staff writer Allegra Hobbs (@allegraehobbs)

2018! How about it? Pretty over, am I right?

Now that we’ve all had a chuckle, let’s do some serious media analysis, reflect on the media trends that shaped 2018, and make some astute predictions for the coming year.

FIRST OF ALL: INFLUENCERS! CAN I BE ONE?? (And Will They Unionize?)

In me news, I got an email a few weeks ago notifying me that I had been identified as an “influencer” and offering to hook me up with some brands for the possibility of (maybe) eventual payment. I was INCREDIBLY FLATTERED — I’m a freelancer, sure, pay me whenever! — but surely a mistake had been made. I barely tweet because I’m anxious and self-loathing — not cute! — and when I do it’s usually about hyperlocal NYC news — not aspirational! So in short, I wish! You see, I deeply revere the dual wings of Instagram: The curated perfection (Utah momfluencers posing with their husbands and babies in front of strangers’ houses with captions like “These ones make my heart full”) and the curated imperfection (a model sporting a messy bun and sweats — brands want authenticity in an influencer).

I was most recently entranced by this influencer who very obviously photoshopped herself in front of Paris backdrops, then acted like it was a very chill and normal thing to do. So I’m making three predictions: (1) With the increased scrutiny of Facebook, there may be an increased scrutiny of the ways in which Instagram is perhaps uniquely bad (it is owned by Facebook and it’s making us even more deeply unhappy), (2) as freelancers begin to mobilize collectively, influencers will follow suit (read this Garage piece by SH friend Daisy Alioto) and (3) Instagram will further divide into two camps, aggressively authentic and aggressively inauthentic, until we’re all forced to choose sides. I’m with the shameless photoshopper!! Catch me outside the Taj Mahal with a EOS® lip balm in my hand ;).

The Year Workers Fought Back

Last year saw an onslaught of layoffs in digital media and ended with what could have been a warning shot to organizing workers — the shutdown of DNAinfo and Gothamist. But just as the mass layoffs have continued at digital newsrooms, so has the union-building. It’s no longer a surprising new trend. Newsrooms that unionized in 2018 include Slate, The Onion, The New Republic, The New Yorker, and New York Magazine.AdWeek lays it all out in a handy timeline here. The only stable thing about the industry, however, has been its precarity, with cuts at Condé publications, Vox, The Outline, and of course, the axing of the entire Mic editorial staff.

But 2018 is, in my mind, the year workers fought back. Thrillist staffers went on strike, and a few months later secured $50k minimum salaries. After a mini-strike in which staffers walked away from their Slack, the Slate union just weeks ago authorized a strike in the event negotiations with management don’t make headway. And freelancers with Study Hall threw their hats in the ring, first pledging not to write for The Outline then calling for greater media transparency and better labor conditions following Bustle’s acquisition of Mic. And this is after freelancers took to Twitter en masse to share their rates! It really feels like writers are increasingly emboldened to speak out against the companies that depend on their labor — what are they going to do, fire us??

Writers Struck Out On Their Own

The former staffers of the decimated LA Weekly launched alt-weekly The LAnd. One former LA Weekly staffer launched her own podcasting company because why the hell not? If you’re going to be broke, be broke on your terms. Others are carving their own path on newsletter services like Substack — some are making a living doing so, and a very few are making a killing.

And Everyone Has a Podcast

The number of podcasts this year has reportedly swelled by the hundreds of thousands — individual creatives are launching podcasts as side hustles, and at the same time big media companies like The Washington Post are launching daily news podcasts in hopes of replicating the success of the New York Times’ The Daily. Nick Quah of podcast newsletter Hot Pod has predicted this is a bubble that will soon burst. Maybe that’s for the best, because there are also a lot of bad podcasts out there.

Facebook is Evil—Now What?

Just to recap, Facebook lied about the superiority of video, contributing to mass-firings in newsrooms; it sold our information; it spread fake news and influenced the 2016 election; it sanctioned some anti-Semitic dirt-digging on George Soros, and it lied and obfuscated on all fronts instead of coming clean. At the same time, it became so powerful that media companies came to largely depend on it for revenue—Mic boneheadedly so, to the extent that when Facebook cut its video show the site went under.

A movement to delete Facebook has taken hold among individuals. Will publishers do the same? Ehhh idk. Buzzfeed wants to form a super company to better suck up to Facebook, so probs not. The duopoly of Facebook and Google reigns supreme! My prediction for 2019 is, unfortunately, more media mergers! But maybe also more boutique companies that stay away from social media completely, not trying to play a losing game by gaming the algorithms to their favor…

Others ARE Looking for Another Way

We’re all pretty jaded by advertising and some media companies are trying to divorce themselves from advertising dollars altogether. Some experiments have shown more promise than others. the blockchain-based Civil tanked on its first round of fundraising, while Dutch news company The Correspondent, which is subscription-based and powered by readers, successfully reached its crowdfunding goal.

Subscription models do seem like the intuitive way forward (ahem) — but are they sustainable? Can we truly be free from the tyranny of advertising? Are enough consumers willing to pay for content (The Correspondent, uniquely, is a pay-what-you-want model)? We’ll probably have a better idea by the end of 2019, as the subscription wars heat up.

(SOME OF THE) BEST STORIES OF 2018:

• Lyz Lenz interviewed a very shouty Tucker Carlson in an attempt to uncover the mystery of Tucker Carlson…but she mostly uncovered shouting.
• Taffy Brodesser-Akner stared into the ethereal, hydrated face of Gwyneth Paltrow and uncovered the mysteries of Goop.
• Sarah Miller recounted her educational and somewhat dispiriting time as a movie critic.
• Elizabeth Bruenig investigated the previously dismissed rape of a high school in her Texas hometown and found a disturbing maliciousness towards victims.
• Alex Vadukul documented how old-school New York eatery Forlini’s is being besieged by Instagram influencers.
• Jenny Odell kept getting random Amazon packages at her doorstep, and the story gets much weirder from there.
• Penelope Green profiled the inventor of the water bed, who’s trying to reinvent his product for wellness-conscious (™) millennials (™).
• — Lauren Oyler outlined the ongoing “Infinite Essay” of Zadie Smith.
• Allison P. Davis performs a cultural post-mortem on the person and the phenomenon of Lena Dunham.

STUDY HALLIDAY COMIC EDITION BY AUDE WHITE: 

Happy New Year from Study Hall! We can’t thank you all enough for this year. We’re really looking forward to the next one, and seeing what we can all dream up together.