As reader Christopher put it, this got ugly fast.
Yesterday, Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras, Jeremy Scahill, and John Cook issued a joint “inside story” on why Matt Taibbi left First Look. Let us note that it is pretty much unheard for journalists to report on personnel matters at their own employer, particularly so rapidly after a story breaks. The reason for the haste, and the focus on l’affaire Taibbi, appears to be to get out in front of an article coming out in New York Magazine about their patron, Pierre Omidyar.
The real issue, as we discussed in our earlier post, is whether this account supports the claim made in Omidyar’s press release about Taibbi’s departure: that it has nothing to do with editorial independence. As we’ll discuss, this story does not lay that issue to rest; in fact, it attempts to draw a bright shiny line between “corporate” matters like overall direction, editorial philosophy, mix of stories, as well as routine matters like expense controls, and “editorial freedom”. The distinctions aren’t that tidy. The degree of retrading of Taibbi’s deal for The Racket, his publication, and ongoing pressure to keep refocusing his the initiative looks like bad faith. And one reads between the lines that Omidyar might have cooled on Taibbi’s plans to foray out of satire into more costly and more disruptive investigative reporting.
The article attempts, not exactly convincingly, to depict the row as a result of a culture clash between a controlling billionaire (read boss from hell) and a writer used to more free rein. The Intercept writers and editors say they also chafed from the interference, including what both fledging publications took to be a three month hiring freeze after Omidyar scaled back his ambitions for the venture. However, the Intercept team managed to work out an accommodation with their billionaire backer.
The scurrilous part of this account is that Taibbi allegedly blew up at a female staffer, who then complained to management, and suggested that his action might be sexist. That led to an internal investigation. You have to love the “throw him under the bus” formulation:
These simmering problems came to a head this month when a Racket staffer complained to senior management that Taibbi had been verbally abusive and unprofessionally hostile, and that she felt the conduct may have been motivated, at least in part, by her gender. [President John] Temple conducted an investigation, and First Look determined that while none of the alleged conduct rose to the level of legal liability, the grievance bolstered their case that Taibbi should not be the manager of Racket. Among their concerns were the staffer’s claims that Taibbi had been privately criticizing First Look managers, particularly Ching, that Taibbi’s abrasive demeanor was alienating some on his staff, and that Taibbi instructed Racket staff to resolve any grievances directly with him rather than going to upper management.
Let’s translate: “Did not rise to the level of legal liability” means “the staffer had no case”. A deep pockets organization, which is normally a plum litigation target, didn’t even bother hiring an outside law firm. But notice also she accuses Taibbi of bad-mouthing upper management, making staff unhappy, and telling his direct reports to “resolve any grievances directly with him”. Um, in a normal hierarchical structure, you do go to your manager first with complaints. It’s only when you can’t get them remedied that you escalate.
Then we get this section:
On October 10, according to Taibbi’s account, Temple and Ching told Taibbi that he would be immediately stripped of all managerial responsibilities pending their investigation. (First Look managers dispute this account, claiming that Taibbi was never stripped of any duties.)
Taibbi was adamant that the complaint had no merit, and rejected any demotion or change in his responsibilities. On the day he was confronted by Temple and [chief operating officer Randy] Ching, Taibbi left the office and—aside from one staff meeting he attended, after which he was instructed by Omidyar not to come back until they reached agreement on his role—did not return. He repeatedly told First Look that he would resign if it did not reverse the decision to reduce his managerial duties, and was insistent that he would accept no changes that could be construed as an acceptance on his part of the validity of the employee complaint.
Now, if Taibbi’s behavior were so objectionable that it warranted action, the right action would not be a demotion. It would be to fire him. If you’ve got an employee where you find their conduct towards subordinates to be unacceptable, unless you demote them to the bottom of the hierarchy, you haven’t fixed the problem. They still have lower level staff, such as technology and production support people, who are junior to them and thus at risk of being on the wrong side of their moods.
The friction between Taibbi and the First Look adminisphere had apparently gotten so bad that it did not take much to push it into a formal rupture. Whether Temple and Chiang were looking for an excuse to push Taibbi out, or whether the staffer’s claims of mistreatment and bad-mouthing the higher-ups hit personal buttons is moot. This is either not-very-seasoned management reacting badly to an already fraught situation or the management team seeing the dispute as an opportunity to deal with a festering problem and make the proximate cause look like Taibbi, not the ongoing power struggle about where the publication was going.
In other words, the response doesn’t add up. That means that the row over the female staffer was trumped up charges.
It is also not pretty to see personal allies of the authors fanning the flames. Shortly after the Intercept piece ran, Gawker ran a post by J.K. Trotter titled, Matt Taibbi Left First Look Media After Female Staffer’s Complaint. The piece is tightly focused on the headline issue. Now you could say that is just Gawker being Gawker. But John Cook, one of the authors of the Intercept story, was recently the editor-in-chief of Gawker, and he hired J.K. Trotter as a gossip reporter. In other words, this looks awfully insider-y.
But what about the bigger potential issue, that of interference by Omidyar or the First Look execs in the editorial content? It appears that the First Look team, at least as far as Taibbi is concerned, tries to define it narrowly in order to frame the dispute as solely about the freedom to do one’s job, as opposed to control over work content. But those aren’t separate when you are talking about the individual creating and leading a publication.
This is the claim made in the story:
Omidyar has publicly and privately pledged multiple times that First Look will never interfere with the stories produced by its journalists. He has adhered to that commitment with both The Intercept and Racket, and Taibbi has been clear that he was free to shape Racket‘s journalism fully in his image. His vision was a hard-hitting, satirical magazine in the style of the old Spy that would employ Taibbi’s facility for merciless ridicule, humor, and parody to attack Wall Street and the corporate world. First Look was fully behind that vision.
As Paul Carr of Pando pointed out in July, this is a significant departure from what Taibbi said his vision was in February. From the New York Times:
Mr. Taibbi will start his own publication focusing on financial and political corruption, he said in an interview on Wednesday.
Contrast that with Omidyar’s remarks in July:
And we’ve partnered with the talented Matt Taibbi to plan and launch this fall a new digital magazine with a satirical approach to American politics and culture.
Now admittedly that statement also talks about a deep commitment to investigative journalism, and a contact who spoke to Taibbi after that date said that Taibbi described his publication incorporating humor, in particular skewering plutocrats, as well as serious reporting.
Here is the First Look account of how the drama played out:
When First Look was launched last October, it was grounded in two principles: one journalistic, the other organizational. First, journalists would enjoy absolute editorial freedom and journalistic independence. Second, the newsroom would avoid rigid top-down hierarchies and instead would be driven by the journalists and their stories.
But First Look and the editorial staff it hired quickly learned that it is much easier to talk about such high-minded, abstract principles than it is to construct an organization around them…
Taibbi and other journalists who came to First Look believed they were joining a free-wheeling, autonomous, and unstructured institution. What they found instead was a confounding array of rules, structures, and systems imposed by Omidyar and other First Look managers on matters both trivial—which computer program to use to internally communicate, mandatory regular company-wide meetings, mandated use of a “responsibility assignment matrix” called a “RASCI,” popular in business-school circles for managing projects—as well as more substantive issues.
Omidyar, in the memo we mentioned earlier, in July curtailed his ambitions and stated he wanted to focus the company on “products” rather than “content”. As a writer, that would set alarms off in my head.
But the article finesses the sequence of events. It mentions the refocus first, with a link but no date, and then has this section two paragraphs later, implying that it happened later, when it took place at least a month earlier:
In June, Taibbi, Greenwald, Poitras, and Scahill wrote a joint letter to Omidyar outlining their principal grievances—the lack of clear budgets and repeated and arbitrary restrictions on hiring—and making clear that a failure to resolve them would jeopardize the feasibility of both projects.
The article then states that after a lot of to-and-fro, matters were resolved well for The Intercept. Nevertheless, the cutback of Omidyar’s ambitions and funding seems to be the direct result of a mini-revolt by his talent.
And here is where the veil is pulled over exactly what happened with Taibbi:
For a time, it appeared that Taibbi’s project had also found the right path. It, too, received its own multi-million-dollar budget, began to hire more reporters, filmmakers, and editors, and set a launch date for September.
But because the site had not yet launched, First Look continued to focus on organizational and corporate issues, and managers actively supervised and at times overruled Taibbi’s management decisions.
Notice that these disputes were so serious that the launch date was missed. And what does “overruling Taibbi’s management decisions” consist of? We are unlikely to hear much from Taibbi, since it is normal in ugly personnel divorces for the departing party as part of a settlement and mutual release of liability to a an agreed-upon statement of what happened, with restrictions on any other remarks, such as a non-disparagement agreement. If the employee has a decent lawyer, the company is held to the same standard. Saying that First Look interfered in editorial matters is hugely damaging in media-land, so the odds are high that if that was an issue, even if it was a secondary issue, First Look would take vigorous steps to make sure Taibbi would not be free to talk about it. You can say all you want to about personal courage, but Omidyar could litigate Taibbi into the ground if he were to violate a separation agreement. It’s not a fight worth engaging.
So Taibbi’s silence or affirmation of the First Look account does not mean that there was no meddling on the level of types of stories and potentially even specific story ideas, even if the main power struggle was over Taibbi’s authority. Hopefully the forthcoming New York article will give a clearer picture of what transpired.
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“(early on, Greenwald, Poitras, and Scahill all opted to be independent contractors rather than First Look employees in order to maximize their freedom to speak out and act).”
From the FL story on taibbi.
So, the best decision that any person who wants to maximize their freedom to speak out and act is NOT to work for FL.
Did I get something wrong there?
Didn’t Greenwald, Poitras, and Scahill, share the byline on that story? Aren’t they the face of the new enterprise? And they don’t even “work” for it, because it might not allow them to ” maximize their freedom to speak out and act”
“Et tu, Brute?” The knives are out…
Ames has been right since the beginning on this.
https://twitter.com/MarkAmesExiled/status/527998430770380800
Ames commented yesterday:
Links to Ames’ articles:
• The Extraordinary Pierre Omidyar
• Keeping Secrets: Pierre Omidyar, Glenn Greenwald and the privatization of Snowden’s leaks
• Pierre Omidyar co-funded Ukraine revolution groups with US government, documents show
• eBay Shrugged: Pierre Omidyar believes there should be no philanthropy without profit
Good links.
This is beginning to look a lot like Omidyar wants to be Charles Foster Kane in real life.
To badly paraphrase Coleridge:
“In Intercept did Omidyar,”
“A stately satire rag decree:”
“Where Wealth, in sacred rivers ran,”
“Roughshod o’er rights of me and thee,”
“Engendering then a sunless See.”
I remember saying many threads ago (so fast do new post pile up here at NC) that Mr. Omidyar seemed to be on a Citizen Kane trip. If events are confirming that suspicion, I will take the further reputational risk of repeating my prediction that Greenwald will remain with Omidyar for a long time to come.
Ah, but what role will he play? Leland or Bernstein?
Its been so long since I saw Citizen Kane that I can’t fully remember what Leland as against Bernstein did. So I wouldn’t dare guess “which role” Greenwald would take, only that he will remain with the Omidyar Group for a long while.
I am shocked, shocked to hear allegations of overreaching, hubris, duplicity, and bad faith dealing by a Billionaire. And a HighTech one at that.
Yeah. I admit the whole thing always seemed inexplicable to me. It’s like Batman going to work for the Joker. What could possibly go wrong?
Omidyar will settle easily with Taibbi. When pressed, the sexual harassment flyer will go away under any litigators serious questioning the individual. Then malcontent promotional stories are mitigated by this letter close to the date of blow up:
“In June, Taibbi, Greenwald, Poitras, and Scahill wrote a joint letter to Omidyar outlining their principal grievances” – too many people on the shovel to dispute his claims.
seen this so many times on an individuals exit with contracts.
Omidyar is mercurial guy blowing hot and cold in a new industry with different rules he is not use to. There is his widely reported involvement in Ukraine for some time much before Maidan. He has “friends” who would like to know what Greenwald, Poitras et al are doing…..early on, hence the need for tight controls.
I think Greenwald is straight (journalistically), he was enamored with the money so he minimized the negatives in making his relationship decisions. I am sure the concept will work out within or outside this organization. The Truth Market needs them all. I hope all these Journalists make wins including Taibbi. Good Luck!
It looks like Omidyar has orchestrated another masterful epic bait and switch on behalf of the 1%. When will we ever learn?
We wont. We are Exceptional Americans. We dont learn, learning is for asians and europeans.
heh… made me laugh, but it’s true.
Indeed. It sure looks like an operation to Intercept truth, to sequester and muzzle the strongest voices against a criminal plutocracy, more effectively thru seduction than assassination. Deftly assassinating Taibbi’s character thru inuendo is now a given. Money is power and power corrupts.
I agree Doug.
This paragraph was interesting: “None of us witnessed any of the alleged behavior on Taibbi’s part that sparked the investigation, and the complaining employee did not want to be identified in this article or speak on the record. Other Racket employees questioned the wisdom of having Taibbi—celebrated for his combative persona—acting as a corporate manager with employees responsible to him.” They didn’t witness anything that was alleged but by golly, some questioned having a combative persona in a position of power over others.
Isn’t unnamed sources speaking off the record one of the things Glenn used to think was wrong about mainstream reporting?
My question is– why haven’t the others resigned? Pierre had a track record of mistreating others in his business ventures before they hired on with him. He is intimately connected to the NSA. It never made sense to me that he would be a person that would allow freedom and integrity of voice. (I notice that Pay Pal has never been covered by the national security state reporting team even though it is intimately connected to mass spying on people of many nations.)
If you want to speak with integrity and authenticity, get out of there and do it now.
Marcy Wheeler left back in May. Taibbi, Greenwald, Poitras, and Scahill sent that letter to Omidyar in June. Obviously Wheeler didn’t deem it possible to accomplish anything under Omidyar, while Taibbi was willing to try and work it out. In any case, the fact that Greenwald is still around, and took part of this hit piece, reinforces the reservations I continue to feel about him. Hope to read Taibbi again very soon, I really missed his work.
Yup. Looking forward to reading Taibbi again also.
My guess? Equity of some sort in the new “civic journalism”
But, then again, there are no details on how the secrets are being paid for. The fact that all of the holders of the secrets are “independent contractors” is the closest I’ve seen them come to disclosing how and what they are getting paid.
Last company I was with, when they wanted to offshore the remaining workers’ jobs, almost all of the workers having been replaced by temp personnel, with the exception of a few remaining, fundamentally the very same strategy was used.
We battled them and ended up getting laid off and proper unemployment (company was owned by a mid-level to smaller private equity firm involved in a “pump-and-dump” but got hung up on the “dump” phase as it was 2008.
Sounds very, very similar.
Tigre, you are so correct! The White House Frequent Flier got SnObama past the 2010 mid-terms with his two most vocal critics bait-and-switched into irrelevance. Sadly, journalists are so under-paid that they are even more easily purchased by billionaires than are Deputy United States Attorneys or Members of Congress. Burned again…
Great summary. And as Yves points out, it doesn’t take much for writers to figure out the underlying problems, the ones being hinted at,, which have little to do with Taibbi’s treatment of colleagues or his managerial style. Much of what is being put out there is typical American office politics, which is particularly vicious–and unconvincing, in this case. Given the slowness of material to appear at the Intercept and First Look sites, I doubt that this e-publication has a future. And as Yves ran through the internal problems and Omidyar’s obviously goofy power dynamics, I was reminded again why “running government like a business” is an absurd statement. Also, about all I can say about e-billionaires getting out of their depth is that at least the egregious Peter Thiel isn’t involved (or is he?).
Also, about all I can say about e-billionaires getting out of their depth is that at least the egregious Peter Thiel isn’t involved (or is he?).
He’s funding Pando Daily though. I wonder if Thiel and Omar are friends, or dislike each other.
Thiel provide only 10% of the initial funding. He may not even have a board seat. 10% is at most enough to make noise, not enough to exert control, PARTICULARLY in a private company. Minority shareholders/investors in private companies have pretty much no say unless they negotiated veto rights over certain decisions. I agree Thiel is pretty vile, but I think he just got roped in to chipping in by his rich buddies. $200,000, which I think is what he gave, is couch lint for a guy at his level.
I said in the other post that I don’t know if the article ultimately defends Taibbi or taints him to the general public (meaning how will the article be played out/spun in mass media).
The one thing I do know is that one of the most visible and highly vocal journalists on financial corruption has been put on the sidelines for almost a year and that we have no idea of when he’ll make a return to investigative journalism, what form if will take or even IF he’ll return to the type of journalism he was doing before he was recruited to head up this project.
I hate to be cynical but beyond the whole female staffer dispute (dare I say/hope distraction for the plebes), I’m still left wondering if this wasn’t purposeful out of the gate rather than just a “bad break” due to it being a new venture with a billionaire and all that. And I still have some qualms about the venture itself. I guess we’ll see how all this plays out in the next few months (year).
Amen.
I’m beyond skeptical & utterly shamelessly cynical. If it quacks like a duck, it is a duck.
I don’t trust Omidyar. Yes, interesting that Taibbi’s been on the sidelines, and now there’s this allegation. Really? This is all strictly accidental? Really?
IMO, this is another “wake up sheeples” moment, but that’s just me.
I think it was a deliberate hit job too. Just look at the stuff he was pumping out into (a domesticated) Rolling Stone Magazine, putting it over on the right snarky tone. That in itself was amazing, (and had to be stopped).
I fully agree.
Omidyar is doing the same thing here in Hawaii with his “Civil Beat” news organization. He entraps the progressives with his righteous call to join the political process, but then leads the charge in promoting GMOs and other big government and big ag solutions. This man is setting up these types of news organization to grab hold of the fringe and to then sequester it out of sight by buying everyone up. Greenwald comes to mind…
I’d been pondering this too, this part jumped out at me:
It certainly gives me the impression that Omidyar is just petty, meddling and insecure rather than someone who would mastermind that kind of scheme.
That was crazy. Petty, meddling and insecure indeed. I wonder what Ebay was like back in the day.
petty, meddling, perhaps, but insecure? Incredibly arrogant more likely. And arrogance that extends to the idea that he and his coterie of managers could control Taibbi (at least it seems to me just from reading Taibbi’s excellent pieces in Rolling Stone).
He could always go back to Rolling Stone unless he and Rolling Stone are both too proud to go back to eachother. He had an audience at Rolling Stone, after all.
Cannot wait:
http://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/oct/31/matt-taibbi-rolling-stone-first-look-media
Oh. Good.
Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras can and should be trusted, simple as that.
Why?
“simple as that.” Well, thank god. It’s so much more work to maintain a critical eye, a healthy degree of skepticism, require trust continue to be earned/maintained with things like facts, accuracy, transparency, commitment to the public interest, etc.
(that said, I do have a lot of respect for the past work of both Greenwald and Poitras.)
I agree with AQ above that Taibbi was effectively sidelined for a year while corruption was left unexposed, especially now before the midterm elections. On Twitter, Taibbi posted (on September 25), “For those asking, my farewell piece to Eric Holder is rather long, contains an unpleasant surprise or two, and comes when launch in a month.” Well it’s been a month now, so I wonder if that piece will see the light of day or not.
I was wondering that myself, KMSM. I’ve read many pieces on Holder, I was really looking forward to Taibbi’s take on the subject because he and his salty language just have a way breaking information down that makes it very accessible to the many. Plus I love Taibbi surprises.
So within about two weeks of making the twitter announcement on the Holder article, Taibbi is put on suspension pending investigation. Cynical me doesn’t like the timing. Hopeful me hopes that this will be the article to be published in Rolling Stone next week per the Guardian piece ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®© linked to in the comments below.
Maybe, just maybe, we shouldn’t count on billionaires to deliver journalism.
Agreed… except Jeff Lurie (owner of the Philadelphia Eagles) did sponsor one of the all-time great documentaries by Charles Ferguson (Inside Job)….. And I must say doing something positive once does not warrant hours of fawning, as the corridors of power adapt quickly….
“The fate of the remaining Racket staff remains uncertain. Taibbi’s departure means that First Look has lost a talented, unique, and influential journalistic voice before he published a single word.”
Because it’s so hard to like publish a word when you have a website that at least many people have heard about the launch of etc. It’s so hard to use a website to get words out there, when people are doing it with cheap blog software and websites they build themselves from reading a book or two on building a website. I have been hired for jobs where they wouldn’t give us any work to do (not journalism though), just because of deep corporate dysfunction, it must be like that. Neither I nor the companies lasted.
Then what WAS Taibbi thinking? I forgot that he ran a magazine for quite a while, but editor of the eXile was not going to translate to running a high profile billionaire-funded chat rag. I think that experience actually made him less suited for the job, not more so.
Blame the victim. Got another knife you could stick in his back? The more the merrier. Get some blood on you, tell the kids about it. Build the empire!
The EXile content should tell you everything you needed to know about Matt Taibbi and Mark Ames. Misogynist, manipulative, insensitive, exploitative, narcissistic self promoters.
Their departure from Moscow caused no tears to fall after they were involuntarily decamped.
Never understood how Greenwald got stuck with a poseur like Taibbi.
Yes, Ames and Taibbi were/are misogynistic, narcissistic a-holes at the Exile. They also had the best reporting from Russia, and exposed the dirty deeds of both western “experts” and Russian oligarchs and politicians. Their departure from Moscow brought much needed relief to these criminals. Taibbi in particular also engaged in top notch reporting of the financial crimes of our criminals posing as bankers. Poseurs they are not.
“narcissistic”….
Um…did you read the story? the authors refer to themselves in the third person.
Misogyny? Repeating the same unfounded charge does not make it true, even if you appear to be “defending” taibbi.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/greenwald-reporter-broke-nsa-story-lawyer-sued-porn-biz-article-1.1383448
“He also accused Greenwald of having bullied him into signing the deal, citing several twisted emails that he said were from Greenwald, whose email address was, “DomMascHry31.” In one, Greenwald allegedly called Haas “a little bitch” and “a good little whore.””
That sounds a lot more like capital M Misogyny to me.
But, we’re being reasonable people here. Sorry to point out facts.
Having read The Exile back in the day, Ames and Taibbi did many things that would richly earn them these labels. They also had the best reporting on Russia, period. So I do not just “appear” to defend them, I am in fact defending them. Whatever they are in their personal lives, their professionalism and commitment to report the truth are not in doubt. Sorry that it gets on your tender sensibilities that I can distinguish between their personal and professional personas and not let one color my thinking about the other. I admire them both.
With friends like you…
Chris Floyd has a much better retort than I can come up with, and hones in on the problem with repeatedly labeling him as misogynist.
“Defending” him, and then repeating the claim, even celebrating it, is a cheap shot in the current narrative, and even in spite my very, very tender sensibilities, it’s bullshit.
There is no evidence at all of his current “misogyny”, even the interceptors admit that. But, it’s another meme that helps excuse the interceptors for the prison-gang-stabing for their leader.
Why is it hard for people to see how damaging this label is, and who is benefiting from it’s repeated use and “defense”. Just fucking stop.
http://www.chris-floyd.com/component/content/article/1-latest-news/2439-revenge-of-the-interceptors-oligarchs-team-mugs-renegade-taibbi.html
It is interesting, that link to Chris Floyd. In his 5th point, he basically says the same thing that I did. He only adds that he assumes they have grown up a bit since those times. I think that’s utter BS. It’s the culture in Russia: it is mysoginistic (as we in the West understand it), and many Russian women, for better of for worst, would assume that we sensitive, non-misogynistic western males, are gays or pussies. Taibbi and Ames sought to fully immerse themselves in Russian culture and did so very well. It is what allowed them to create the great reporting that they did, by going places and talking with people the standard issue western journo never would. So whether they were misogynist then (they were) or are still (don’t know and don’t care) is utterly besides the point. I care about their reporting, and that is top notch. Get over yourself though, it is as though you put them on a pedestal of perfection and that’s just silly. No one’s perfect.
What don’t you get?
“Let’s analyze his misogyny”
“is it really his misogyny, or was it russias fault?”
How many more times can you repeat the unfounded, nonfactual claim?
Isn’t it a story about him getting fired?
I may very well be on a pedestal as we speak. You have no way of knowing. And what would be wrong with me being on a pedestal anyway? Maybe the pedestal is for heath, or cultural reasons. I helps my posture? It’s sunday? Getting ready for a good full moon howl? What is your problem with pedestals? Are you an anti-pedistite?
Are you retarded or merely stupid?
Oh, we’re onto name calling.
Which allows me to divine the thoughts driving the actions of another individual?
Stupid or retarded?
Which did you choose when telling me what ames and taibbi were thinking, over a decade ago now?
I’ve read the whole thing several times now, using both stupid and retarded superpowers, to try and divine what he might be thinking. I still don’t see where he labeled them-
“misogynistic, narcissistic a-holes”
Could you help me out? My powers are apparently weak. I’ve even managed to find point #5, which you referenced. It was easy, I only needed one hand and a foot (bad accident with a zamboni) to count that high.
” If there was some blow-up with a staffer at Omidyar’s shop, involving harsh and abrasive language, I would imagine it was more general then gendered.”
No writer who can invent and successfully propagate the following (of Goldman Sachs) is a poseur:
You might not like the guy. But poseur he is not.
Talent does not entail authenticity – I enter the history of the last 100 years in evidence.
Isn’t that the truth. I remember one of my best English teachers may years ago admonishing his students to beware that that in the intellectual world “Eloquence equals intelligence”. That’s Taibbi.
And now that everybody has safely left this thread, I can tell you I spent many years in Moscow at the same time these carpetbaggers were running their scam, and that Moscow was a much better place to live after their exit. No one missed them, ever.
Shame about their Russian illustrator though who drew the ‘Field guide to Moscow’, as his works were absolutely brilliant and spot on. Very talented artist. He was the very best contributor to their tawdry publication and elevated their evil clown journalism to a much higher standard. His work deserves better recognition.
So (above) I refute “poseur” and somehow that morphs into “authenticity.” So if I refute “authenticity,” what happens then? A shift to “sincerity”? We can play that game all day long.
Out of the adjectives and assertions, we pluck a nuggest of fact: Taibbi has fine editorial judgment, as evidenced by his choice of an illustrator.
All this translates into “I don’t l-i-i-i-i-i-k-e him.” Well, so what?
Who are you quoting? I did not use those words so perhaps you’re replying to someone else as this thread as it has become more jumbled?
I absolutely and firmly stand by the assessment of both Ames and Taibbi as the worst kind of exploitationists, and the minute dissection and attack of individual words on the discussion comments will not change that appraisal.
With all due reverence to this website and to both Yves and Lambert – those guy are world class assholes, and a cute turn of the phrase by them every now and again does not relieve them of that disposition.
I am now leaving this thread.
dosvedania,
gardener1
This is utterly irrelevant to the caliber of their reporting. You’ve just confirmed what Lamber said, that you don’t like them, and somehow that makes them bad reporters. Sorry, those are two different categories.
“Their departure from Moscow caused no tears to fall after they were involuntarily decamped.”
Says everything about who you are and who you represent. Nice try.
Dammit, can we get some mod control here, Yeves? I come here for independent, though -provoking comments by intelligent citizens, not to hear from some PR shill from the Koch brother’s libertarian machine.
Sorry, generally speaking I only reject comments for 1. abusiveness, 2. persistent dishonest argumentation, and 3. general trollery (as in taking over the conversation, not dropping an argument even though they’ve lost). This thread seemed OK as of last night, but I see 20 more comments on what should have turned into a stale thread, so when I finish my new posts, I’ll come back and have a look.
Taibbi never ran a magazine. Mark Ames was the publisher of eXile.
Taibbi spent some time as “co-editor”.
http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2010/02/exile-201002
Your remark does not disprove what I wrote.
An editor does not manage the business side, have responsibility for hiring, firing, distribution, supervising ad sales, etc. An editor edits content. Different role.
Oh okay, you were objecting to “ran a magazine” and not “editor of The eXile”.
Omidyar’s organization really is a horror show:
Can’t blame the misapprehension on the journalists. They were sold a bill of goods and then found out they would be micromanaged by MBAs.
“Can’t blame the misapprehension on the journalists”. Hmmm, as I remember it, most of the pieces on Pierre at the launch were puffs *from his own employees at Hawaii Civil Beat’, I think it’s called. Now, were I an investigative reporter, and weren’t dazzled by the glitter of the gold, I would have dug into Pierre, including his ‘philanthropic arm’, his PayPal blockade of WikiLeaks, his (ahem) obfuscations around that…and then wondered if a billionaire’s funding might be worth it.
Of course, at least Mr. Greenwald claims that he never checked him out…
Please read the names of the people who PUT their names on the story that you are commenting on.
They are journalists, and they are ‘blaming’ another journalist, as well as throwing a few unfounded, highly charged accusations at him.
But, they don’t work for the intercept, they are only contractors.
I read the same article as you, and my sense is that Greenwald, Cook et al really think First Look sucks.
Is that why they smeared Taibbi?
The fact that you can draw that conclusion, on a story BY THEM about the justification for shit-canning Taibbi, says an awful lot.
But, you probably read between the lines, right?
Hey, believe whatever you want. I’m not sure why you think they can’t dump on Matt and Pierre at the same time.
BTW, after going to press, they posted an update to the article.
I believe what I fucking read. The text is not up for discussion, or a matter of opinion. It’s fact. It’s a story about how pierre was justifed in firing Taibbi.
BTW, they don’t have a fucking press.
If there’s nothing to discuss, then good day to you.
How is the text of a story “up for discussion”? Are you employed by pierre?
I bet at the very least you got a good self righteous sneer out of walking away wrong.
You’re welcome.
Great piece, Yves.
To all: hadn’t part of Taibbi’s time over the past year been about his book launch, ‘The Divide’?
And as far as I can tell, no one has spoken to Yves’ most important (imo) thrust:
“But what about the bigger potential issue, that of interference by Omidyar or the First Look execs in the editorial content? It appears that the First Look team, at least as far as Taibbi is concerned, tries to define it narrowly in order to frame the dispute as solely about the freedom to do one’s job, as opposed to control over work content. But those aren’t separate when you are talking about the individual creating and leading a publication.”
“with restrictions on any other remarks, such as a non-disparagement agreement. ” The redacted emails post by Paul Carr sort of indicated he had one. Yes, shocking there was not even a human resources person at an organization of that size with that many dynamic people and trying to set up an organization from the ground. Marcy Wheeler, when she left, was basically mum.
It’s really looking like more of a vanity project for Glenn Greenwald. I wonder if the model used for the Poynter Institute’s ownership of that Florida newspaper isn’t a model we should be looking at for better inspiration rather than billionaire libertarians “entrepreneurship” excuse to own the message.
Sometimes–especially with any publication featuring articles by Glenn Greenwald, who does respond to comments–it is worth reading the Comments section. Here is a quote from Jay Rosen in the Comments section of this article:
Regarding funding by Omidyar, here is Greenwald’s take (also in the Comments):
Greenwald sounds fairly pragmatic to me. No situation in life is ever ideal, and as long as Omidyar is willing to spend the dollars for legal backing on the NSA revelations, I’d rather be able to read those revelations than worry about Omidyar’s non-journalistic interests.
They did not need an oligarch, or some fancy-shmancy website, or most of all, this debacle. They could’ve leveraged their names and reputations and brought in more than enough non-oligarchical, but real investors to get a site up and running, then growing it from there, and it’s a pretty fair bet they would’ve hung onto their readers if they just put out good, solid stuff – much of which will have to come with an approach to them, I would think, in any event. When did gold-plating every speak to power?
” as long as Omidyar is willing to spend the dollars for legal backing on the NSA revelations”
Where is there any evidence that pierre has done that? He bought the secrets, yes….But what legal fight has pierre paid for?
“I’d rather be able to read those revelations than worry about Omidyar’s non-journalistic interests.”
Too much stupid to deal with. False dichotomy? Rose colored glasses? Monkey at a type writer? Paid troll?
Please provide your evidence that Omidyar has “bought the secrets”.
If your only response is an ad hominem attack, I would say you are the troll. NC regulars usually stick to facts and are polite when disagreeing.
The only people that are known to have a complete archive of the secrets, by their own admission, are bylined on this story.
ad hominem? Against who? So you agree with this statement-
” No situation in life is ever ideal, and as long as Omidyar is willing to spend the dollars for legal backing on the NSA revelations, I’d rather be able to read those revelations than worry about Omidyar’s non-journalistic interests.”
It’s either worry about pierre and his ties to the NSA/CIA/State dept, or let him be and read his version of what is being released?
Again, where is the evidence that he’s spent anything except on the people who hold OUR secrets?
It’s so much easier to not worry about what your billionaire savior is doing with his billions.
“at least pierre lets us watch some of his stuff films, it’s better than not knowing that he likes to kill people.”
John Temple, who is basically the managing editor, confirmed what Ames has been saying all along in the New York Magazine story (emphasis mine):
Temple says there is no incongruity between Omidyar’s communitarian ideals and his financing of an insurgency. “It’s not all about civility…He wants to aggregate to himself the power to declassify and to bring about the “greater good,” as he defines it.
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/10/pierre-omidyar-first-look-media.html
The writer means “arrogate” not “aggregate.” This feels like the flaw of a copyist, to me; I wonder if he’s paraphrasing somebody else.
I think you are jumping to conclusions here–it’s way to early to make out what happened. You seem to be siding with Taibbi for reasons unknown. This reaction is too quick, unless you have some special knowledge of the situation that you aren’t telling us.
I’ve noticed that posters here have tended to be hostile to Omydiar and Greenwald in particular. I see little reason to be so critical of Omydiar simply because he is a billionaire. But remember this–if we are to have a progressive revival in political terms we have to recruit people with power and those people live in the community of the very wealthy. If you don’t have some relationship with the baronial powers you have nothing–we are in a post-democratic, post-Constitutional and post-rule-of-law moment. I’ve seen a lot of sniping at Omydiar from the left over the past year and I have yet to see a truly rational reason for it. I think a better way would be to wait and see and seek alliances not conflicts.
As commenter Hugh always points out, it is incredibly dubious to posit that a single person can create a billion dollars worth of value. People don’t ascend to that rank with only incidental relationships with the baronial powers.
Maybe you’re right, but even if you are it’ll be a hell of a bumpy road.
this is spot on. no expansion of freedoms or rights has ever come without the support of people in the benefiting class short of a full-blown revolution. blacks would still be slaves if it wasn’t for whites campaigning against the evils of slavery, for example, and the civil rights movement would have gotten nowhere without the support of, for another example, hollywood.
furthermore, yves’ analysis in this case comes with a heavy a priori bias and is more speculative than her normal analyses. for example, it is unsupported by anything from the taibbi camp. in particular, this part:
“Now, if Taibbi’s behavior were so objectionable that it warranted action, the right action would not be a demotion. It would be to fire him.”
it seems to me that Taibbi was suspended pending an investigation which seems a perfectly reasonable thing to do. Taibbi thought the whole charge was bogus and demanded that it wouldn’t be entertained and set an ultimatum. while the investigation came to the conclusion that he was right, they did not unsuspend him while it was pending. again, that seems to be a reasonable thing to do. i’m sure the situation could have been handled better but i see no evidence of sleaze or bad will.
i will also say this, if anyone is deserving of the benefit of the doubt it is greenwald, poitras and scahill. the three have repeatedly put themselves in danger to shine light on the truth. i find it especially ironic that most of the attacks coming against them are coming from pando, which lest anyone forget is owned by on-the-record NSA supporters and VC glibertarian squillionnaires marc andreesson and peter thiel.
Well, count me as ‘hostile to Pierre’ and somewhat hostile to Greenwald.
For instance, this, as I said up yonder. And you may not know of Pierre’s contributions to USAID and enter UA, both of which are dedicated to ‘democracy for some (1%-ers).
http://rt.com/usa/158976-greenwald-anonymous-paypal-pastebin/
Personally, I’m a WikiLeaks fan, and was sincerely amused to see this Tweet:
WikiLeaksVerified account @wikileaks
How Obama linked billionaire Omidyar led to 98% of Snowden docs being unreleased http://interc.pt/10ChJT0 See: https://wikileaks.org/WikiLeaks-statement-on-the-mass.html …
https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/528188591613415425
But I do admire your advice to not rush to conclusions, in any event, Banger.
Politics is about building social relationships, strong relations with strong people who are all interested in power. A good alliance is not about good and evil, lesser evils or any other left over theological thinking. A good alliance is getting enough people working in concert to to get what they want in the face of organized opposition. Joining with people you detest is something done everyday by people who want to accomplish things in the policy arena. If you haven’t come to the conclusion that most of the people, if not all of the people on this site are powerless, due to their inability to achieve even small political victories, you aren’t getting the real meaning of all of the back biting, denouncing, bitter attacks on unprosecuted banksters and against people that do not end every post with Delenda Est Obama, then you are missing how helpless most people feel in the face of daily events on a global and national scale. The powerless need the powerful who are willing to do something to materially progress their status in the social order. This will be done at the expense of some other powerful, wealthy group, but nothing will be done at all without building an alliance of the powerful and the dominated to work towards a set of worthwhile common interests that together will overcome ANY other organized opposition. When you see one billionaire fighting for gun control with millions of dollars and another fighting to further environmental laws to rein in carbon emissions, if you want to dominant those policy battles, you join them on those fronts and not spend all of your time pointing out that they are just rich guys who are just rich guys, trying to co-opt, blunt divert or strangle really real change. Like minded people need to work together even if they are unequal in wealth.
This is complete BS in this case. Pierre, through ON, has a very long history of working within the MIC on a global scale. He now has the only people who have access to our secrets defending him.
What are the chances that if pierre’s name came up in a “secret” that it would be published? What about pierre’s firends?
Yes, in some cases making alliances makes sense. This case is not one of them.
What happened to all that material? At last count less than 5% had been released, and a lot of what was released was redacted.
Building alliances is not an end in itself, unless you are pierre and trying to co-opt real dissent.
Your comments are always good reads. However, I take exception to this:
“But remember this–if we are to have a progressive revival in political terms we have to recruit people with power and those people live in the community of the very wealthy. ”
The notion that only the very wealthy have and can have power is part of the problem. Part of the ‘kool-aid’ if you will. All the voter suppression laws recently enacted in the US show very clearly that wealth alone isn’t a guarantee of power, and that the wealthy interests are well aware of that fact.
+100
‘If you can’t beat ’em and they won”t let you join ’em, just convince a few of the more socially conscious among them…’
I don’t think so somehow. Whatever change can be made to improve our lot, it needs to be sui generis so that the ‘if we can’t beat em join em’ conundrum is a problem not for us but for the 1%.
While Banger is not suggesting the rich and powerful are sufficient he does appear to be inferring that they are necessary. I disagree.
Ralph Nader: “Only the Rich Can Save Us”; hmmmm.
If only the rich can save us then we are fu*ked.
Splits in the ruling class are to be encouraged, surely we can agree? Lafayette, 1789, and so forth.
Elizabeth Janeway:
He didn’t say “only.”
“I’ve seen a lot of sniping at Omydiar from the left over the past year and I have yet to see a truly rational reason for it. I think a better way would be to wait and see and seek alliances not conflicts.”
Are you suggesting that Omidyar has just been a “useful-idiot” of the “deep-state”? Have you noticed the attenuation of some of the more forceful, bold and vibrant voices in recent times? Can you honestly believe that this has all been coincidental…or maybe incidental?
IIRC, wasn’t Greenwald a founder of a group whose expressed intention was to provide financial support to journalists doing “real” journalism? Couldn’t some of Pierre’s’ money been used to support “real” journalist, already doing excellent work, with already existing platforms (e.g. NC)? From my POV, any claims to altruistic intentions without addressing this are mute. I’m grateful that Yves was not seduced to joining, what from my POV seems like a huffy puffy wannabe.
I would certainly welcome a lot more of this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VwcpOithag0
Then you aren’t looking very hard. https://www.nsfwcorp.com/dispatch/extraordinary-pierre-omidyar/
Omidyar is a piece of sh*t. Those of us who don’t fetishize the rich and powerful have no difficulty seeing reasons to “snipe” at this guy.
Seeking the help of billionaire patrons to invest in activities which go against the class interests of billionaires is certainly one theory of what to do.
Mass leaderless resistance in various forms is another theory of what to do.
Both theories can be tried by their separate theory-action groups. Results can be compared and contrasted.
It would be narcissistic of any one theory-action group to demand that people submit to the dictates of that one theory-action group before it tests out its theories with actions and lets others view and judge the results.
Please tell me what conclusions I’m jumping to. That’s a drive-by attack with no support for your assertion.
1. It is UTTERLY unheard of for employees or journalist to issue a piece like that. That’s factual. Even the New York Times today raised an eyebrow over the story.
2. NY Magazine’s piece on Omidyar comes out this Sunday
3. The article does not resolve the question of editorial meddling. I stated I hope the NY Mag story would.
4. The inclusion of the alllegations of the female staffer was unwarranted. The managing editor walked that part WAY WAY back, a de facto admission that including it was inappropriate. It would be sufficient to have said at most that the higher ups were deeply disturbed by complaints from his team about how he was managing them.
After reading the 4 links above to the Mark Ames pieces I also see no reason to be critical of Omidyar “simply because he is a billionaira” but I see lots of reasons to be critical of him because of many of the ways he chooses to spend/invests those billions. I am also very sceptical of his free market/profit philosophy of do-gooderism (is that a legitimate word? :).
I also do not see Yves jumping to any conclusions. She appears to be summarizing the “what is known so far” based on her personnal experience as well as the personnal experience of many of us that work in large Corporate environments, particularly the issue of the unnamed staffer and that staffer’s complaint regarding “sexual harrasment”.
Overall, after reading the Ames pieces, as well as waiting for a very long time to see Taibbi in print again, it seems, on the face of all this, that Omidyar and his managers were definitely attempting to muzzle Taibbi to some degree at the very least.
As for the editorial comments of Greenwald, Scahill, et. al. it looks to me like it is more of a justification of why they are sticking around and not a direct hit on Taibbi.
oligarchs in the original (real) progressive era were anathema to progressives, Debs, Sinclair, etc.
We don’t need Clintons coopting a movement. We need discipline, independence and theory.
We’re missing the updates to the hit piece where Alex Pareene contradicts the entire story and stands up for Taibbi. Guess he won’t be at First Look very long either….
Taibbi is returning to Rolling Stone. Good.
Yes, many believe that. For some reason.
~
Maybe that was always the plan. Maybe Rolling Stone planted Taibbi there as mole to destroy a potential competitor.
sweet.
Oh really? This is not a trick? I should have read down this far before commenting up above.
So Taibbi stole my idea of returning to Rolling Stone before I even had the idea? Good. Very good.
That’s called the parallelism of great minds.
The best take I’ve seen of this is Racket and back and forth with “Pierre” et all was to take Matt off the playing court before elections. Imagine what he’d have cooked up for release about now??????
I don’t think there was any grand plot here. Omidyar was collecting marquee journalists the way other rich men collect paintings. He didn’t care about whether what he did had a negative impact on them, merely about his interest.
From the Great Gatsby:
They were careless people, Tom and Daisy–they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back to their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made…
For me, the key sentence in The Intercept’s explanation is this:
I don’t know if Taibbi was naive about Silicon Valley’s ethos and structure when he joined FirstLook. Perhaps he thought, as many do, that Silicon Valley is about libertarianism and “disruption.” Yet despite S.V.’s supposed “libertarianism,” Big Tech is cozily in bed with Wall Street and the government. It is just one more arm of the Vampire Squid that Taibbi has written about.
Taibbi has perhaps discovered what many of us who work in the healthcare industry know: that MBA managers and technocrats are running the show now. I’m glad Taibbi is free now and will go back to Rolling Stone. We need him to expose more of the corruption. I’m not so sure he could have done that effectively at FirstLook with technocratic managers overriding and micro-managing his decisions.
Interesting that the “let’s be fair”, “let’s just wait”, and “we’ve got to compromise with power” people in this thread do not now and never have extended the same rationalizations to Obama. In fact, they disdain anyone who does. But after a year of “big revelations coming soon!!!!” hogwash from Greenwald et al. we are all supposed to imagine that he’s just powerless (like a certain someone we talk about around here) so we should “give him time” to, I don’t know, type? It’s all completely fishy to me.
Talking about power politics is verboten.
“wait and see” and “we’ve got to compromise with power”, that’s how change happens. Sure.
Time and money folks, that’s all it takes. He’s got the money, he’s just biding his time now.
Greenwald himself has always been a proponent of skepticism including journalists. Why would Greenwald have a get off free card? And his public exclamations that Omydiar, and Omydiar’s peccadilloes – such as financial interests in Ukraine, have no influence over his reporting make a very dull ring. Greenwald’s reporting at Salon and the Guardian often raised questions about the environment people worked in. Story after story brought up the fact that so and so previously worked for scumbag company or boss x, y or z. Again, why would the same criteria not be applied to Greenwald?
I’m pretty sure RS is not some freewheeling libertarian organization. They’ve been around and successful for too long. I doubt was that naive – or idealistic – which might be why he left. Didn’t want to twist himself into a pretzel to accommodate Omidyear’s whims and who might have underestimated Taibbi. Arianna is probably smirking, uh, smiling at the amateurs.
There’s something to be said for an actual masthead with reasonably well-defined roles known by the industry and tested over time, as opposed to a freewheeling cluster of MBAs treating a publication as some kinda startup (and not being very productive, either).
” Yet despite S.V.’s supposed “libertarianism,” Big Tech is cozily in bed with Wall Street and the government.”
Exactly. What is Omidyar without Wall Street? Nothing.
That was my takeaway as well. From reading the linked article, there seems to have been a pretty major cultural gap that needed bridging, and a common theme from nearly all accounts is that management wasn’t really up to the job of doing that. Which is also kind of obvious if you look at the outcome. They seem to have been under the impression that you can manage journalists like a software project, which strikes me as a recipe for disaster.
There also seems to have been a bit of naivety on the part of the journalists:
When First Look was launched last October, it was grounded in two principles: one journalistic, the other organizational. First, journalists would enjoy absolute editorial freedom and journalistic independence. Second, the newsroom would avoid rigid top-down hierarchies and instead would be driven by the journalists and their stories.
But First Look and the editorial staff it hired quickly learned that it is much easier to talk about such high-minded, abstract principles than it is to construct an organization around them.
This sounds very much like the “just get all the damn managers out of the way and everything will be great” school of thought. But it’s not that simple. Enterprises of this size don’t self-organize. Some management is always required, and (as decades of Dilbert strips attest) it’s not always easy to do well, even in much less challenging contexts than this one.
take no prisoners Mr Taibbi…our generations george seldes…go for it…you are not alone….
Matt is simply too good to be out of action for long. Hopefully he and Rolling Stone will forge a new agreement that gets Matt back where he belongs — contemptuously ridiculing the obscenely corrupt who truly deserve it.
“That means that the row over the female staffer was trumped up charges.”
Important to remember they were trumped up by the staffer, not by the management. So how long will she remain on payroll?
it certainly looks like matt taibbi got himself enwrapped in the tentacles of one of those “great vampire squids”.
luckily he seems to have gotten out alive… and won’t be fooled again…
I’m reading this thread and “Shark Tank” is on the squawk box downstairs. If Greenwald walked on that stage with Taibbi and gushed about starting up a hard hitting digital mag, one would get you a century they wouldn’t all pass on it. It’s like so many shows these days. By the time I click on it, they’ve already had the group hug.
I’m with those who miss Taibbi’s reporting. How much was it worth to how many people to keep him sidelined for a year? And why keep him silenced for a year? It doesn’t make sense to me unless it was as you say on NC, “a feature.”
I don’t think keeping Taibbi on ice was a plan. See this comment:
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2014/10/slugfest-taibbi-exodus-first-look-fails-address-editorial-meddling-doubts.html#comment-2345761
One wonders if there isn’t a “Trading Places” bet between billionaires about whether they could get some of the planets best journalistic talent to sell out. Mortimer, you can pay me my one dollar now.
Playing with people’s lives – check
Reduce the amount of public analysis during the next round of fascist voting rituals – check
Plant some evidence, slime up someone who is clean, and draft Alfred E Neumann press releases – check
Agnotological Distraction – check
Recoup money from other billionaires in next venture – pending
I hate those guys (Dean Wormer)
I’m just happy that I will once again be able to read Taibbi over at Rolling Stone. I’ve really missed his machete pen.
So what will be the fate of The Intercept and First Look now that Taibbi is gone, and with the unnecessary acrimonious piece by Greenwald et alia which — while attempting to taint Taibbi — has now tainted its own brand? (Notice that Taibbi is being quiet probably due to a non-disclosure agreement.) There’s really only one “star” journalist left there, so it’s doubtful that the magazine can attract talent after this publicized fiasco.
Prior to this, was The Intercept garnering much attention? Its viewership wasn’t all that great from what some commenters at other sites have said, and it wasn’t a well-known publication. Alexa ranks it at 3,917 in the U.S. In comparison, Rolling Stone ranks 420, and the *Washington Post ranks 60.
Other commenters elsewhere have pointed out that only 5% of the NSA materials have been released, and pertinent articles aren’t released often. The revelations that have been released aren’t exactly revelations. Even if they were, no one seems to be paying attention. There’s more of a collective yawn. Greenwald may have had more impact when he was at The Guardian.
The most effective place for Taibbi is in a mainstream publication like RS which can reach most ordinary Americans. Whether we liked him or not, his pieces there became well-known and widely read.
*Omidyar had an opportunity to buy the Washington Post a year ago, and turned it down so he could create a new journalism and “disrupt” the old style of journalism. This venture doesn’t appear to have been a success and now could become increasingly irrelevant. Its main attraction was having “star” journalists on board, and now there’s only one left.