
The Pierre Omidyar Insurgency - samclemens
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/10/pierre-omidyar-first-look-media.html
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mwsherman
I come away from this thinking that Omidyar doesn’t have any particular
expertise or insight about running a journalism startup. He seems like a
dilletante, trying to improve the world perhaps, but mostly trying to live an
interesting life. Which is fine but not a recipe for success.

He’d be more effective either as a foundation giving grants to worthy
journalists, or as a VC of same.

~~~
esfandia
> I come away from this thinking that Omidyar doesn’t have any particular
> expertise or insight about running a journalism startup. > He seems like a
> dilletante, trying to improve the world perhaps, but mostly trying to live
> an interesting life. Which is fine but not a recipe for success.

That's for sure the impression that the article wants us to have. I certainly
don't know Omidyar, but I want to read a more neutral article (or at least
other viewpoints, including Omidyar's himself) about him to form a clearer
opinion.

~~~
throwaway20148
That the top level editorial staff almost went into revolt over what they
perceived to be "the lack of clear budgets and repeated and arbitrary
restrictions on hiring" is pretty damning. That said, this article reads like
a somewhat routine profile that messily switches course mid-stream in reaction
to events on the ground.

I'm interested in hearing more about this:

> There was an East Coast–West Coast feud, a divide between the journalists
> and the technologists. Omidyar’s loyalists out in California and Hawaii
> grumbled as Greenwald traveled the world, promoting a book, picking up
> awards, and speaking out of turn.

The NYT Innovation report makes the case that editorial and technology/design
working closely is important not just for the primary products of the
business, but for fostering trust and opening up communication between the
business department and the newsroom. Seems like that'd be difficult if the
company is physically separated by the whole United States (and half the
Pacific in some cases).

[http://www.niemanlab.org/2014/05/the-leaked-new-york-
times-i...](http://www.niemanlab.org/2014/05/the-leaked-new-york-times-
innovation-report-is-one-of-the-key-documents-of-this-media-age/)

------
aaronbrethorst
Original source regarding the Matt Taibbi debacle:
[https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/10/30/inside-
story-m...](https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/10/30/inside-story-matt-
taibbis-departure-first-look-media/)

kinda-sorta-disclosure: it includes a quote from a high school friend of mine,
who also happens to be the executive editor of Racket:

    
    
        We were successfully working to address those
        issues when First Look once again stepped in
        to fuck things up. I regret that the world
        won’t get a chance to see Matt Taibbi’s Racket.

~~~
danso
This being Hacker News...I'm really interested in hearing what people have to
say about RASCI, something I had never heard about until the parent comment's
link:

> _Taibbi and other journalists who came to First Look believed they were
> joining a free-wheeling, autonomous, and unstructured institution. What they
> found instead was a confounding array of rules, structures, and systems
> imposed by Omidyar and other First Look managers on matters both
> trivial—which computer program to use to internally communicate, mandatory
> regular company-wide meetings, mandated use of a “responsibility assignment
> matrix” called a “RASCI,” popular in business-school circles for managing
> projects—as well as more substantive issues._

That doesn't sound much fun for managing business/IT projects, I can imagine
journalists just hating it.

~~~
wavefunction
The Wikipedia entry doesn't do RASCI any favors in promoting it as any sort of
useful artifact from what I can tell.

It seems most like a "blame matrix."

~~~
x0x0
it's not entirely worthless

if, after a meeting, you circulate a quick set of (1) what did we agree on,
(2) who is the person responsible for each of (1), (3) who requires signoff on
various (1) I find it quite useful. It's good to have it written down to serve
as a consensus from the meeting to reduce miscommunication about who has what
commitments and who must sign off.

Lots of orgs use stuff like this: github has a Primarily Responsible Person,
apple has something similar.

That said, I've never had to draw out a formal rasci chart, and this can
easily be taken too far. In a team of maybe 1-10 people this level of
formality is way overkill.

------
stevengg
[http://pando.com/2014/10/28/taibbi-takes-time-out-from-
first...](http://pando.com/2014/10/28/taibbi-takes-time-out-from-first-look-
after-disagreements-can-i-publish-our-emails-now-matt/)

~~~
dil8
Thanks for this.

I already had my suspicions about Firstlook Media, and this just reiterates
them.

Secondly, I am not too impressed with the way Greenwald has been guarding the
leaks and his organisation is the sole benefactor of their contents as he
trickles them selectively to the public. The documents should be accessible to
all. Having said that I am an admirer of his work, but would love to have seen
the documents given to Wikileaks

~~~
wavefunction
Greenwald is not the only journalist with access to the documents: this has
been explained and mentioned several times. Several news organizations had
access to the cache including The Guardian, New York Times, Washington Post
and others. The idea was that the professional journalists would be better at
figuring out what was both news-worthy and ethical to release. There are
already people claiming Snowden personally gave an autographed copy to Putin
and then we have folks on the other side like you who are misinformed and .
Obviously, taking people like you and the people acting like Snowden forwarded
everything to the FSB/Chi-Coms into consideration, there is absolutely nothing
anyone can do to release this material in a fashion that some uninformed
person won't complain about.

Wikileaks have claimed that they have Russian diplomatic cables just as
explosive as the "Pentagon Cables" but it's been years without any release
which leads me to think that they either: a) don't have them and are lying b)
have them and are not releasing them for some political reason which would be
even worse. I wouldn't trust them at all to release any important information
in a thoughtful manner.

~~~
dil8
I guess I phrased my comment incorrectly. I am aware that other organization
have the documents, but my problems is questioning journalist/news
organizations as the gate keepers to what the public should know/should not
know.

>"The idea was that the professional journalists would be better at figuring
out what was both news-worthy and ethical to release"

I completely disagree with this.

Can you provide some a source for the claims about wikileaks?

