"Looks better on mobile than desktop" this is widespread lately and I hate it. mobile first design but your shit still better look good on a goddamned normal screen
― akm, Sunday, 1 August 2021 17:38 (two years ago) link
If they're not going to do a post on the crepey J** T****tino poem, what is even the purpose of this site
― my Least Favorite Writer (Whiney G. Weingarten), Monday, 9 August 2021 15:29 (two years ago) link
there probably is a post about it, you just can't find it because of the awful shit design
― bon ivermectin (Murgatroid), Monday, 9 August 2021 16:02 (two years ago) link
have to settle for this sorry:
https://digg.com/2021/creepy-jia-tolentino-poem-nicholas-rombes-3am-magazine
― there's too much fucking shit on me (Neanderthal), Monday, 9 August 2021 16:42 (two years ago) link
they made a movie
― "Rocky Top" and "Funky Bitch" are songs I never look forward to (Sufjan Grafton), Monday, 9 August 2021 16:59 (two years ago) link
this dude is a down bad rombes
(tortuous attempt to pun on "bad hombre")
― 《Myst1kOblivi0n》 (jim in vancouver), Monday, 9 August 2021 18:20 (two years ago) link
the header/logo is like the underboob of headers
― maura, Monday, 9 August 2021 22:06 (two years ago) link
The former staff of Deadspin launched @DefectorMedia a year ago. Now it has 40,000 subscribers, no ads, a >$3 million run rate, and 23 employee/owners. “This rules”, says editor in chief @ToLey88. https://t.co/BegJhQ1vrt— Peter Kafka (@pkafka) September 2, 2021
A big test comes next week, when many of those 40k subs decide whether to renew. But Ley is confident many of them will, and says Defector is set for another year at a minimum. We have a detailed convo about running an employee-owned, reader-supported site. Also: “Slack Law.”— Peter Kafka (@pkafka) September 2, 2021
― 𝔠𝔞𝔢𝔨 (caek), Thursday, 2 September 2021 15:10 (two years ago) link
I'll be renewing.
― Ned Raggett, Tuesday, 7 September 2021 19:21 (two years ago) link
Here's more details from their end about it all
https://defector.com/one-year-of-defector/
― Ned Raggett, Tuesday, 7 September 2021 19:22 (two years ago) link
We used about half of that $3.2 million to pay salaries and benefits for Defector’s 23 full-time employees. Another big chunk of money, a little over $500,000, was spent on creating and maintaining what a cool guy with a powerful business mindset would probably call our “tech stack,” but which I will simply call “all the shit that makes the website actually work.” That includes the website itself (lovingly crafted by Alley Interactive), the paywall technology (operated by Pico) that we use to make sure people actually pay up in order to read the site, the newsletter platform (Mailchimp) that we use to deliver a daily newsletter to Pal-level subscribers, and the company (Stripe) that processes all of subscriber payments. Taxes, HR, insurance costs, accounting services, and legal fees all added up to another few hundred thousand dollars. Our last big expense was the approximately $100,000 we spent paying freelance writers and other contractors who made art or helped produce video and audio content for us.
did gawker/deadspin revolutionize the "article in the form of a fake interview that imagines a slightly uncooperative/pass-ag interviewer" or did they just run it into the ground
good for them though i'm thinking about subbing finally, probably get more out of it than my athletic sub
― ✖, Tuesday, 7 September 2021 21:35 (two years ago) link
i associate that style with Pass Notes in the Guardian but i imagine they weren’t the firsti.e. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/sep/07/free-blockbuster-the-unlikely-return-of-the-vhs-tape
― Tracer Hand, Tuesday, 7 September 2021 23:00 (two years ago) link
I guess I'm so damaged from working for publically traded companies but I was just sitting there almost stunned like...oh yeah...you can actually just run a business that makes something and makes enough to pay for expenses and all the employees' salaries
― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Tuesday, 7 September 2021 23:23 (two years ago) link
yeah its cool happy for them
― lag∞n, Tuesday, 7 September 2021 23:29 (two years ago) link
And building on ums's point there, here's Defector's annual report as such (as noted, they have no investors to report to). Very interesting read:
https://defector.com/defector-annual-report-year-one/
― Ned Raggett, Monday, 4 October 2021 14:41 (two years ago) link
transparency is rare and welcome
― When Young Sheldon began to rap (forksclovetofu), Monday, 4 October 2021 14:51 (two years ago) link
I mean, if more places actually did this alone:
Target salaries and bonuses are calculated based on the previous quarter’s actual financial results rather than any forecasted results, so we should never be committing to distribute cash that the company would need to retain for other reasons.
― Ned Raggett, Monday, 4 October 2021 15:11 (two years ago) link
happy for them, seems like a good model get a bunch of writers/editors who have followings/a track record of writing stuff people want to read and start a coop with sustainable business practices, much better than substack which is on the silicon valley money train and will inevitably just dump a bunch of people who are relying on them, theres also brick house and discourse blog attempting similar things tho i suspect theyre not doing as well
― lag∞n, Monday, 4 October 2021 15:20 (two years ago) link
for a number of reasons i don't think the deadspin to defector model is really replicable
― J0rdan S., Monday, 4 October 2021 16:22 (two years ago) link
ok
― lag∞n, Monday, 4 October 2021 16:26 (two years ago) link
replication step one: bring in jim spanfeller
― mark s, Monday, 4 October 2021 16:27 (two years ago) link
― J0rdan S., Monday, October 4, 2021 12:22 PM (eight minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink
Piggybacking on this a bit there was a tweet somewhere when the deadspin staff quit en masse that ‘there’s basically a popular newsroom sitting on the curb if any secret lefty millionaire wants to go pick it up.”
I suspect that when substack starts upping their cut a defector2 could happen.
I do wish they posted more but i may be misremembering the number of posts deadspin did per day
― Its big ball chunky time (Jimmy The Mod Awaits The Return Of His Beloved), Monday, 4 October 2021 16:35 (two years ago) link
building up brand equity, a readership, and personal notoriety over 15 years as part of a successful new media organization and then quitting en masse over new ownership meddling to ubiquitous press coverage that helps you rally a subscriber base behind you... there's lots of factors (aside from the work being good) inherent to the success of defector that will be hard for another group of people to replicate. a talented group of ex-substackers could perhaps make something work, but there's a passion for defector as a cause celebre that is unique to their situation. perhaps the andrew sullivan/matt yglesias/bari weiss wing of substack could make it work as there is a similar tho sort of politically reverse anti establishment passion for why ppl read those kinds of writers, but again you're gathering a unique set of ppl who were largely able to use successful media organizations as audience building platforms first. also the fact that the core of defector have worked together for like a decade is largely unheard of in media. they can run the site w/ no internecine drama or warring factions, the co-op runs smoothly & coherently on an organizational level beyond the front facing output, i feel like a substack exodus would have most trouble w/ that part
― J0rdan S., Monday, 4 October 2021 16:50 (two years ago) link
i think you could do —something— doesnt have to be exactly defector with just a bunch of people who are capable of writing things that people read, might not be able to be ad free or whatever, but like other media companies exist theres no real reason they cant be worker owned
― lag∞n, Monday, 4 October 2021 17:09 (two years ago) link
and then of course theres also........podcasts
― lag∞n, Monday, 4 October 2021 17:10 (two years ago) link
building up brand equity, a readership, and personal notoriety over 15 years as part of a successful new media organization and then quitting en masse over new ownership meddling to ubiquitous press coverage that helps you rally a subscriber base behind you... there's lots of factors (aside from the work being good) inherent to the success of defector that will be hard for another group of people to replicate
Although in a different domain, there's by now a well-established analogous pattern of "editorial board of scientific journal published by predatory for-profit publisher resigns en masses and collectively launches a new free open-access journal with identical scope and similar name"
― Guayaquil (eephus!), Monday, 4 October 2021 17:16 (two years ago) link
along the same lines, many of today's freshest young entrepreneurs just start claiming to be the entity itself. for example, "i own gawker.com and i run it now, and i publish the stories. talk to me if you want to know the details", etc, running with it from there
― typo hell #10: i didn't think any of them really off badly (Karl Malone), Monday, 4 October 2021 17:18 (two years ago) link
i am ranger rick
― When Young Sheldon began to rap (forksclovetofu), Monday, 4 October 2021 17:29 (two years ago) link
Yikes
https://www.gawker.com/media/inside-the-turmoil-at-jezebel
― Legalize Suburban Benches (Raymond Cummings), Sunday, 5 December 2021 02:26 (two years ago) link
‘tarpley hitt’ tho
― mookieproof, Sunday, 5 December 2021 07:17 (two years ago) link
so tired of the clowns who are like, what we need is more clicks and fewer dollars spent on writers, so just hire some more 22 year olds to piece together different variations of celebrity names and controversial ideas to create zero-content articles“why aren’t we interviewing rihanna” is killing me, because at some point, you need someone experienced enough to interview the rihannas of the world and a rep that isn’t “we aspire to be clickbait” to get those interviews. you chose the other path?
― mh, Sunday, 5 December 2021 16:01 (two years ago) link
I misread that as “dickbait” and
― Legalize Suburban Benches (Raymond Cummings), Sunday, 5 December 2021 16:42 (two years ago) link
What a shitshow.
Lol also if you scroll down to the second-next article after that, by the same writer, it's an article about Nellie Bowles but the tagline is "bowels". Fair play.
― recovering internet addict/shitposter (viborg), Sunday, 5 December 2021 18:31 (two years ago) link
xxxxp just reading some articles when that tarpley… hitt?
― mh, Sunday, 5 December 2021 18:34 (two years ago) link
lmao they let Luke Winkie write for them, that about sums up Gawker 2.0
― Murgatroid, Tuesday, 7 December 2021 20:37 (two years ago) link
tarpley hittpiece
https://www.gawker.com/money/a-very-weird-interview-with-robert-f-kennedy-jr
― licorice in the front, pizza in the rear (Whiney G. Weingarten), Wednesday, 8 December 2021 19:09 (two years ago) link
You have a section in this first chunk —
By the way do you consider yourself a journalist or just a pharmaceutical rep? Because that's what you sound like. You don't sound like a journalist. You sound like you're an apologist for the pharmaceutical industry, and for the government agencies that are aligned with them.
Yeah I put that on my business cards. So you have a section in the book called "Final Solution: Vaccines or Bust."
Excuse me?
You have a section — a sub header — in the book called "Final Solution: Vaccines or Bust."
Yeah.
That's a pretty pointed choice of words. Did you mean to invoke the Holocaust?
It says what it says.
Can you elaborate?
― Chappies banging dustbin lids together (President Keyes), Wednesday, 8 December 2021 19:19 (two years ago) link
How old are you, Tarleton?
― Heez, Wednesday, 8 December 2021 19:30 (two years ago) link
Larry David introduced RFKJR to his wife Cheryl Hines
― kurt schwitterz, Wednesday, 8 December 2021 19:44 (two years ago) link
i must have missed that episode
― When Young Sheldon began to rap (forksclovetofu), Wednesday, 8 December 2021 20:09 (two years ago) link
can’t believe the Q people are doing arcane rituals to summon a Kennedy when this guy is right there
― mh, Wednesday, 8 December 2021 22:52 (two years ago) link
can’t believe the Q people are doing arcane rituals to summon a Kennedy when, after all, it was you and me
― bobo honkin' slobo babe (sic), Thursday, 9 December 2021 00:01 (two years ago) link
not actualy a gawker project but the unfolding ian urbina debacle* maybe belongs on this thread**, if only for the way everything is flailingly unravelling for him
*(former NYT writer uses clout to harvest music contribitions for promotional projects surrounding his (seemingly solid and genuine) investigative journalism, racking up the largest number of composition co-credits in spotify history as a consequence, despite not composing a note himself: it's extremely unclear what money has been generated from this or where it's all going)
**(ok seems it's already linked on the youtubers whomst thread but maybe i wanna reboot it here, venmo me cash if you disagree)
― mark s, Thursday, 9 December 2021 10:47 (two years ago) link
hmm I don’t think it belongs here either
― mh, Thursday, 9 December 2021 18:44 (two years ago) link
wheres my cash
― mark s, Thursday, 9 December 2021 18:49 (two years ago) link
what’s your venmo address
― mh, Thursday, 9 December 2021 18:53 (two years ago) link
Oh so this book is what Garrison is referring to then
https://grrrgraphics.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/the_real_anthony_fauci-1536x1091.jpg
― Glower, Disruption & Pies (kingfish), Wednesday, 29 December 2021 04:41 (two years ago) link
kinda digging those lines to the left and right of the book. ben is learning to abstract the immense tension in his anus
― Karl Malone, Wednesday, 29 December 2021 04:46 (two years ago) link