
Why Pierre Omidyar decided to join forces with Glenn Greenwald - uptown
http://pressthink.org/2013/10/why-pierre-omidyar-decided-to-join-forces-with-glenn-greenwald-for-a-new-venture-in-news/
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kyro
With this government shutdown, the very real possibility of default, the
incompetency of many in government finally reaching and affecting the American
public, the NSA leaks, the company and journalist shakedowns in the name of
security, and the lightning speed at which information of all this can now
reach the literal hands of millions, we're in an incredibly pivotal period in
our society. I fully support Omidyar 150% for wanting to catalyze this change.
Whether he may or may not be going about this the perfect way is irrelevant.

~~~
CrankyPants
There was virtually no possibility of default. It was theater, and the more
people bought into the idea of default, the more it fed into the narrative.

~~~
teleclimber
This comment makes me wonder how much this venture would be effective in
actually producing change.

Thanks to the internet's "filter bubble" we are able to believe whatever we
want to believe.

One man's "ferocious investigative journalism" is another man's theatre.

~~~
CrankyPants
Sorry if I wasn't clear: my comment wasn't intended to be seen as a commentary
on serious journalism, nor was it a commentary on the quality of journalism
practiced by the subjects of the article, etc.

It was a commentary on Americans' perpetual Chicken Little mindset, and the
way that feeds and funds a theatrical press, and the circular nature thereof.
Everything is portrayed as being impending doom incarnate, whether it's by
news outlets, marketers, religious coalitions, irreligious coalitions, etc.

America has over a fifth of the world's economy, the most military might in
history and therefore control of the waterways the world over, the best
breadbasket-and-navigable-rivers combination on earth, and yet every few days
there's some new bogeyman around the corner that will end The Republic in a
fortnight–especially if you change the channel now!–as if the winds aren't
currently about as fair and the seas as following as they could reasonably be.

The Shutdown really didn't threaten any of those things in any practical
terms, nor did the Boston Marathon bomber, nor did Aurora, nor did Anna Nicole
Smith's offspring's paternity or whatever staged shock was programmed for the
latest awards show.

Investigative journalism is wonderful. Enabling the emotionally manipulative
theatrical tactics of any political entity is not investigative journalism;
it's being the press arm of politicians (without even invoicing them for the
help), which many, many news sources-of all stripes–are more than happy to do.
Yet strangely, they continue to be held in esteem, mostly because they've
always been held in esteem. (It gets worse when one's own team is the basis
for most of that esteem.)

If journalists want to change the world for the better through journalism, as
opposed to just maximizing ad rates and helping get their team elected, then
they will only do so if they're more interested in being journalists than they
are in making any particular argument, or seeing any particular outcome.

But how anyone can look at this endlessly breathless coverage of every last
thing that bleeds, blows up, or politicks, and not see how utterly contrived
most of it is, is beyond me.

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CamperBob2

       Omidyar believes that if independent, ferocious, 
       investigative journalism isn’t brought to the attention 
       of general audiences it can never have the effect that 
       actually creates a check on power. Therefore the new 
       entity — they have a name but they’re not releasing it, 
       so I will just call it NewCo — will have to serve the    
       interest of all kinds of news consumers. It cannot be a  
       niche product. It will have to cover sports, business, 
       entertainment, technology: everything that users demand.
    

Can't disagree more with this. The only reason news outlets currently have to
cover all of that stuff is that they're still trying to act like the
newspapers and TV/radio stations they replaced. When you had only one or two
newspapers in town, and only two or three TV channels within range of your
rabbit ears, the news business was necessarily a general one. There is no
reason at all to impose this model on the Web, and there are a lot of reasons
not to.

~~~
abraxasz
I agree with Omidyar here. Not that I'm particularly interested in sports and
entertainment: when I read the paper on line, I go straight to whatever I'm
interested in (often politics, econ, etc..). Nevertheless, I thing one of the
goal of this new venture is to make sure as many people as possible are aware
of what's wrong with political powers. A gross restatement of their objective
would be: make sure the people feeding on Fox News get another source of
information, a reliable one. So they're practicing a foot-in-the-door
technique: provide quality journalism for popular topics, and hope that when
people browse their site, they will be more likely to stumble on important
news they would otherwise have missed.

More generally, I'm very excited and hopeful about this project. It is a truly
innovative experiment in an aging industry, and I hope it succeeds. For the
first time in my life I'm considering subscribing to a newspaper..

~~~
pstuart
I have similar interests but understand the need for fluffy diversions. To a
point.

The biggest problem for me in consuming real news is rage fatigue -- so much
unnecessary stupidity, pain, and greed makes it hard to digest after a while.

------
GuerraEarth
HuffPo is capable of only biased media coverage. The Guardian is hardly a
_guardian_ of anything. The reality is that any sort of journalism, unless
highly competitive and forcibly constrained to be accurate, is going to
degenerate into agenda and propaganda. And only with Edward Snowden-type
whistleblowing will politics be kept at arm's length as regards news
reporting. Does anybody remember the shame of the New York Times after 9/11
and how the paper was a microphone for Washington? The old _Grey Lady_ was for
a time a very willing and anything goes prostitute. Washington said jump, and
the NYTimes somersaulted.

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mcphilip
So essentially a Huffington Post esque scope of coverage to lure the masses
hoping to ultimately redirect their attention to internally produced
ProPublica quality investigative journalism?

~~~
mixmixmix
Pretty much!

------
devx
I think they should consider having it outside of US, or if they think the US
Constitution has a good chance of protecting them, then at least have 2
offices (one in US, and one in Brazil), with redundant data between the two.
In case one gets shut down, the other can still report the news about what
happened.

------
Sagat
I wish I had enough money to be able to have a measurable impact on the world.

~~~
balabaster
You may not think you can have a measurable impact on the world, but you can
be part of the solution, spread the word to the rest of your network that's
not aware of things like this, wake them up to what's going on right under
their noses, influence them toward change. It all starts at home, and that's
free.

Subscribe to companies that have positive ethics, do what you can to extend
their sphere of influence. It doesn't take much to make a difference. As time
goes on and you have the means to be more influential both in terms of your
audience and in terms of your finances use that to further extend the sphere
of influence...

~~~
Sagat
Wise advice, but at the end of the day no one is really happy to make ant
steps when a select few are capable of bending the world to their will like a
cheap straw, for better or for worse.

~~~
balabaster
Yes but if enough people stand up and make a noise, they can change the
world... Just one example, though there are others: It took very few people to
start the drive to abolish slavery, if they'd sat around thinking "what's the
point, I'm just one person, I can't make a difference," where would we be?

I realise that many people like their status quo, with nobody really paying
them any attention. They have a comfortable life, they don't rock the boat too
much, they play by the rules... or at least don't leave any tangible evidence
of not playing by the rules... or bribe the right people to look the other
way. But I think it's every person's responsibility to stand up and vote for
what they believe in. People abstaining from voting and not standing up and
rocking the boat when it needs to be done are part of the problem, not part of
the solution. If people want to effect change, they've got to participate, and
if you don't have enough people participating to challenge the status quo,
then nothing will change, ever.

It is every citizen's responsibility to do what it takes to be informed and
actively make informed decisions that will lead humanity forward.

------
billnguyen
Glad someone is taking this on. The recent threat to investigative journalism
is a real bad indicator to America's future. Hopefully this in conjunction
with Aaron Swartz's will really bring some bite back to journalism.

Now if only they can change that apathetic/ignorant attitude that so many of
us Americans have...

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slg
I am a little disappointed. I was hoping for something revolutionary, but
nothing put forward (at least in this brief description) is anything new. If
this is actually a company and not a charity like the article states, how
exactly are they going to make this thing earn money? It isn't like no one has
tried to create an all encompassing news source or one that has numerous
investigative journalists on staff. Do they just think they are good enough to
succeed with the exact same strategy that others have used and failed?

~~~
kyro
I'd pay for Greenwald-level investigative journalism in the topics that
interest me. Sports fans, finance guys, politicians, etc, take rabid interest
in their respective fields, for the most part. If Omidyar can staff this new
venture with journalists like Greenwald across all topics, I think he'd have a
very, very valuable offering. Think of it like a TMZ for reality.

~~~
balabaster
Me too... and I think it's the responsibility of everyone that has a stake in
free and democratic society to support such a venture, don't you think?

~~~
rustynails
And what's to stop him becoming a citizen Kane like the others? The thing
that's missing for me is the history of behaving with integrity. He's no
Zuckerberg, but he's no patron saint either. eBay is not a beacon of virtue.

Is the idea that having the "right" popular journalist = unbiased reporting? I
struggle to see the masses being convinced - or maybe it's just me.

Just another Citizen Kane.

------
mverwijs
> You start with individual journalists who have their own reputations, deep
> subject matter expertise, clear points of view, an independent and outsider
> spirit, a dedicated online following, and their own way of working.

Interestingly, here in the Netherlands a similar venture was crowd-sourced by
a few investigative reporters and personnel:

[https://decorrespondent.nl/en](https://decorrespondent.nl/en)

------
detcader
Fantastic. (Hopefully it doesn't become a men's club.) Greenwald should bring
in Jillian York, onekade, Falguni Sheth, and all the other fantastic
journalists trailing behind him.

But what of Democracy Now and Al Jazeera? Are they going to be quasi-
competitors in the adversarial journalism game? Greenwald was actually
contacted about possible involvement with Al-Jazeera's US TV station but that
never went through..

~~~
rollo_tommasi
There's no reason to think that Al Jazeera will be a player in the
'adversarial journalism' game. It's a massive media conglomerate just like
NBC, CNN, or FoxNews; at best, watching al-Jazeera will just become a way for
people to brand themselves as 'independent thinkers'.

------
malandrew

        By “support” Omidyar means many things. The first and most 
        important is really good editors. (Omidyar used the phrase 
        “high standards of editing” several times during our 
        talk.)
    

By high standards of editing, I hope that the editors' only focus is pushing
their writers to create better work and that the editors themselves are 100%
shielded from economic pressures and the only consumer they listen to are
readers.

The biggest problem with news today is that the customer is the advertiser and
this customer has the ear of the editors. The news industry needs the
journalistic equivalent of the chinese wall in finance. The news arm should
not have contact with the advertising arm except with the presence of counsel
(i.e. compliance).

At the end of the day, the 5th estate has a serious conflict of interest just
as retail banking and i-banking does, and this conflict of interest likes in
the gulf between advertisers and writers/editors.

------
chris_mahan
I'll sign up for $20/month. Just give me an address where to send the money.

------
ohashi
There is a surprising lack of new details here.

~~~
detcader
Greenwald et al have learned to be sparse when it comes to sharing details.
Risks are often involved -- for example, they might not have registered the
domain name yet. Also it's obvious from the article that this is all in the
brainstorming stages.

~~~
guelo
And yet Greenwald already quit his job. Where is he going to publish now?

------
jasonmcalacanis
I think it's awesome that billionaires are filling in the important gap in
investigative journalism.

Interestingly, Jeff Skoll is also doing great work in the "content to make
society" better category.

Frontline (see NFL concussion doc) and Propublica
([http://www.propublica.org/series/overdose](http://www.propublica.org/series/overdose)
) are doing AWESOME work in this space as well.

If Pierre invests $25m a year they can run a 100 person newsroom ($150k all in
for the top journalists + tech team + sales) for 10 years for the price Bezos
paid for WashPost.

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balabaster
Hoo-fucking-rah! I hope these guys make traction and get where they're hoping
without falling off the rails, I truly do. This was what I hoped for yesterday
when the rumours began circulating.

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presty
> will have to serve the interest of all kinds of news consumers. It cannot be
> a niche product. It will have to cover sports, business, entertainment,
> technology: everything that users demand.

> At the core of Newco will be a different plan for how to build a large news
> organization. It resembles what I called in an earlier post “the personal
> franchise model” in news

Imagine if Kara, Walt & Co join "Newco" when their AllThingsD contract ends...

