How The Racket Almost Upended Journalism(wired.com)
wired.com
How The Racket Almost Upended Journalism
http://www.wired.com/2014/12/life-and-death-of-the-racket/
3 comments
This article, linked in the Wired piece, actually does the reporting that you're looking for: http://inthesetimes.com/article/17403/reports_from_inside_fi...
Awesome, thank you.
Why could we not have at least seen this happen?
"“We outsourced Thomas Friedman to an Indian content farm, where they produce for pennies a word, any kind of material you want. Really, it’s terrible and I felt kind of guilty after I did this. But you hire them to write a blog post or an article, and I hired this company to write ten stories about globalization and the economy. I basically told them I wanted them to write a Thomas Friedman article, I told them I wanted then to write an article about globalization and its effect on the workforce that’s positive about globalization, speaks about the challenges, but in the end works out for everyone. I told them to quote a cab driver. I just gave them Friedman’s theses, and asked them to write 800 words, and they did.”"
"“We outsourced Thomas Friedman to an Indian content farm, where they produce for pennies a word, any kind of material you want. Really, it’s terrible and I felt kind of guilty after I did this. But you hire them to write a blog post or an article, and I hired this company to write ten stories about globalization and the economy. I basically told them I wanted them to write a Thomas Friedman article, I told them I wanted then to write an article about globalization and its effect on the workforce that’s positive about globalization, speaks about the challenges, but in the end works out for everyone. I told them to quote a cab driver. I just gave them Friedman’s theses, and asked them to write 800 words, and they did.”"
I was really looking forward to The Racket. I really wanted FirstLook to become to this massive prairie of muckraking bison and harassing gophers and a ghost with a mug of wild turkey next to his shotgun laughing over it all.
Instead I'll have 'project responsibility matrices' bouncing around in the bitter attic of my thoughts for years. Shame.
Instead I'll have 'project responsibility matrices' bouncing around in the bitter attic of my thoughts for years. Shame.
This piece wraps up abruptly, but that's not the real issue. The real issue is that the piece seems to force itself into a conclusion at the precise point where it's starting to get interesting. It's getting good, setting the stage, and then...it stops. That's a real shame.
Also, this is neither here nor there, but I feel we're getting half of the story. Ok, so Taibbi ran into the typical frustrations with "responsibility matrices" and other corporate-process bullshit. But what else happened? How much money was spent building this thing out? Were there crucial turning points along the way, places where things could have gone north or south, based on choices people made? And what does Omidyar have to say, for that matter? I have no personal insight into the inner workings of First Look generally, or The Racket specifically. But I can't shake the feeling that there must have been more to the story than what we get here.
Finally, is it really fair to say that something that never launched "almost upended journalism?" By that same logic, the never-produced Halo movie was "almost" the biggest blockbuster of all time. We're presuming the success of the project, if only it had launched. Thing is, we can't make that presumption. As much as I would have liked this project to succeed, as much as I admire Matt Taibbi, and as much as I believe journalism could use a good upending, I can't say whether the market would have borne this out. We just don't know.