The Intercept Is Running Out of Cash(semafor.com)
semafor.com
The Intercept Is Running Out of Cash
https://www.semafor.com/article/04/14/2024/the-intercept-is-running-out-of-cash
38 comments
It’s funny bc Semafor received something like $10m from SBF.
Seems SBF went around spreading cash to everyone who cared to collect.
What was he hoping to achieve? It seems to me that he was hungry to buy into elite social circles, and they were willing to part with his cash to deliver that service.
What was he hoping to achieve? It seems to me that he was hungry to buy into elite social circles, and they were willing to part with his cash to deliver that service.
Or he was willing to part with his cash. I don't believe any news organizations made [substantial] donations to SBF, or FTX.
It is all about effective altruism [1] ;-)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effective_altruism
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effective_altruism
Yeah, it's very effective to be altruistic to news agencies for that good PR.
Most news organizations have figured out that partisan coverage helps grow your audience while criticizing your own team results in cancellations. That's a problem for Glenn Greenwald who has always focused his energy on criticizing those in power, whichever party that may be. It ultimately resulted in him leaving the Intercept.
Journalism is hard work and it doesn't pay much (unless you're a celebrity reporter like Greenwald) and subsequently people who pursue a career in journalism do so out of idealism. They see wrongs in the world and hope that by drawing attention to these wrongs society will improve. Partisanship in journalism isn't childishness. Journalists overwhelmingly believe that exposing the crimes and malfeasance of "the other" is the most important thing and writing about the failures of their own party is a distraction from that cause.
The substack model isn't a solution, either. Substack is fine for intelligent commentary but you can't pay for investigative journalism with a substack model. It just looks like real journalism just isn't profitable and I consider that a serious problem.
Journalism is hard work and it doesn't pay much (unless you're a celebrity reporter like Greenwald) and subsequently people who pursue a career in journalism do so out of idealism. They see wrongs in the world and hope that by drawing attention to these wrongs society will improve. Partisanship in journalism isn't childishness. Journalists overwhelmingly believe that exposing the crimes and malfeasance of "the other" is the most important thing and writing about the failures of their own party is a distraction from that cause.
The substack model isn't a solution, either. Substack is fine for intelligent commentary but you can't pay for investigative journalism with a substack model. It just looks like real journalism just isn't profitable and I consider that a serious problem.
didn't Glen made bank criticizing everyone (with quality) and then left when they sold the intercept, which now got to this point with the new owners?
> you can't pay for investigative journalism with a substack model
Why not? Some of the best investigative journalism I've read has been on Substack.
> Most news organizations have figured out that partisan coverage helps grow your audience while criticizing your own team results in cancellations ... Journalism is hard work and it doesn't pay much
That's probably true of e.g. the New York Times, but the Intercept isn't a great example. The history there is quite complicated. When they had Greenwald at the helm they were doing OK and got an audience. Once they booted him out and went fully partisan they lost most of their audience but the editors didn't care because they are/were funded by a billionaire.
Even then it was complex. Greenwald technically wasn't cancelled - he quit because his editors didn't want him to write stories attacking their side - and wrote about how Omidyar had successfully divorced his funding from his own political views here:
https://greenwald.substack.com/p/pierre-omidyars-financing-o...
no matter how much my attacks escalated on his [Omidyar's] core beliefs and the other groups he was heavily funding — and escalate they did! — I never received any remote signal that my outspoken journalism and commentary were imperiling his ongoing funding of The Intercept.
[The Intercept] is a dream job for most of [the employees]: enormous salaries, endless expense accounts, a complete lack of job requirements, and no need even to attract an audience. For years, outside of three or four journalists, articles published by The Intercept produce almost no traffic. With rare exception, nobody reads the site. They have a massive budget to create highly produced videos and yet their videos almost never exceed even 10,000 views: most tiny, from-their-garage, zero-budget YouTubers attract larger audiences. And nobody cares, because the money flows in from Omidyar no matter what.
Why not? Some of the best investigative journalism I've read has been on Substack.
> Most news organizations have figured out that partisan coverage helps grow your audience while criticizing your own team results in cancellations ... Journalism is hard work and it doesn't pay much
That's probably true of e.g. the New York Times, but the Intercept isn't a great example. The history there is quite complicated. When they had Greenwald at the helm they were doing OK and got an audience. Once they booted him out and went fully partisan they lost most of their audience but the editors didn't care because they are/were funded by a billionaire.
Even then it was complex. Greenwald technically wasn't cancelled - he quit because his editors didn't want him to write stories attacking their side - and wrote about how Omidyar had successfully divorced his funding from his own political views here:
https://greenwald.substack.com/p/pierre-omidyars-financing-o...
no matter how much my attacks escalated on his [Omidyar's] core beliefs and the other groups he was heavily funding — and escalate they did! — I never received any remote signal that my outspoken journalism and commentary were imperiling his ongoing funding of The Intercept.
[The Intercept] is a dream job for most of [the employees]: enormous salaries, endless expense accounts, a complete lack of job requirements, and no need even to attract an audience. For years, outside of three or four journalists, articles published by The Intercept produce almost no traffic. With rare exception, nobody reads the site. They have a massive budget to create highly produced videos and yet their videos almost never exceed even 10,000 views: most tiny, from-their-garage, zero-budget YouTubers attract larger audiences. And nobody cares, because the money flows in from Omidyar no matter what.
A single piece of investigative journalism can cost the NYT 500,000 easily. A reporter can work for a year on a single article where every piece of evidence has to to be verified, lawyers are involved to check liability, the journalist(s) and photographers have to travel around the world to follow leads. Then the article needs to be written and illustrated, and coded if it has animated graphics. It's all super expensive but the NYT can afford this because they have a multi-billion dollar annual budget. When you're on substack you have to churn out content or your subs will cancel. The only way to consistently create content is to write editorials.
See for example "These Journalists Spent Two Years and $750,000 Covering One Story": https://archive.ph/L7PA2
See for example "These Journalists Spent Two Years and $750,000 Covering One Story": https://archive.ph/L7PA2
All that shows is that the NYT does some very expensive things. It doesn't prove that all investigative journalism costs that much. Many useful investigations are essentially a series of FOIAs and working through source documents, don't require a year of work and don't require animated hand-coded graphics.
Newspapers also have to churn out content or else their subs will cancel. That's inherent to any form of recurring subscription journalism.
Newspapers also have to churn out content or else their subs will cancel. That's inherent to any form of recurring subscription journalism.
> Why not? Some of the best investigative journalism I've read has been on Substack.
Do you have examples of important stories broken on Substack?
Greenwald has broken a few huge stories in his life, but in general he's not an investigative journalist. Rather, he's a political commentator, and that's what he does on Substack. In fact neither Greenwald nor Laura Poitras was an investigative journalist; that's not why Edward Snowden selected them.
Do you have examples of important stories broken on Substack?
Greenwald has broken a few huge stories in his life, but in general he's not an investigative journalist. Rather, he's a political commentator, and that's what he does on Substack. In fact neither Greenwald nor Laura Poitras was an investigative journalist; that's not why Edward Snowden selected them.
> "Greenwald quit in fury to make quixotic allies on the right"
This type of (mis)characterization is really tiresome and you see it all the time in new media.
This type of (mis)characterization is really tiresome and you see it all the time in new media.
Worse is how susceptible otherwise intelligent people are to propaganda. Depressing.
What's propagandistic about it?
It seems pretty clear from my perspective that the Snowden papers were a high watermark of Greenwald's career. Everything else since then has been a cash-in on selling to the populist anti-establishment grift, regardless of fact. I wouldn't say Greenwald himself is "right-wing", but that end of the aisle is objectively more favorable to his beat.
It seems pretty clear from my perspective that the Snowden papers were a high watermark of Greenwald's career. Everything else since then has been a cash-in on selling to the populist anti-establishment grift, regardless of fact. I wouldn't say Greenwald himself is "right-wing", but that end of the aisle is objectively more favorable to his beat.
> I wouldn't say Greenwald himself is "right-wing", but that end of the aisle is objectively more favorable to his beat.
This is true. We're long past the days when the left was the anti-establishment voice.
This is true. We're long past the days when the left was the anti-establishment voice.
It is truly sad that the right wing speaks truth to power these days. I mean when the Bushes, Cheneys, Roves, Boltons are feted by the left these days, one will have to skip past these traditional pigeon-holing.
What's incorrect about this? I guess you could quibble about what "quixotic" is supposed to communicate there, which is not completely clear to me. But he did leave, prominently, angrily. And he has forged new alliances with the right since then.
Clearly mischaracterizes it as the primary reason for leaving as opposed to one of the things that happened after he left.
I mean we don't know his motivations but in retrospect he did immediately make a bunch of friends on the right, and align his work with their goals and messaging.
It's a judgement that you can disagree with but as a characterization it does fit the facts.
It's a judgement that you can disagree with but as a characterization it does fit the facts.
Plenty of explanations fit the facts for any given set of facts. That's why politics is so fun.
This seems sad. The Intercept was seeming like a powerhouse back when Glenn Greenwald was involved. They're a very different organization these days, and their legitimacy has sometimes been in question due to alleged internal censorship. Still, I think it's a problem that our economic system doesn't leave room for financially viable journalism.
Their legitimacy also has been in question due to Greenwald himself. His involvement with Russian agents is very questionable.
Could you cite, please? Be keen to read about that.
Glenn Greewald is the journalist who is best known for founding The Intercept and broke the Edward Snowden story. He is also anti war and spends his time these days criticizing the US policy that created the situation in Ukraine.
That makes him an agent of Russia using the same logic that decades ago said opposition to invading Iraq made you a terrorist sympathizer.
That makes him an agent of Russia using the same logic that decades ago said opposition to invading Iraq made you a terrorist sympathizer.
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Article Frequency is low. I understand they are a small team but the attention economy is eating them alive with distraction. I would either triple the monthly articles or create more interactive articles with more rich content to keep the readers engaged longer.
Was it inevitable that search engines would take all the news revenue, destroy the economics of news, and then release AI for a perfect storm of a post truth world?
Maybe, maybe not. But things are certainly going to be very interesting over the next decades. Buckle up.
Maybe, maybe not. But things are certainly going to be very interesting over the next decades. Buckle up.
I don't think anything in history is inevitable, I think it's always contingent on decisions people made at the time and that could have been decided differently, but I will say that exact series of events was laid out in a speculative fiction short film[1] I watched about 15 years ago. So clearly it was foreseeable.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntN4q7vuPUI ["Googlezon", 10m]
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntN4q7vuPUI ["Googlezon", 10m]
In 2017 The Intercept helped the NSA identify Reality Winner after a classified document detailing Russian interference in the 2016 election was mailed to The Intercept offices.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality_Winner#Release_of_cl...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality_Winner#Release_of_cl...
It seems only through incompetence though, I think that's important to note.
"The Intercept is losing roughly $300,000 a month, is on track to have a balance of less than a million dollars by November — and could be completely out of cash by May 2025, according to data shared internally in March."
And apparently these are a "worst-case scenario."
And apparently these are a "worst-case scenario."
The media is an important business, but I just don't have a lot of respect for The Intercept as a publication. The two biggest blows I can think of are the Tara Reade story and a smaller article on DHS leaks I read around a year ago.
The Tara Reade story had so many rocky foundations, so much so that mainstream publications were hesitant on breaking it, but The Intercept decided to move ahead anyway because their angle is "leftist anti-Democratic establishment" and the story would hurt Biden. That story completely collapsed and Tara Reade is now a Russia Today Putin stooge.
The other was a story commented on by Crooked Timber[1]. If you read the article itself[2], it's even written poorly and disjointed. Add that with a pretty horrendous quote-butcher that CT mentions and it's clearly just a hack piece.
1. https://crookedtimber.org/2023/06/08/disinformation-and-the-...
2. https://theintercept.com/2022/10/31/social-media-disinformat...
The Tara Reade story had so many rocky foundations, so much so that mainstream publications were hesitant on breaking it, but The Intercept decided to move ahead anyway because their angle is "leftist anti-Democratic establishment" and the story would hurt Biden. That story completely collapsed and Tara Reade is now a Russia Today Putin stooge.
The other was a story commented on by Crooked Timber[1]. If you read the article itself[2], it's even written poorly and disjointed. Add that with a pretty horrendous quote-butcher that CT mentions and it's clearly just a hack piece.
1. https://crookedtimber.org/2023/06/08/disinformation-and-the-...
2. https://theintercept.com/2022/10/31/social-media-disinformat...
Maybe they should establish a hedge fund arm a la Hunterbrook.
Guess the Russians turned off the money faucet once their plan to use Greenwald to flood The Intercept with Hunter Biden penis stories fell through.
I'm reminded of a quote by the late poet David Antin, which I can not find at the moment, but found one which gets at a similar idea, which I think is relevant here because really theres two types of news: the kind you can predict will happen and plan for dedicatibg the recources needed to cover, and then the other kind, which in some cases is arguably more important, but because there's no plan in place to pay for the work involved in reporting on it it's trickier to have a permanent establishment that is responsible for it. I'm pasting the adjacently related quote I found below. Look up David Antin if the formatting seems strange:
there will be a man who
will have a theory of sculpture and he will
relate things that other people will for example
im giving a parallel example that is im
not leading into greater depth here what im
assuming is that a man publishes an
announcement in some accessible place saying
that he will pay a reward for the capture of
this notoriously nondangerous criminal who is
among the twenty most or least wanted men
by the united states government the name of the
man who published this is douglas huebler
and he offered a reward of a thousand dollars
for the capture of this notoriously nondangerous
man who the police also wanted and he
was going to pay a reward for the capture on the
basis of selling the documentation that is to
say he was going to sell the documentation
involving the apprehension of the criminal and his
offer to pay the thousand dollars and when
he did this he set a kind of diminishing reward
if the capture was effective within so
many days a thousand dollars was paid if not
it was reduced gradually over a period of about
a year i believe and the thing was worked
out very carefully because as the time elapsed
between the offer and the capture the price of
the art work i believe was being reduced to
keep it equivalent so that the whole thing" "
Edit: source: https://www.artforum.com/features/talking-at-pomona-213137/
there will be a man who
will have a theory of sculpture and he will
relate things that other people will for example
im giving a parallel example that is im
not leading into greater depth here what im
assuming is that a man publishes an
announcement in some accessible place saying
that he will pay a reward for the capture of
this notoriously nondangerous criminal who is
among the twenty most or least wanted men
by the united states government the name of the
man who published this is douglas huebler
and he offered a reward of a thousand dollars
for the capture of this notoriously nondangerous
man who the police also wanted and he
was going to pay a reward for the capture on the
basis of selling the documentation that is to
say he was going to sell the documentation
involving the apprehension of the criminal and his
offer to pay the thousand dollars and when
he did this he set a kind of diminishing reward
if the capture was effective within so
many days a thousand dollars was paid if not
it was reduced gradually over a period of about
a year i believe and the thing was worked
out very carefully because as the time elapsed
between the offer and the capture the price of
the art work i believe was being reduced to
keep it equivalent so that the whole thing" "
Edit: source: https://www.artforum.com/features/talking-at-pomona-213137/
"The Intercept was awarded a grant of $3.25 million from Sam Bankman-Fried, founder of cryptocurrency exchange FTX. It had only received $500,000 when Bankman-Fried went bankrupt and the shortfall in funding "will leave The Intercept with a significant hole in its budget" according to its editor-in-chief." [1]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Intercept