salon vs. slate vs. atlantic

the democratization of meme design has destroyed graphic design, designers deserve to be paid

stop pretending that capitalism works and move to the renaissance artist/patron model

patrons expect a lot for their money. if you were a painter, they could wallow in the exclusive privilege of hanging your stuff on their walls and the rabble never getting to see it. as a writer the only things you can deliver to a patron are groveling praise and a thimbleful of prestige. writers never could wring much out of the patronage model.

I ride for big government liberalism, socialists were never nice people

― lag∞n, Sunday, March 10, 2013 2:04 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah but nice liberals in power just let other not nice people become powerful or ascribe a not nice outcome to some impersonal mechanism. same effect might as well cut to the chase imo

at least u can satisfyingly locate target of blame

~exactly~

the problem with tnc's post is he's a commentator, basically. he gets paid to read a whole bunch of things and then distill them down. and when he runs dry of important things he can blog other sorts of things, because he's also building a community in the comments section and he can jump in and moderate their discussions, etc. And when he writes for somewhere else, he's also basically extending what he does -- blogging and commentary. Thayer does reportage. it's a different gig. posts/articles individually take more time and research (closer to tnc's actual print articles as opposed to blogs). it's one thing to _blog_ for free on occasion to get exposure, or knock out opinion pieces, but it's another to actually _report_ for that purpose. especially since tnc is a name draw in a way that thayer and almost everyone else won't be and don't intend to be. it's pretty clear he's not intending to build some _personal_ brand, but instead his "brand" is that editors know him and give him paid work to do in-depth reporting in the places he covers.

so if you're doing what tnc does, his advice isn't bad. but that's not the only thing to do or be.

'the Atlantic has more full-time employees than ever' is a disingenuous line of reasoning cause the atlantic made one of the single most successful print-to-digital transitions and is thus one of the least representative old school media properties.

tip for nate Thayer: write more abt gender essentialism

'what do you mean there are no full-time jobs, cracked.com is hiring 5 new editors' xp

nate I want to point out gawker is hiring & nick Denton wants to give u money right now

it seems p obvs its not plagiarism, especially since he personally brought up the problem of n korea losing some of his attribution links in the editing process before any of this broke

― lag∞n, Sunday, March 10, 2013 5:08 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the CJR article that attempted to exonerate Thayer admitted that the number Thayer gave them for one of the disputed sources doesn't work -- "I was not able to contact Gene Schmiel — Thayer gave me a wrong number. I’ve asked, several times, for the correct one"-- which is all very Stephen Glass.

that's still kinda a side issue, like this blew up because 'is asking professionals to work for free' is an issue that hits close to home for a lot of people not cause people have strong opinions on thayer and his work

duns did reach gene schmiel and confirm that thayer talked to him. the issue was that schmiel didn't feel authorized to give new quotes and so said to thayer that he could quote what he had previously said. thayer did so, treating it as though schmiel had said that stuff again. duns thinks that this is a dirty lie and he could only have quoted the fact that schmiel had said this stuff prior. i'm not keen on thayer's approach, but duns' approach leaves out that thayer actually did the legwork of contacting schmiel and getting quotes, only to be given old ones.

regardless its a grey area and not thayer sits on a throne of lies/

remembering these lagoon posts for when the ilx revolution comes

― k3vin k., Sunday, March 10, 2013 6:00 PM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lagoon: 12th against the wall

i suppose he like THE MODS too

'the Atlantic has more full-time employees than ever' is a disingenuous line of reasoning cause the atlantic made one of the single most successful print-to-digital transitions and is thus one of the least representative old school media properties.

― iatee, Sunday, March 10, 2013 2:58 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i would say this is a entirely valid line of reasoning if you are defending the atlantic's policies...???

well the atlantic is a successful digital media property and the digital age has been what has been killing paid journalism. so the new jobs they have are still kinda replacing what would have been even more jobs at even more institutions in a previous era.

like it's not about the atlantic, it's about the state of the industry

I mean, they're also a successful digital property in that they churn out a bunch of blog posts designed to pull in reader eyes, but I'm not sure that content is anywhere near as valuable as print articles. Then again, the writers are probably paid even less than that marginal value.

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/03/i-didnt-think-about-being-ripped-off-i-thought-about-whipping-ass/273937/#

tnc has some twisted logic here

What I am asking you to do is to avoid an appeal to a more noble past. I lived there. It wasn't noble. It was fucked up. Like right now is fucked up. When you ask me to show solidarity with writers who aren't being paid, you should also ask yourself what solidarity white magazine writers have shown over the years with struggling black writers who could not break in. You are appalled that Nate Thayer was once offered $125,000 to write for The Atlantic, and was then offered nothing. Fair enough. Are you equally appalled that there were virtually no black writers who could have gotten the same deal?

like you can appeal to certain parts of the past - such as 'there was a middle class in america' - without believing that it was better in every single way for every single human being. nobody's mourning white privilege, they're mourning the privilege of getting paid for a certain form of labor, something that affects and will continue to affect, ya know, black bloggers too.

i really doubt opportunities for black writers have blossomed that freaking much in the last ten years. the real heyday for a more integrated world of journalism (to the extent there was ever even the beginnings of one) was iirc the 70s. i'm really taken aback by how offbase tnc is here.

http://www.nabj.org/news/88558/

yeah I mean his examples of today's progress is like..these 3 people have jobs now

i don't think he's saying that opportunities for black writers have exactly blossomed in the last ten years, he's just saying that those opportunities didnt exist back then and if they dont exist now because of the decline of the middle class, well thats not that different than the way it was back then either

opportunities did exist back then, maybe not the opportunity to be the token dude at the atlantic

but in terms of getting paid enough money to pay your rent for writing, more opportunities, across the board

And now everyone got to fight. Some of the writers I most admire -- Jamelle Bouie, Adam Serwer, Gene Demby -- advanced themselves, in part, by writing for free in the form of blogging. These people are warriors. And fifteen years ago -- under the system that is so lustily praised -- they would not have existed.

like he is implying that the current system is more meritocratic and we shouldn't forget that, but a. I mean how much is it really and b. again it doesn't really matter if there are 3 jobs total we're talking about

I mean this is the mothership he's putting his credibility on the line to defend:

http://www.theatlantic.com/writers/

xp Jeremy Duns is weirdly fixated on nailing people for plagiarism. He's usually right but he comes across as quite vindictive and obsessive.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremy_Duns

yeah that page of writers says it all about opportunity. i get that the atlantic has done great things for him, but its really out of touch to not see what's happening everywhere else.

Yes, they were commentators, not shoe-leather reporters: "reporting" seems to have talismanic effect over the consciousness

I wish it did

Never looked at the masthead, but Kasia Cieplak-Mayr von Baldegg would be an awesome Bond villain name.

Or Ivy League smut peddler!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4X30fcMb5FA

ahahah

wow that list of 'contributors' is depressing

I'm not gonna actually go research this but it doesn't seem inconceivable that there was at least 1 minority working at the atlantic 20 years ago

That would make a great piece. Could you look into it and get me 1500 words by Monday? I can't promise payment, but a lot of people read ILX.

Before llx it was hard to break into the world of message boards

"reporting"

I'm so sick of 'capitalism, man'

― lag∞n, Sunday, March 10, 2013 5:58 PM (1 week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ftr you know my neoliberalism gum tweet was a joke right, i have been thinking about this for 1 week

hoos added to the list

otw

I liked this reaction to the whole payment kerfuffle: http://lhote.blogspot.com/2013/03/admiring-shade-on-somebody-elses-deck.html

I wonder what unpromoted or underpromoted publications well-read journalists write for today. You know, to give aspiring publications a leg up.

Unpaid, I mean

so i was on salon the other day and got this great set of recommendations:

http://i.imgur.com/5AC7567.png

I liked this reaction to the whole payment kerfuffle: http://lhote.blogspot.com/2013/03/admiring-shade-on-somebody-elses-deck.html

― maura, Tuesday, March 19, 2013 12:02 AM (10 hours ago) Bookmark

yeah. i mean, what we should all be mad about, if anything, is the slow inevitable crumbling of western society as we know it. :)))))))))))))))))))

:D

might as well post this here too, because fuck the atlantic:
http://natethayer.wordpress.com/2013/03/04/a-day-in-the-life-of-a-freelance-journalist-2013/

http://natethayer.wordpress.com/2013/03/04/a-day-in-the-life-of-a-freelance-journalist-2013/

― iatee, Monday, March 4, 2013 11:05 PM (1 month ago)

oh durr. someone just posted it to my feed today. oh well.