Superman Was a Reporter. Now He Owns the Newspaper.

Clark Kent's Got His Work Cut Out for Him


Everyone has an opinion about Jeff Bezos’s purchase of The Washington Post. James Fallows has a lovely piece about why the moment is significant for journalism; Kara Swisher writes about what the Post didn't see coming and offers Bezos some excellent advice; and (on our own site) Bill Taylor and Justin Fox explore new leadership and investment models related to the acquisition. But one of the more interesting angles is one from Slate's Farhad Manjoo, who calls out a line in Bezos's letter to the staff: "I won’t be leading the Washington Post day-to-day." If anything, Manjoo argues, leading day-to-day is what Bezos should be prioritizing. Sure, a potential injection of cash is a huge boon. But what the publication really needs is the entrepreneur's ideas and presence, particularly given what he's really good at: "finding new ways to sell old things." He has three signature traits that feed this ability: He's "relentlessly focused on pleasing customers," "uncommonly patient," and "fascinated by novel business models." The latter, Manjoo stresses, is key, because journalism is at a point where figuring out a new way to construct a pay wall isn't good enough anymore. It needs a new business model that also allows it maintain its integrity.

No Hierarchy, No Management, No Nothing

How Medium is Building a New Kind of Company with No Managers First Round Capital

Medium isn't merely a digital publishing platform; it's also a fierce adopter of Holacracy, a style of management that is entirely management-free. Jason Stirman, one of Medium's founders, discusses its attributes in this meandering First Round Capital article. To start, he says, he never liked seeing people as resources you have to draw value out of. "When I think about resources, I think like natural gas or coal mines," he explains. "Thinking about a person's life that way just seemed really dehumanizing." So he started talking to people about their lives, not their work. Then he embarked on the motivational approach known as SCARF — status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness, fairness. To get a passionate workforce, he says, you have to identify which of these factors is most important for each employee. There's much more in this article, from how the Medium team built its strategy from the ground up to how it established key management tenets that revolve around what the company needs to accomplish in order to serve its core purpose. So does it work? Stirman says yes. But, of course, there's also this charming reaction.

"I Think I'll Move to Australia"

A Magical Land on the Bottom of the Earth Where You Can Get a Pay Raise Quartz

It's not just Alexander who might have a better go of it down under. Seems workers in Australia aren't just plugging along in the global workforce — they're actually thriving. While things have plateaued recently, the average household income jumped 49% between the mid-90s and today. Compare that to the U.S., where household incomes rose 4.5% over the past 20 years. What's the secret? The country's business model, which is hardly repeatable, is based on "digging stuff out of the ground and selling it to China." And, frankly, that model could cool relatively soon. But fear not, there's something else Australia does well: paying its fast-food employees. In Quartz's sister publication, Jordan Weissmann explores how and why McDonald's pays its employees $14.50 an hour or more. Part of the reason? It costs consumers between 6 and 70 cents extra to buy a Big Mac. So could the U.S. make this work? Maybe. But franchises would have to entirely rethink their profitable business model — and people would have to pay more for those terribly unhealthy and oh so delicious French fries.

You Don't Actually Watch Foreign Films

The Science Behind the Netflix Algorithms That Decide What You’ll Watch Next Wired

"Dark dramas featuring a strong female lead." Yeah, Netflix is pretty good at knowing what I'm going to like. And in this in-depth interview with Carlos Gomez-Uribe, the company's VP of product innovation and personalization algorithms, and Xavier Amatriain, its engineering director, we all get to find out how the cinematic sausage is made. Viewing behavior, for one, is much more important than what people say they like or want. "A lot of people tell us they often watch foreign movies or documentaries. But in practice, that doesn’t happen very much," says Gomez-Uribe. Surprisingly, there are limits to Netflix's algorithms, particularly when it comes to one film Gomez-Uribe enjoyed. "I watched Tell No One, the French thriller, over a year ago. I’ve been trying to find similar movies. The person on the content team who acquired it said it’s the only one like it in the world." And just how does all the tagging of content happen? Smart people do it, says Amatriain. "We have more than 40 people hand-tagging TV shows and movies for us," he explains. Yes, hand-tagging by people with entertainment-industry experience. Computers can't do everything.

To Share or Not to Share?

The Whistle-Blower’s Quandary New York Times

How do you know if one of your employees might blow the whistle on your company? Amidst the brouhaha over Edward Snowden, and regardless of whether you think his decision was the right one, the question of why people out their firm's private business is one that's important for bosses and employees alike (and it's just plain interesting, to boot). A trio of researchers — Adam Waytz from the Kellogg School of Management, along with doctoral candidate James Dungan and Liane Young of Boston College — have been researching why some people are more likely than others to blow the whistle. It turns out that the difference lies in whether someone's moral compass points to loyalty or fairness. People who are apt to blow the whistle lean more heavily toward the latter, while those who believe in loyalty probably won't give away secrets. But emphasizing one value or the other by having study subjects write essays about them can influence a potential whistleblower's behavior. So if you want to create a workplace that favors whistleblowing, your mission statement can emphasize fairness. But keep in mind: Either value can be changed by whatever narrative you apply to it. "Larger loyalty to the greater good" encourages whistleblowing too.

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