One narrative people don’t even realize they’re clinging to is that the rich are somehow more informed or intelligent than the rest of us. They aren’t. Oh, some of them have access to information we don’t, but there’s no grand plan on the part of these guys. In fact more often than not the problem is that they are at best incredibly talented in one area, and figure because they managed to do one thing really well (which is usually questionable in of itself, depending on your metric), that automatically translates out into literally everything.
They are the rich dolts. And sooner or later somebody has to stop giving these dolts money just as a matter of common sense.
There’s no better example of this at the moment than digital publishing. This has been a problem for a long time. Mic, for example, raised $60 million and burned through almost all of it with dumb decisions like renting office space it didn’t need.
But now you have the rich dolts. A company called Maven bought Sports Illustrated, and has already managed to run it into the ground. What remains of the Gawker network, already a mess because Nick Denton and Max Read failed a really basic test question on journalism and legal protections, is currently at the mercy of G/O Media, an organization stupid enough to tell a publication that made its bones not sticking to sports, indeed regularly mocks the idea of sticking to sports, to stick to sports.
This is bad enough. But take a good look at the future plans of these supposed geniuses and that’s when things get really bad.
The details are pretty basic: Launch tons of sites, or buy a respected brand, either underpay or don’t pay labor to staff these sites, and defecate out as many posts as possible as quickly as possible. This will generate massive ad revenue, for no money.
Back in the day the polite term for this was “algorithmic journalism,” and I should know, I did a ton of this hack work to pay the rent back when I was a temp. It was writing to corner a keyword by any means necessary, and then sell ads on it.
The problem, of course, is that this model is already dead. The rise and rapid fall of Upworthy is one example, but Google has spent a decade pounding nails in the coffin of this “model,” and any SEO expert or digital writer will tell you writing to the keyword is death. This isn’t even getting into the fact that digital advertising is rapidly sinking as people discover that, oh right, consumers hate ads.
Normally this is where people insist there’s an evil plan to end all media and leave us with one Fourth Estate under Koch or something, but keep in mind everybody involved is going to lose their shirts here. Maven bought SI from Authentic (AKA Juicy Couture) for $45 million, against future royalties (i.e. hoping Boomers still have a thing for Kathy Ireland in a bikini), and that’s a fairly insane business plan in of itself. And digital ads are supposed to support this?
Even the most blatantly evil company doing this, Alden Global Capital, is doing it for incredibly stupid reasons: The belief that newspapers will be this magic cash cow to try and prop up some of its terrible investments. In other words, they’re doing something stupid to try and avoid the consequences of something else stupid they did before.
The long-term impact of this on media is unclear, although what is clear is that non-profit and crowdfunding models will probably be what actually saves news reporting. And I’ve got every confidence news reporting will be saved. Bar anything else, people just like reading the news, and contrary to popular belief, they know quality journalism when they see it.
But that doesn’t stop the short-term damage. The best thing we can do is call the rich dolts what they are. At the very least, you can keep your money away from them.
