
The Intercept cuts back - sodosopa
https://www.cjr.org/business_of_news/layoffs-the-intercept.php
======
kodz4
Glenn Greenwald spends too much time on Twitter railing imho when that time
could gave been spent doing Journalism.

It was the in depth journalism that he originally did that made Snowden
contact him. Not the current 75 tweets a day on everything under the sun.

Ideally journalists need to get off Twitter. It's a waste of their time.
Especially the pointless fact checking of bullshit. I'd rather see and PAY for
one Spotlight story a year than 24x7x365 days of tweeting.

~~~
DyslexicAtheist
The Intercept has become a pretty large organization that goes well beyond the
vision (and personal views) of Greenwald.

GG has no doubt upset a lot of powerful people who want to see him fall
professionally (or even worse). It's not surprising that he has his hands full
on twitter fending off attacks. I don't think GG or his staff are only on
Twitter in order to find scoops and topics for regurgitation (or that twitter
is automatically a problem affecting the magazines output).

The Drone Papers[1] released in 2015 by Jeremy Scahill were an outstanding
piece of writing.

In 2016 they revealed[2] that a AT&T site in NYC hosts a secret NSA
surveillance site

It is probably hard to create such hits on a regular basis especially when
their new content will always be judged on their previous (first) successes

I don't see the quality of their reporting being reduced though, but fwiw they
did expand into a more mainstream political sphere which isn't always about
tech-conspiracies (NSA, Snowden, Drone-papers) and so they have to compete
with other outlets that cover the same stuff. If they have become less edgy
(more "blah") than they used to be maybe less funding will be good for them
and they'll find their roots again.

[1] [https://theintercept.com/drone-papers/](https://theintercept.com/drone-
papers/)

[2] [https://theintercept.com/2016/11/16/the-nsas-spy-hub-in-
new-...](https://theintercept.com/2016/11/16/the-nsas-spy-hub-in-new-york-
hidden-in-plain-sight/)

~~~
Scipio_Afri
I'm a bit confused, if NSA mission is to be able to spy on other counties'
military operations, why wouldn't that include the ability to intercept
communications coming from outside the country or information going out from
suspected spys? What I'm saying is the facility in NYC is not at all
surprising, there are a ton of fiber cables that come in from overseas into
NYC. Anyone with half a brain about internet infrastructure and has ever read
any of the mission directives or legal authorities of NSA will realize exactly
what they're doing there. That is looking at cyber operations/attacks coming
into the country and looking for covert communications from people who are
trying to influence our government for their foreign government's military or
economic benefit.

Also, for what it is worth, NSA is also pretty important in ensuring weapons
proliferation and military equipment movements (which helps indicate possibly
wars, covert actions or invasions) using measurements of various types to
track nuclear, biological and other weapons. That is fairly essential for
upholding and enforcing international laws and treaties.

Finally I'm also confused when people say "domestic" tracking. Basically the
NSA had databases they could look at if given legal authority to do so
(meaning they think someone is a spy and show evidence of that) to see
interactions between a person and other people (who they call, how often,
where their phone is, etc). Apparently it seems now they just have to request
or, like anyone else, buy that data from the telecoms instead of it being in
house.

~~~
DyslexicAtheist
_> Anyone with half a brain about internet infrastructure and has ever read
any of the mission directives or legal authorities of NSA will realize exactly
what they're doing there. _

It's a good thing when long running rumors can be corroborated, so labeling
this as non-info is somewhat unfair. News in Europe of cell towers listening-
in on national parliaments discussion or phones being directly targeted, make
scary headlines outside in Europe or anywhere outside US. This story drove
home the same message to Americans: that it's not just something the NSA does
overseas to _" keep us save"_. The story also made sense since it continued
the established narrative from previously published Snowden leaks in The
Intercept.

 _> NSA is also pretty important in ensuring weapons proliferation and
military equipment movements (which helps indicate possibly wars, covert
actions or invasions) using measurements of various types to track nuclear,
biological and other weapons_

as a non US citizen, this deeply terrifies me (even without the current geo-
policial climate).

edit: reduce waffle

------
addicted
The Intercept lost all credibility when it didn’t even take basic steps to
protect the identity of a confidential source who emailed them internal NSA
documents (Reality Winner). The fact that in this case the documents
contradicted Greenwald’s public position raises the possibility that the
reality was even uglier, with their actions potentially being deliberate.

They have also been accused of having revealed identities by a couple of other
NSA whistleblowers.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Intercept#Exposure_and_a...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Intercept#Exposure_and_arrest_of_a_confidential_source)

~~~
dontbenebby
The article you link to only mentions Ms. Winner. Do you have a citation to
support your claim that multiple sources have been outed?

------
specialist
For $250m, The Intercept was a noble freshman effort.

For comparison, Fox News was run at a massive loss for its first decade. Most
of the other right leaning orgs have patrons.

One needs stomach, fortitude, deep resources, and business acumen to build a
self-sustaining media presence from the ground up.

Alternately, use the seed capital to start an endowment, keep the effort
modest.

------
throw2016
There has been zero consequences from the entire set of revelations. What is
the incentive to continue to do investigate journalism as great risk to one
self when there are no results?

What Snowden seems to have inadvertently revealed is a culture that is a lot
more interested in posturing around these issues than the issues themselves.
And its those breaking the illusion be it Snowden, Manning or Assange who will
face the music while civil society looks the other way.

~~~
lern_too_spel
Zero consequences? There was one illegal program (phone metadata collection)
in the revelations. It was shut down. The revelations showed that the NSA had
in the past extracted email metadata from email companies from international
cables. The email companies have since encrypted their cross-datacenter
internal traffic. Snowden disclosed many Chinese targets to the PRC. The PRC
has presumably secured them.

~~~
throw2016
If you think Snowden leaks was about 'one illegal program' you are seriously
misinformed and have a lot of catching up to do. These are large scale and
illegal mass surveillance programs. [1][2][3][4][5]. More can be found here.
[6]

No one has been held accountable for these illegal programs. The then head of
NSA James Clapper brazenly lied to Congress and has still not being held
accountable. [7]. On the contrary there is a grand jury out to get Assange,
Manning is back in jail and Snowden is being hounded and in exile. No good
deed goes unpunished.

China had nothing to do with the Snowden leaks or any of these secret mass
surveillance programs as you will discover. Happy reading!

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_(surveillance_program)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_\(surveillance_program\))

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XKeyscore](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XKeyscore)

[3]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempora](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempora)

[4]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairview_(surveillance_program...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairview_\(surveillance_program\))

[5][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boundless_Informant](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boundless_Informant)

[6]
[https://theintercept.com/search/?s=snowden](https://theintercept.com/search/?s=snowden)

[7] [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/19/republicans-
co...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/19/republicans-consequences-
james-clapper-testimony)

------
jessaustin
I'm always amazed by comment threads at TI. So much vitriol! At least they are
hidden by default. We are told that lively comment sections increase
engagement, but I wonder if that's really the case for TI. ISTM they should
have just set up something on Reddit and not had any comments on the main
site. E.g. "reddit/r/theintercept/russiarussiarussia" would be irredeemable,
but only those who are interested would be exposed to it.

------
danso
It is interesting to see how The Intercept/First Look has evolved, both as a
news organization and a non-profit, speaking as someone who has also worked at
a billionaire-founded nonprofit news org [0]. Both orgs have a focus on
accountability journalism, and PP, like TI, drew criticism for its seemingly
high salaries (for the non-profit world). I think undoubtedly TI had
significantly more attention/awareness/pageviews than PP, when comparing the
first few years; I wouldn't be surprised if Greenwald has more Twitter
followers than the entire PP staff combined. Beyond that, I don't know how
directly comparable the two orgs are, because the state of online-first
journalism in 2008 was so much different than it was 2014, when TI launched.

That said, one main difference might be ProPublica having more a general plan
for self-sufficiency through philanthropy. The Sandler Foundation promised
$10M for the first 3 years, and to provide support afterwards -- their share
would shrink as contributions from other donors came in (don't remember if
there was a solid plan if PP failed to attract significant donors after the
first 3 years). PP's early investigations [1] were relatively niche topics (at
least at the time, and most certainly compared to anything Trump-related
today). But the drive to have "impact" \-- awards, collaboration with other
news orgs, spurring legislative action -- was ostensibly attractive to
philanthropic foundations looking to donate. It's worth noting that PP has for
awhile dedicated fundraising staff -- $1M in fundraising expenses according to
its 2017 990; I don't see First Look listing any fundraising expenses in its
990s so I don't know if they'll start going that route or plan to find revenue
from other sources.

0: [https://www.propublica.org/article/propublica-10th-
anniversa...](https://www.propublica.org/article/propublica-10th-anniversary-
welcome-to-our-second-decade)

1:
[https://propublica.s3.amazonaws.com/assets/about/PP_2010_ann...](https://propublica.s3.amazonaws.com/assets/about/PP_2010_annualrep_forWEB.pdf)

------
gnicholas
The article didn’t dive into it much, but if The Intercept were declassified
as a foundation, the deductibility of Pierre Omidyar’s donations would be
capped based on his AGI.

------
astazangasta
Why don't they fire Mahdi Hasan, James Risen and everyone else who was only
hired to shill for the establishment?

------
influx
There’s only so many NSA PowerPoint you can publish from Snowden before people
become bored.

~~~
fwsgonzo
Very reductive view of the last bastion of investigative journalism

~~~
exo762
OCCRP?

~~~
sodosopa
Shhh. Apparently people don't like to hear about an ethical group of
investigative journalists. They only want to focus on the ones tied to
Assange.

------
closeparen
It's hard to care too much about the publication that hosts Sam "Bring Back
Bullying" Biddle [0] and his reporting on technology and the people involved
in it through a lens of deep personal contempt. Funding a _reporter_ (he is
their tech reporter, not an opinion columnist) to grind an axe about his own
hatreds and social status anxieties is not a recipe for truthful engagement
with real-world complexity.

[0]
[https://archives.cjr.org/the_kicker/gawker_bullying.php](https://archives.cjr.org/the_kicker/gawker_bullying.php)

~~~
bdefore
Making an ad hominem attack on one reporter who said something sarcy and
twitterlike on Twitter (not in an article) five years ago, while employed at a
different company, should hardly determine whether you care about The
Intercept. His output for them is here if you care to identify how is 'hatred
and social anxiety' is affecting his work:
[https://theintercept.com/staff/sambiddle/](https://theintercept.com/staff/sambiddle/)

~~~
reitzensteinm
Sarcy and Twitterlike isn't some kind of a defense. People that are assholes
on Twitter are in fact assholes.

~~~
jessaustin
We're all assholes to some extent, but Twitter accentuates that aspect of many
personalities. It seems fine-tuned to generate heat with no light. Many people
have withdrawn from public life entirely because Twitter could never be arsed
to implement decent blocking mechanisms.

------
Theodores
That is quite fascinating. Billionaire pays millionaire rock star journalist
and calls it charity. I wondered why it was that I never find anything
meaningful in The Intercept.

I prefer the journalism that is more citizen journalism, a guy with a
Wordpress blog and time to spend in front of a keyboard with maybe 50 people
paying $2 a month on Patreon.

The joke of content is the price of it, how much does it cost to keep the
lights on really? Does it have to cost thousands for an article? I can
understand this if you are writing a research paper on difficult science, but
working out what happens in the world for real, can that only be done by
people paid telephone number salaries?

~~~
blfr
_how much does it cost to keep the lights on really?_

Depends. Would you like original reporting based on reporters actually going
somewhere and investigating, and not just reviewing documents in the evenings?
Would you like them to have health insurance and a retirement plan?

Should the publication be edited and fact-checked? Should their website be
capable of supporting more immersive style than simple blog posts: videos,
visualizations, timelines, graphs? Should they host independently or remain at
the mercy of censors at YouTube?

Would it only cover one city? One country? A big one like the US or an
organization like the EU? The whole world?

The cost can easily range from $20 a month to $20 million a month.

