Languishing in obscurity is another Melville novel that was savaged when it came out but has received kinder treatment from contemporary critics. It's called Pierre, or the Ambiguities.
Well, there's nothing ambiguous about the bold new journalism initiative of another Pierre, Pierre Omidyar. The eBay founder plans to spend a staggering sum of money, $250 million, on his evolving news start-up. He's already attracting top-tier journalists, including Glenn Greenwald of Edward Snowden saga fame.
Omidyar wants to launch a news organization that is not narrowly focused on, say, investigative reporting, though it will do plenty of that. Instead, he envisions a wide-ranging powerhouse that will cover an array of subjects and attract a broad swath of readers. The idea is to create a mass audience that will magnify the impact of the hard-hitting stories the site aims to produce.
It's early times for the enterprise, whose existence leaked prematurely. Many details remain to be worked out. But last week marked an important milestone when the nascent news outlet, temporarily known as NewCo, signed up Eric Bates, a former executive editor of Rolling Stone. Bates, says Omidyar, "will be instrumental in helping us define our editorial strategy for a general-interest audience as well as the editing infrastructure we will need to support our independent journalists."
Top 5 Blue Chip Companies To Buy Right Now
In other words, help figure out what NewCo is going to do and how it is going to do it.
Bates, who was laid off by Rolling Stone in January after 10 years at the magazine, is clearly psyched about his new mission. And who wouldn't be?
"It's exciting to build something from the ground up," he said in a telephone interview. Omidyar's formidable investment, he adds, "is unprecedented, extraordinary, parti! cularly at a time when journalism is struggling to find its financial footing."
As traditional journalism has been buffeted by the onset of the digital era, wealthy new players like Omidyar have entered the fray, an encouraging development. His fellow tech billionaire Jeff Bezos, the founder and CEO of Amazon.com, recently purchased The Washington Post. (Omidyar thought about it but opted to launch his own news colossus.) Investor to the stars Warren Buffett has been snapping up newspapers. The Sandler family bankrolled ProPublica, which rapidly has become an important investigative journalism player.
RIEDER: Can rich tech dudes save journalism?
Unlike ProPublica, Omidyar's baby won't be a nonprofit; it is conceived as a for-profit entity so it can become self-sustaining. It will be digital-only, with no plans for a print component.
So how did Bates become part of Project Omidyar? He received a call from Greenwald, the journalist who broke so many of the NSA surveillance stories based on classified documents provided by former NSA contractor Snowden and who was Omidyar's initial marquee hire. It didn't take long for Bates to sign on.
Eric Bates, a former executive editor of Rolling Stone.(Photo: handout)
In addition to the obvious appeal of building a potential editorial juggernaut, he was attracted by Omidyar's tech chops, the eBay entrepreneur's track record of building such a successful platform.
Bates is no stranger to high-profile endeavors. While at Rolling Stone, he edited the "The Runaway General," the career-ending profile of Gen Stanley McChrystal, and participated in four interviews with President Obama.
Bates very much likes the idea that NewCo will be a multifaceted operation aimed at a mass audien! ce — mu! ch as Rolling Stone bundles its high-end reportage with the latest on Lady Gaga, Pearl Jam and Led Zeppelin — rather than a targeted venture focused on a narrow slice.
"You've got to find ways to bring the work to those who wouldn't ordinarily read it," he says. "That's what we're doing. There's no point if you're not reaching people."
Bates says it's too soon to say when the new venture will debut and how big the staff will be.
Omidyar has said that the new entity will cover "general interest news." After all, most people don't necessarily want a steady diet of news about government and public policy.
"A lot of public-interest journalism is done by places that are underfunded," Bates says. "They have to make strategic choices (as to where to focus). We will be in a position to think more broadly."
But the heart of the mission will be public service journalism on subjects such as national security and money and politics. "Everybody who is coming together feels strongly about the need for better journalism so citizens in a democracy can make choices," Bates says
And he's certain that there is an appetite for sophisticated, significant fare.
"There's the notion that the digital world has dumbed everything down, that everything is shorter, faster, less thoughtful," Bates says, "But, in many ways, people are hungrier than ever for thoughtful long-form journalism and sources they can trust to filter out the noise."
No comments:
Post a Comment