Tag: Jill Abramson

  • The acceleration of journalism

    I’d tended to think of the acceleration of journalism as being a matter of fewer staff producing more copy. But this passage from Jill Abramson’s Merchants of Truth suggests the changing demands of editing are a factor as well. From pg 416: Before she left for ProPublica, Marilyn Thompson, the investigative reporter and proponent of […]

  • The first and second wave of viral publishers

    From Jill Abramson’s Merchants of Truth pg 281 While the new-media pioneers at BuzzFeed and Upworthy produced LOLs and cultivated trumped-up umbrage over the killing of poor Cecil, a second guard of new-media publishers set out to capture the loyalty of another psychographic swath of America whose disaffection far surpassed mere boredom. The new wave […]

  • Vice’s ‘non-traditional’ working environment

    From Jill Abramson’s Merchants of Truth pg 348: One abiding feature was the draconian nondisclosure and nontraditional workplace agreements staffers were required to sign before joining the company, 7 which demanded, “Individuals employed by Vice must be conscious of Vice’s non-traditional environment and comfortable with exposure to and participating in situations that may present themselves […]

  • The gamification of virality and the pleasures it brings

    The gamification of virality and the pleasures it brings

    A few creepy extracts from Jill Abramson’s Merchants of Truth about the office culture at BuzzFeed. The pursuit of virality has been gamified, with these ostentatiously fun undertakings matched by an underlying threat that those who can’t reach these standards won’t survive at the company in the longer term. In light of this we should […]

  • Staying small in order to grow

    Staying small in order to grow

    I thought this was an interesting extract from Jill Abramson’s Merchants of Truth about the rise of Vice. Limiting their circulation was a deliberate strategy to facilitate its expansion in the longer term, enabling them to side step some of the pressures they would have been subject to if they had dived headfirst into growth. […]