Everything is about rich people because they’re the ones writing the checks
More evidence of trickle-up economics
Yesterday, Emily Sundberg wrote in Feed Me that she’s noticed the “obsession with wealth and power” at New York media companies was becoming “more explicit”, pointing to the Wall Street Journal hiring a “Power and Culture” reporter, and a new food media startup called Caper describing itself as covering the “people, money, power, creativity, ambition, and chaos that fuels the food world”. This is obviously a very funny observation to make in a newsletter primarily about what rich people in New York and California do with their money. I’m not a hater, to be clear. I read Feed Me every day—I think consumer culture trickles down, so as someone who thinks and writes a lot about what the 99 percent does with their money, I find it quite useful. Also, I’m nosy. New York’s trendiest restaurants are not in my regular budget (yet….) but they’re fun to read about!
In any case, I think she’s onto something here. In theory, this could be good for the public—we have a right to know what rich people are doing because they are very powerful and their decisions affect the rest of us. In practice, these are all “access journalism” ventures mostly designed to flatter the vanities of the ultra-wealthy. Reporting is, famously, not a profitable venture, but stroking the egos of billionaires is a great way to mint money.
My hunch is that media execs are responding to the same pressures of the ”free market” as everyone else. The top ten percent of U.S. households make up almost half of all consumer spending, and everything is designed and priced accordingly. It’s why flying economy is a more and more torturous endeavor unless you pay for a bunch of extras that used to be included in the price of a ticket, but flying first class is still a pretty sweet deal. It’s why every day a dozen new restaurants with with small plates that are $30 each open up in New York, but we don’t have any affordable grocery stores in a lot of neighborhoods. You can make a lot of money selling a premium product to wealthy consumers, and that includes the news. Why focus your coverage on what the unwashed masses need to know to participate in democracy when you can give the world’s wealthiest people a gossip column about their friends instead? They’re the ones writing the checks!
I keep noticing that the Bay Area suddenly has all these new media companies—the SF Standard, TBPN (technically they’re in Los Angeles, but that doesn’t seem to have any bearing on their content), Reboot. I am willing to admit there’s some algorithmic bias here; I am interested in the tech industry as an intellectual fascination, and its potential for both good and bad (against all odds I still believe tech could be a force for good if they tried!), so naturally I click on a lot of AI-related links and my feeds respond accordingly. But this still seems like a shift away from New York City as a locus of the media industry. Perhaps this is because there’s a lot of new money in San Francisco, and all kinds of moneymaking ventures sprout up around gold rushes. But there are enough people covering what Pacific Heights’ multi-millionaires are doing. To me, the more interesting story is how the AI revolution affects the Bay Area’s teachers, nurses, baristas, public sector workers, households that make under six figures—what some would call the “permanent underclass”. (I hate that term so much.) I’d like to visit sometime this year. I just want to see what’s going on over there.
This all seems more relevant in light of today’s massive Washington Post layoffs, which are a real tragedy for the industry. I don’t really understand how we’re supposed to have a society without newspapers, but it appears that America’s billionaires are trying their best to speed-run that future. MacKenzie Scott could do something about that right now and become a legend forever if she wanted to. Does anyone know how to get her attention?
If you were just laid off at the Washington Post or any other media company, here’s a spreadsheet of jobs that are hiring. All credit to the Washington Association of Black Journalists, who compiled this list. This is an ongoing project, so if you happen to be hiring or know of any jobs, you should DM them!
Trump border czar Tom Homan is pulling 700 federal agents out of Minnesota. That’s only a quarter of the number of officers occupying the state, so the Twin Cities—home to some of the bravest, most principled people in this entire country—is not yet in the clear. My friend Gaby Del Valle was in Minneapolis last week reporting on what’s been going on there, and she talked to a man who was detained for protesting at the site of Alex Pretti’s murder. You can read the interview here.
Google is doubling its AI spending to as much as $185 billion. I still have yet to meet anyone in real life who uses Gemini for anything.
Becca Rothfeld, thankfully, has a new job lined up. I’m really sad about the Post but I’m especially devastated about its book section, which had some of the best criticism of any major paper. Reading book reviews was how I learned about the existence of so many wonderful books when I was a teenager, and I didn’t really come from a household big on reading so I don’t know how I would have learned about them otherwise. It makes me sad that there are fewer and fewer outlets for incisive and thoughtful book coverage. I’m sure there are plenty of young people out there who are like me, who will not get the chance to read some really great books because no one is writing about them professionally.
Kathy Hochul has tapped Adrienne Adams to be her running mate. Congratulations to Adrienne Adams on becoming the next Lieutenant Governor of New York, since there is approximately a zero percent chance that Antonio Delgado wins this primary, and a bill passed last year has eliminated the lieutenant governor primary. It’s really a shame that he’s not running a real campaign for governor. There was plenty of room for a real progressive challenger to keep Kathy on her toes, but I suppose Zohran is doing that all on his own. The DSA Difference™ in action!
A new Nancy Meyers movie! What we really need in these trying times is a moving romantic comedy with plenty of scenes set in a beautiful, tastefully decorated million-dollar house. I mean this completely seriously and without a trace of irony. Rich people’s homes are so ugly these days and someone needs to stage an immediate cultural intervention. Bring back FIREPLACES! COMFORTABLE COUCHES!
I’m struggling to define my own personal line between wanting to know what’s going on in the world of power/culture/the uber rich and feeling like a lot of this coverage of it is distinctly uncritical in a way I’m feeling less and less comfortable with. Lately it feels like the uber rich (and those who aspire to be) have let their guards down in terms of any kind of humility or acknowledgement of privilege. Maybe that was always performative to begin with, but man is it jarring to see interspersed with ICE raids, an abysmal job market, Venezuela, Greenland, [gestures vaguely at it all].