Reports from Inside First Look Media Suggest That Maybe Silicon Valley Shouldn’t Manage Journalists. Feverish speculation surrounds First Look’s recent troubles.
But perhaps the most obvious culprit is its reliance on truckloads of tech money. In a revealing account of Taibbi’s departure, a team of First Look journalists candidly noted that the start-up was hobbled at the outset by a “highly structured Silicon Valley corporate environment” riddled with “management-speak” and “a confounding array of rules, structures and systems imposed by Omidyar and other First Look managers.” Journalists on the Left have always had problems with institutions. I’m not referring here to these scribes’ honorable muckraking pedigrees, or their principled distrust of the national security state and the corporate boardroom. Rather, they have trouble building and sustaining viable media institutions of their own in the broader marketplace of ideas. But “the thing is, Pierre became a billionaire in 1997-98,” the same employee says.
Emails: Vice Requires Writers to Get Approval to Write About Brands. A lot has been made of the popularity of VICE lately, and much of it is well-deserved, which reminds me of a real-life fable that occurred just the other day...
I was at a local coffee shop typically reserved for hipsters and young, hip recent post-grads when I noticed that all of their Macbook Airs were on the same internet page. That page was the VICE homepage. I asked them how they can be so hip if they are so uniform. They all replied at once: "VICE media gives me all the important stories that people like myself enjoy discussing, as well as the current hip thinking on each topic. " I was stunned and asked, "OK, but let me show you GAWKER. " 'New York Times' Editor: Losing Snowden Scoop 'Really Painful'
Hide captionEdward Snowden didn't trust The New York Times with his revelations about the National Security Agency because the newspaper had delayed publishing a story about NSA secrets a decade earlier.
Mario Tama/Getty Images Edward Snowden didn't trust The New York Times with his revelations about the National Security Agency because the newspaper had delayed publishing a story about NSA secrets a decade earlier. 'Period Of Turmoil' Preceded Abramson Firing, Says Top Editor At 'Times' Hide captionNew York Times Executive Editor Dean Baquet, seen in 2006 while serving as editor of the Los Angeles Times, said in an interview with NPR that he doesn't believe his predecessor, Jill Abramson, was fired because of gender.
Bill Haber/AP New York Times Executive Editor Dean Baquet, seen in 2006 while serving as editor of the Los Angeles Times, said in an interview with NPR that he doesn't believe his predecessor, Jill Abramson, was fired because of gender. Dean Baquet sat in his new office in Midtown Manhattan, the very picture of composure and precision, as he described the top-level dysfunction that led to the firing of Jill Abramson as executive editor of The New York Times and his promotion to replace her as the top news executive there. The firing, made public on May 14, involved three major actors: Abramson, Baquet (pronounced baah-kay) and the paper's corporate chairman and publisher, Arthur Sulzberger Jr.
"I never said to anyone it's me or Jill. The most comprehensive analysis ever of the gender of New York Times writers. In this post I present the most comprehensive analysis ever reported of the gender of New York Times writers (I think), with a sample of almost 30,000 articles.
This subject has been in the news, with a good piece the other day by Liza Mundy — in the New York Times — who wrote on the media’s Woman Problem, prompted by the latest report from the Women’s Media Center. The WMC checked newspapers’ female byline representation from the last quarter of 2013, and found levels ranging from a low of 31% female at the NYT to a high of 46% at the Chicago Sun-Times. That’s a broad study that covers a lot of other media, and worth reading. But we can go deeper on the NYTimes. The WMC report, it appears (in full here), only focused on the A-section of each newspaper, with articles coded by topic according to unspecified criteria.
First Look Media. The Inside Story Of Matt Taibbi's Departure From First Look Media. Matt Taibbi, who joined First Look Media just seven months ago, left the company on Tuesday.
His departure—which he describes as a refusal to accept a work reassignment, and the company describes as a resignation—was the culmination of months of contentious disputes with First Look founder Pierre Omidyar, chief operating officer Randy Ching, and president John Temple over the structure and management of Racket, the digital magazine Taibbi was hired to create. Those disputes were exacerbated by a recent complaint from a Racket employee about Taibbi’s behavior as a manager. The departure of the popular former Rolling Stone writer is a serious setback for First Look in its first year of operations. One year later, First Look still has only one such magazine, The Intercept. Omidyar has publicly and privately pledged multiple times that First Look will never interfere with the stories produced by its journalists.
That letter led to lengthy and often heated discussions. Photo: Richard Renaldi. The Pierre Omidyar Insurgency. The eBay founder was a mild-mannered Obama supporter looking for a way to spend his time and fortune.
The Snowden leaks gave him a cause—and an enemy. Illustrations by Matthew Woodson Every September, for a siren-snarled week, much of midtown Manhattan surrenders to a pair of occupying powers: the United Nations and the Clinton Global Initiative. The U.N.’s annual General Assembly brings in the foreign excellencies and tin-pot dictators, but it’s Bill Clinton’s event that attracts the billionaires. This year’s edition, co-sponsored by, among others, a Greek shipping magnate’s wife and a Ukrainian oligarch, took place inside the barricaded Times Square Sheraton, where the Clintons made evangelical “calls to action” on issues like water scarcity and women’s empowerment.
One evening, in conjunction with CGI, Pierre Omidyar threw a reception across the street. WikiLeaks. Tehelkatv on YouTube.
News Corp.