After the Fall
Journalism isn't dying, but it is changing.
With mass layoffs across the media sector, it’s easy to say that journalism is dying, but I don’t think that’s quite an accurate read on what’s happening. I recently listened to an episode of the brilliantly titled podcast “Never Post” where they talk with Gita Jackson (Aftermath), Alex Sujong Laughlin (Defector), and Rusty Foster (Today in Tabs). All three have worked in larger media organizations, and all agree that the growth model forced by the executive class is no longer viable. What will work is smaller, sustainable journalism.
I have two minds about this. On the one hand, I feel like the executive class has no idea what journalism is, and can only see things in terms of brands. The Washington Post recently reported on how Authentic Brands, which owns Sports Illustrated, was wealthy enough to throw lavish parties, but not to support the journalists who actually work for Sports Illustrated. Jamie Salter, the CEO of Authentic, knows how to turn a buck by licensing out names to things, but when pressed about how to address the SI’s struggles as a publication, this statement tumbled out of Salter’s mouth:
“When your magazine comes to your door, everything that’s in there, you and I already know about,” Salter said. “What I’m saying to these guys, you got to change the strategy a little bit. It’s got to be more about the highlights. ... Show us that Super Bowl catch. Like, how did he catch that ball? Like, the glue on his hands. ... Talk about that story. Talk about the real moments that I want to hold on to forever.”
This is…nonsense? For starters, every single sports publication talked about Mecole Hardman’s game-winning Super Bowl catch. There was no new “glue on his hands” because Stickum and other adhesives have been banned in the NFL since 1981, and if Hardman had been cheating, we probably would have heard about it because it’s kind of hard to hide adhesives on your hands in the most-watched televised program of all-time. Salter knows absolutely nothing about journalism, and he only sees SI as a branding opportunity, not a publication where people have to do writing and reporting.
It would be very nice to be done with all the Salters of the world and have us all retreat to individual publications, but I think we have to be aware of our limitations. I think back to this clip from the 2011 documentary Page One: Inside The New York Times where the late, great media columnist David Carr takes the guys at Vice to task for their slim, sensationalist reporting.
In 2012, Vice thought it was big, but clearly limited in their scope and how they even thought to approach journalism. But while Vice grew exponentially over the next decade, it was all for naught. Last week, Vice Media laid off hundreds of workers while executives took massive bonuses. The wealthiest among us do not value journalism, and yet their wealth provides the ability to find and dig deeper into important stories, as Vice did with its Charlottesville reporting in 2017. We have to acknowledge that there’s a trade-off here where independence and sustainability might mean lacking the resources to find the bigger story, and that’s a problem I’m not sure how to solve. We can’t simply rely on The New York Times and hope for the best.
For my part, I know the current limitations of this newsletter. I cannot deliver you a scoop. To begin, most scoops go through the trades anyway (i.e. Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, Deadline, and The Wrap) because the people who have the information want to make sure that when it’s disseminated, it goes as far as possible. I also think scoops in the entertainment business are pretty small fry in terms of what’s interesting. For example, if I had known that Pedro Pascal was playing Mr. Fantastic in the Fantastic Four movie and reported it before Marvel’s official announcement, that may have drawn some traffic, but it’s not particularly interesting. Pascal is a great actor, he’s only getting more popular, and Marvel tends to be pretty good at casting even when their movies are disappointing. So we need to rethink what even constitutes “news” at the newsletter level.
We certainly shouldn’t put on rose-colored glasses about the last decade. When Jackson said that during her time at Gawker there were a giant screen showing traffic metrics on Chartbeat in real-time to see how your story was performing against other stories, that was chilling to me. We all kept an eye on Chartbeat during my time at Collider, but since we worked remotely, it didn’t loom over us in an office as a reminder that we were never really off the clock. And this is when these businesses were considered a success! As the guests on Never Post note, what we’re headed back to is blogging. It will not be lucrative, but perhaps it can be sustainable. What that means for journalism at large is a tricky question, because I certainly don’t want to compete with every other movie writer on the planet. Like if you can only choose between me and the guys at The Reveal, choose the Reveal! I can’t lie and say I’m better than two veterans of The A.V. Club and The Dissolve. But however subscriptions shake out, the work itself still has value.
That’s why I can’t throw up my hands and say, “Journalism is dying!” Journalism has value. It will continue to have value, but the question that still hasn’t been adequately answered is how to properly pay for it at scale. At a low-end, I think this newsletter model works. I make a little money and you get my expertise. But we will need something bigger, and that either comes from growing a publication, or the wealthiest among us realizing that journalism is valuable without being lucrative. I have more faith in the former happening than the latter.
Recommendations
Speaking of delusional billionaires, Dave Karpf has a good rundown of Chris Dixon’s Read Write Own. Dixon is a big believer in blockchains, crypto, NFTs, and all other Web3 products despite the market’s total collapse over the past two years. Karpf notes that Dixon seems genuinely ignorant of tech history both recent and of the past several decades, and even if he wasn’t, the product he’s pushing isn’t that appealing. It seems like Dixon is a landlord telling everyone how great it is to be renters. Ownership is for him, but for you and me, we just have to roll with market forces where every single asset is tokenized and volatile. Contrary to what folks like Dixon believe, a lot of people don’t like it when everything is gambling.
What I’m Watching
I have finally started watching Twin Peaks. I feel like there’s no real understanding of David Lynch as a filmmaker without it despite Twin Peaks and its follow-up, Twin Peaks: The Return, being TV series rather than movies. I’m only two episodes in, but I do like its vibe where it’s not only a murder mystery, but that, like with his 1986 feature Blue Velvet, Lynch is blending a 50s Americana aesthetic into a story set in the present day to create a sense of not only unease, but a critique of 80s values that have no real place in history except in our minds. I also went in expecting Kyle MacLachlan’s FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper to be the show’s straight man, but no! He’s a big old weirdo, and I am loving his performance.
What I’m Reading
How Google is killing independent sites like ours by Gisele Navarro and Danny Ashton [HouseFresh] - I’m kind of amazed at how quickly Google Search has tanked. There was a time when Googling was so reliable that the company became a verb to seek out a fact. “Google it,” and you would know the answer. But now you can easily game Google, and as HouseFresh points out here, good luck finding any reliable product recommendations. As larger websites become desperate for more revenue, they’re trying to game the commerce market for sales, which leads to a bunch of copy-pasted Amazon reviews and phony Reddit posts.
The Shocking Death That Has Devastated Gamers for Decades by Zachary Small [The New York Times] - Spoilers for Final Fantasy VII, a game that came out in 1997, I guess. It tickles me to no end that there’s an article in The New York Times about this game I fell in love with when I was 13, but it’s a well-reported piece that delves into the consequences of this character’s death and why it was so impactful at the time in a medium where “death” simply meant starting over. Anyway, it’s a good read if you know the death they’re talking about, and a good lead-in for the upcoming release of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth.
The True Triumph of Robert Downey Jr.’s Second Act by Tim Grierson [RogerEbert.com] - Grierson quotes a line from Robert Downey, Jr’s 1999 prison sentencing that has also stayed with me ever since I heard it: “It’s like I’ve got a shotgun in my mouth, with my finger on the trigger, and I like the taste of the gun metal.” The line itself is oddly poetic, and yet, as Grierson points out, it seemed like Downey was writing his epitaph. We saw so many talented performers succumb to addiction, and their loss doesn’t get easier as the years go by. Downey looked like yet another light that would be snuffed out by addiction, and yet here he is on the cusp of winning an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for Oppenheimer. It’s an incredible comeback story, and my hope is that for others who are wrestling with addiction, they can look at Downey’s success and see that there’s hope. That may not mean winning an Academy Award, but for those in the depths of addiction, getting and staying sober is an even bigger reward than a trophy.
What I’m Hearing
Is Hans Zimmer’s score for Dune Part Two even better than Part One? Possibly!
What I’m Playing
You know what I’m playing (at least until tomorrow when Rebirth comes out).
I support YOU and The Reveal!