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August 8 - August 18, 2019
“There is a risk that one third of the electorate will be isolated in an information loop of its own, where Trump becomes the major source of information about Trump, because independent sources are rejected on principle,” wrote media critic and New York University professor Jay Rosen in April 2018. “That has already happened. An authoritarian system is up and running for a portion of the polity.”
The Huffington Post held itself accountable not to journalistic rules but to readers’ enthusiasm. It did not purport to dictate the terms of the national conversation but rather to reflect it. It aimed not to change hearts and minds but to resonate with them.
The facilities were a far cry from the glassy palace where HuffPo lived, but there was a certain charm to the dilapidation.
As BuzzFeed grew, its understanding of what people liked—and, more to the point, what they liked to share with friends—became increasingly fine-tuned. “We start[ed] to get a sense,” Peretti would later explain, “of where’s the beating heart of the internet.” For most of its existence, the web was hailed as the ultimate information repository, a reservoir that contained and catalogued the sum total of human knowledge. Peretti, by contrast, saw it as the aggregate of human emotion, a living and breathing thing more sentimental than rational.
the Times convinced itself that although the mechanics of the industry were changing, the fact remained that “it wasn’t a story until it was in the Times.” Most Times editors barely noticed when competitors had a scoop, unless it was the Washington Post or the Wall Street Journal. But as the internet became a more adaptable and vital place to search for and consume information, that insularity turned into true myopia.
“I am willing to invest in the future if you can show me the future.”
“People are looking for things to enjoy and to celebrate,” Peretti said.
for Peretti, evangelism was rarely about saving the world. It was most potent when it operated subliminally. The easiest way to pull off this effect was to compose posts that gave readers the illusion that it was for them, personally—or even better, about them. When people encountered what they thought was good press for their personal brand, they publicized it almost without fail.
One of the most effective emotions was one for which there existed no English word: the feeling of having one’s faith in humanity restored.
Tom Punch, another Vice creative officer, suggested the company’s chief commodity could be distilled even further: every single request the company receives from advertisers, he said, “has the word ‘authenticity’ in it.” It may have occurred to them that, like any precious natural resource,
authenticity would inevitably be depleted.
The news cycle was dictated by the speed of Twitter,
order to have the money he needed to launch a good show and to have the loyalty of his staff, Tyrangiel wanted his small kingdom to have a moat, so he banished the previous news chief, Jason Mojica, and most of his original team.
youth and prestige (Vice being youth, HBO the prestige), did not always harmonize. His young correspondents were full of moral outrage, like much of their generation, and Tyrangiel had to push them to make their stories deeper and more nuanced.
Bezos became the Post’s Beta tester. According to Prakash, he liked to go deep into the sausage-making. Even when Prakash and his engineers came up with new product versions that they decided to abandon before taking public, Bezos wanted to be shown the version so he could understand why it had been rejected. At the reborn Post, failure was refreshingly destigmatized.
Nationally, from 2009 to 2015, according to statistics published by the American Society of Newspaper Editors, full-time newspaper jobs plunged from 46,700 to 32,000,
Alice knows exactly how to mix up close reporting and anecdotal detail, and when to go big picture to provide analysis and context.
