Over the weekend, an open letter by some of the outgoing writers and editors of the New Republic appeared on the Facebook page of Robert Reich, the former labor secretary turned professional pundit, following a mass resignation of staff and unpaid “contributing editors” from the magazine. The letter, which lamented that “The promise of American life has been dealt a lamentable blow” with the resignation of editor Franklin Foer and literary critic Leon Wieseltier over plans to replace the former, also railed against what the authors described as “liberalism’s central journal” being “scuttled with flagrant and frivolous abandon” – a reference to internal changes being introduced by the 100-year old title’s owner Chris Hughes, a 31-year-old co-founder of Facebook.
The irony of the New Republic’s retreating elite posting their displeasure on Facebook was heightened by Hughes publishing a defense of his plans for the magazine – plans which recently-appointed chief executive Guy Vidra described as changing the publication into a “vertically integrated digital product”, whatever that means – through that most traditional of outlets: the Washington Post. To see the changes at TNR as part of the ongoing battle between Silicon Valley and traditional journalism, Hughes wrote, “dangerously oversimplifies a debate many journalistic institutions are having today”.
The debate, we thought, was mostly over. No serious news organisation can expect to have an audience or a future if it hasn’t already worked out its place in the digital ecosystem. However, as Silicon Valley culture moves beyond Palo Alto and into every aspect of our lives, from personal transportation to venerable political magazines, the cultural aftershocks persist.
The changes at the New Republic – and the ongoing fallout – are the latest lightning rod for the suppressed existential rage at the heart of American journalism’s chaotically mesmerising transformation. The people who now invest most in journalism come from outside the field, which disturbs and excites traditionalists in equal measure. It is the tech billionaires who are changing digital media – men like Hughes and Jeff Bezos (who bought TNR and the Washington Post, respectively), and Pierre Omidyar (who founded First Look Media), Jonah Peretti (the founder of BuzzFeed) and Ken Lerer (who’s been behind the Huffington Post, BuzzFeed, Thrillist, The Dodo and more). But will the media change with them?
Hughes, Omidyar and Bezos were hailed as journalism’s saviors: they have the money, from Facebook and eBay and Amazon, to underwrite the journalism – and the business pedigree to implement the technological changes that will be necessary and constant.
The tension between an engineering culture and an editorial culture is – as Hughes correctly identified – damaging and oversimplified … but definitely real. At the recent Newsgeist conference – a coming-together of technologists, educators, journalists and executives – one of the most animated sessions was called “Product versus Editorial” and, if there had been an option for us to express ourselves with primal screaming, it would have shattered the windows, such was the frustration of those who have to work with both.
From outside, these discussions always look as though the two sides eagerly present their worst aspects: the technologists throwing around exclusive language like “product development”, “ideation”, even the dreaded and empty “content” with a seeming lack of self-awareness; and journalists, oblivious to their own entitlement, making claims for the significance of their contribution which go some way beyond available evidence or public sympathy.
I caught up with Hughes on Monday afternoon as he was between one-to-one meetings with TNR staff in the Washington office: he was clearly regretful that what started as a search for a digital editorial lead became characterised in the media and among his staff as an intentional move to replace Foer behind the editor’s back, and annoyed at how his own editorial strategy had been framed.
“It is frustrating to me personally that there was a perception we would listicalize the place. If that was my intention, I would have done it long ago,” said Hughes, stressing that he remains committed to the New Republic publishing “journalism that is obsessive on a certain level”.
It is now impossible to have social impact as a journalism organisation without digital distribution, and impossible to achieve good distribution without understanding the complexities of platforms and networks that you do not control … even if they now transmit your work. When an increasing number of Americans reach news on their phones, and 30% find their news through Facebook, so-called “legacy” journalism is over, at least as an independently constructed and distributed cultural good. So the question for Hughes, and would-be billionaire saviors like him, is what’s next.
“I think we have seen a number of things happen in the last 18 months which are moving things along,” Hughes told me, “from the ‘innovation’ report at the New York Times, what Ezra Klein is doing with Vox.com, the longform journalism that BuzzFeed has started to produce, and even Medium – which on the face of it is bringing a community around a spectrum from very serious longform journalism to bloggers and other diverse voices.”
Still, in rattling off the journalistic competition he admires, Hughes audibly winced over including BuzzFeed, which has become a Pavlovian stand-in through which the uninformed – even among former TNR staff – encapsulate the idea of “declining standards” in journalism. But BuzzFeed has achieved what every journalism organisation needs to: Buzzfeed is successful because of the internet, rather than in spite of it.
TNR is not alone: a year in, Omidyar’s First Look is navigating the same cultural problems as Hughes, as best chronicled in a Vanity Fair story published online last week: the high-profile departures of Matt Taibbi and editor John Cook are explained in terms of Omidyar’s process-driven methods clashing with the autonomous – and not always well-behaved – nature of journalists.
Surprisingly, the marriage of techno-wealth with traditional journalism and all its attendant mythological dysfunction is working smoothly in the least likely of places – at the Washington Post. Bezos’ purchase of the paper 14 months ago, which seemed an obvious prelude to a tragi-comic power struggle, has provided the Post with a seemingly steadying influence of underlying financial security (thanks to Bezos’ money) and the forceful brilliance of editor Marty Baron.
Baron’s relentless focus has electrified his team into covering important stories with a speed and depth the organisation struggled to attain just a few years ago. Unseating the director of White House security, delivering controversial and difficult stories from Ferguson and peeling back the reporting problems on Rolling Stone’s University of Virginia rape story – that is the kind of energetic reporting that has given the Post a new lease on life. The paper might yet need a matching and aggressive digital strategy – one that reflects smart contemporary journalism rather than generic commercial software applications – but still: it’s progress.
The media world has changed so much that the New Republic, the Washington Post and the New York Times can never be what they once were, no matter who holds the purse strings and no matter who is in charge of editorial. But we do still need institutions that take seriously the mission of informing and debating, of reporting events and exchanging ideas – and we need them to be integrated into the way that people consume and participate in news. To get there, the marriages between owners and editors – between technologists and journalists – need to learn to operate on mutual respect. Putting technology to use for journalism needs not two distinct cultures but a new and unified one.
Anything else would be flagrant and frivolous.