The digital-media bubble is bursting. That's hurting a generation of promising young journalists.

["Dave Farber" <farber () gmail com>]

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne () warpspeed com>
> Date: December 5, 2018 8:10:45 JST
> To: Multiple recipients of Dewayne-Net <dewayne-net () warpspeed com>
> Subject: [Dewayne-Net] The digital-media bubble is bursting. That's hurting a generation of promising young 
> journalists.
> Reply-To: dewayne-net () warpspeed com
>
> The digital-media bubble is bursting. That’s hurting a generation of promising young journalists.
> By Margaret Sullivan
> Dec 3 2018
> <https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/the-digital-media-bubble-is-bursting-thats-hurting-a-generation-of-promising-young-journalists/2018/12/03/d7887d30-f6f2-11e8-8c9a-860ce2a8148f_story.html>
>
> About five years ago, I was asked to visit the newsroom at Mic, a digital-media start-up backed by venture capital 
> and focused on news for the millennial audience.
>
> As the public editor of the New York Times, I suppose I was seen as an expert in traditional journalism ethics — 
> especially through the eyes of Mic’s reporters and editors, mostly in their 20s, and many in their first jobs out of 
> school. And because I was active on Twitter and writing a frequent blog, perhaps I looked like I knew how to build a 
> bridge from old-school newspapering to the digital-first present.
>
> I remember how smart, engaged and hopeful the Mic staffers were as we talked, in their Lower Manhattan newsroom, 
> about topics such as conflict of interest, objectivity vs. fairness, and possible career paths.
>
> Could this exciting venture — then only two or three years old — thrive long into the future? Could these young 
> journalists build their lives and careers on it?
>
> In 2013, that seemed possible, despite some flashing danger signs.
>
> But last week, Mic was the latest of its ilk to crash and burn. More than 100 employees were fired, amid word that 
> its staffless shell would be sold to another media company.
>
> And because Mic’s demise happened so suddenly and so mercilessly, it seemed like one of the worst.
>
> “A gutting experience” was how top editor Kerry Lauerman, formerly of The Washington Post, put it. (Along with his 
> boss, Publisher Cory Haik, who also had been a Post executive, he resigned just before the editorial staff was let go 
> last week.)
>
> For former Mic reporter Marie Solis, the gutting experience came last year when Mic decided to emphasize video rather 
> than traditional text stories.
>
> The young Vassar graduate, who now works at Broadly — an offshoot of Vice — told me a few weeks ago in a phone 
> interview that she lost her job with no warning as the company pivoted.
>
> That move to video didn’t pay off, not for Mic or the many other similar media companies that took their cues from 
> all-powerful Facebook. The promises of more traffic — which turned out to be based on false interpretations of data — 
> never came to fruition, and as Heidi Moore wrote in the Columbia Journalism Review, “Publishers must acknowledge the 
> pivot to video has failed.”
>
> Now Mic is being scrapped for parts, as its name and technology are being sold to Bustle for a reported $5 million — 
> a pittance, considering that the company had raised $60 million in venture capital, once boasted 17 million unique 
> visitors and had a (theoretical) valuation of more than $100 million.
>
> “We cannot imagine a move more cynical or perverse than terminating your entire staff, only to cede the ‘brand’ to a 
> new buyer who will presumably pick the scraps from the carcass of a newsroom that we all spent years building,” Mic’s 
> employee union said in a statement last week.
>
> They have every reason to feel sold out and angry.
>
> “When you are a good manager, you bring someone in to do good work, with the understanding that they’ll be taken care 
> of, and will have a future,” said Aram Zucker-Scharff, who writes, teaches and consults about the new economy of 
> journalism. (Also the director of advertising technology at The Post, he made it clear in a phone interview Monday 
> that he is not speaking for our mutual employer.)
>
> “But a lot of venture-capital-based media companies are built with the idea that your fate is to be fired,” he told 
> me, although that reality goes unsaid.
>
> “It’s unethical,” he added. “You’re hiring them to be disposable cogs.”
>
> And, as he wrote in a widely read Twitter thread, “the numbers were never really there. Eventually they were always 
> going to disappear as fraudulent traffic and metrics fell apart.”
>
> What worries him, and me, is the human cost — and the cost to tomorrow’s journalism — when this happens over and over 
> again.
>
> [snip]
>
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> Twitter: https://twitter.com/wa8dzp



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