Intercept Intercepted?
March 28, 2019
While it is an old swan song, journalism continues to take a big hit when it comes to the Internet. The Columbia Journalism Review shares how The Intercept recently took a big hit in, “The Intercept, A Billionaire Funded Public Charity, Cuts Back.” First Look Media is a digital media company founded by a tech billionaire Pierre Omidyar and it owns the Intercept, a public charity journalism Web site that solicits donations from its readers to support “fearless, independent journalism.”
The Intercept’s co-founder Laura Poitras was “surprised” when she heard that 4% of her research team had to be downsized. The employee cuts may be perceived as out of step with how a public service is supposed to work. But reader support is not enough to keep it going. Omidyar was the biggest backer for First Look Media and he pumped his own money into the service, relying on his stocks from PayPal and eBay. Maybe tax concerns are an issue.
Omidyar started his digital journalism company in 2013 hoping to create a beacon for old-fashioned journalism in the industry’s changing face. It went well in the beginning, but it did not take long for his company to be reporting on the wrong type of content. Journalists were unhappy with the company’s culture and many left without looking back.
The salaries are also making people scratch their heads:
“ ‘I was recruited to work with First Look before it was publicly announced,’ Marcy Wheeler, a national security journalist best known for her coverage of Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russia and the Trump campaign, wrote in a January 2018 essay. ‘The initial discussions pertained to a full-time job, with a generous salary. But along the way—after Glenn and Jeremy Scahill had already gotten a number of other people hired and as Pierre Omidyar started hearing from friends that the effort was out of control—the outlet decided that they were going to go in a different direction. They’d have journalists—Glenn and Jeremy counted as that. And they’d have bloggers, who would get paid less.’ That discrepancy, and the indignity of being treated as a less-than-full journalist, led to her resignation.’”
The top brass’s salaries are not going to change, while those lower on the totem pole are squished. Perhaps a library will step forward to house the information. Moscow State University perhaps?
Whitney Grace, March 28, 2019
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