Tuesday, March 03, 2015

No One Could Have Predicted...


File under: Put not your faith in Internet Princes (from HuffPo):
...
[Ken] Silverstein described a work environment at First Look that was "anything but functional," with a flawed editing system and “epic managerial incompetence.” Amid the slew of firings, hirings, promotions and demotions and with little guidance or support from management, Silverstein said employees felt "lost."
He writes:
What I observed was that the Omidyar-led management could not complete the simplest tasks—approving budgets or hires—without months of internal debate and apparent anguish. The Intercept didn’t even begin publishing until last February. (We weren’t supposed to call it “Glenn Greenwald’s The Intercept” because a lot of other people worked there, including me for a bit, but everyone knew Glenn was the anchor of the project.) After a pause ordered by editor in chief John Cook to address its internal dysfunction, the site relaunched in July with a good, complicated story about how the NSA and the FBI had been monitoring a few Muslim-Americans in the United States. Yet I saw how difficult the story was to birth for its chief editor, John Cook, and he didn’t end up lasting long—before quitting and returning to Gawker.
Silverstein called the demise of Taibbi's Racket the "end of my journalism dream." It was like watching Omidyar’s team "kill their second baby," he writes -- the company invested substantial money and resources only to fire Racket's entire staff two days before Thanksgiving. 
"The fact that First Look hired so many talented people to create Racket, spent more than a million dollars on it, and in the end fired everyone before Racket ever published a single story must stand as one of the greatest squanderings of money and leadership ineptitude in modern journalism," he wrote.
...
This has all been moved miles above above my pay grade, but even a punk ass blogger like me can manage to both feel bad that so much was spent on so little, and deeply amused that Team Radical Transparency has apparently taken a vow of corporate silence regarding the Big Story of the shitstorm of egos and incompetence that is raging through their very own, very expensive back yard.

10 comments:

Rob said...

But at least Greenwald has an Oscar...which is nice.

Chan Kobun said...

RAAGH OBSESSED NSA AUTHORITARIAN TRIBALIST OBOMBERBOT STOOGE DRONEGLASS

There, quota filled. Now the usual slew of drooling shit-flingers can turn their attentions back to their navel lint and other such heady topics.

Lawrence said...

These money people, you can't give them their money before they put in a couple of honest years in a nametag and hair net job. No humility. Work. There is nothing so degrading, so humiliating as work. Except being unemployed. Work is what you do so you and your family have food and shelter. And motherfuckers like Mitt Romney have never worked. Nor will they. George W fucking Bush never did a day's work in his life. He sweated his mile run time. He cleared brush at his fake ranch. He was (sometimes) a busy man engaged in strenuous pursuits. And he never worked. Because it never mattered. Work is getting out of bed when you don't feel like it and saying "Yes sir" to shitheads you don't respect. Among other things.
Fuck authority. Not just the cops, or whatever you imagine when I say that, but the entire concept. What is it good for? What are you afraid of if it went away?

Mike Lumish said...

"Glenn was the anchor of the project."

Well, golly, there's your problem right there. Greenwald has a demonstrated talent for keepin an eye on the main chance and taking care of number one, which is utterly irrelevant to actually running a major operation. Levels of incompetence and the rising thereto etc etc.

As an aside, Omidyar can drop a million dollars on a whim like I might drop a hundred dollars on skanky whores and Thunderbird for a lost weekend. Which, if you think about it, is pretty much what happened on the Intercept.

Fritz Strand said...

Most intellectual institutions are lead by people of staggering ability or develop traditions that foster tyranny (in my humble opinion).

Ivory Bill Woodpecker said...

Thank you, Lawrence. That is the best definition of "work" I have ever read.

Fuuko Ibuki thanks you, too.

Compound F said...

you stanky people. srsly, what is yer forking beef with Greenwald, Poitras, and their handling of the Snowden revelations? And please do not refer to greenwald's ego, for I shall knock you into next week's debt deflation.

Ivory Bill Woodpecker said...

@Compound F:

I walked into this movie about halfway through, but I think much of their animus against GG is that they perceive him as a parvenu.

If I understand correctly, GG used to support Darth Cheney's wars, before he saw the folly of those wars and abandoned his former support.

Drifty and company suspect GG, much as the earliest Christians suspected Paul of Tarsus right after his conversion.

Compound F said...

Ivory Bill W,

Thank you for your explication. But if that were true, wouldn't DG have railed against Greenwald on those grounds, just as DG railed against Sullivan's "fifth column" comments? I have not seen evidence of such a similar complaint against Greenwald. Rather, DG's complaints always seem to revolve around Greenwald's character, to which I say, "bleh."

Ivory Bill Woodpecker said...

@CF: Again, it may be the Paul of Tarsus thing. Drifty may see GG as a mere opportunist, which would be the "character" issue.

Also again, I came in late. I don't recall ever hearing of GG until he started bashing the Empire of Capital. I say "Empire of Capital" rather than "American Empire" because Big Money is Palpatine. Uncle Sam is merely Darth Vader.