Greenwald illustrates a Gnu Media problem

Unless you've been dead for 10 days, if you follow media issues, you're aware of Glenn Greenwald's temper-tantrum departure from The Intercept and his decamp to freelance journalism at Substack.

Temper-tantrum it was, and lie-based it also was. Those who know Greenwald should be shocked by neither.

This whole Greenwald claim of "but my contractual rights say no editing" is a lie. The Intercept, per this great NY Mag story, says that was ONLY true of his columns. His news stories were, are and always have been subject to editing, and mentioned previous examples. Details of that in re the proposed Hunter Biden story.

Greenwald’s main editor on the nonpolitical pieces was Peter Maass, a veteran journalist who joined The Intercept shortly after its founding in 2014. In light of the high-profile, controversial nature of Greenwald’s planned column on Hunter Biden, Reed told Greenwald that Maass would edit the column. 

On Tuesday, Maass sent a lengthy memo to Greenwald, outlining what he said were the draft’s strengths and weaknesses and suggesting that he adopt a sharper focus on media criticism rather than litigate questionable evidence of Joe Biden’s corruption based on purported documents from his son Hunter that had been published by the New York Post.

Shock me.

(At The Guardian, he was billed as a columnist, and I don't know if he wrote any straight news stories. I can't remember back to his Salon days.)

But, in any case, Glenn's belief that he was above editing, as well as above the need for editing, illustrates a problem with Gnu Media related to problems I've noted before. (And, to add to that, on YouTube with video or SoundCloud with podcasts, one can claim that anything one is throwing against the wall is a column, and I think that's the basic stance.

As an Old Media person, as managing editor of several weekly and semi-weekly papers, I've edited staff writers. And, contra this gotcha bullshit, even by his standards, from Max Blumenthal, 

The Intercept’s Betsy Reed, who earns $427,419 a year & produces zero journalism of her own, mocks independent journalists who rely on Substack & Patreon to get by. Not everyone has a reclusive billionaire to pay them huge sums to edit stuff no one reads. https://t.co/TdnjrDdinw pic.twitter.com/83FMDhpRgQ

— Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) October 30, 2020

expected to be paid more than them. 

My response, which included Max, Reed, and the person who retweeted:

Sully has said he expects to get more on Substack than at New Yorker & what he made there was more than Betsy does.
2nd, in traditional media as well as Gnu Media, editors make more than many of the reporters they supervise.
This is "gotcha" even from you Max. More #twosiderism

— Flim Flam 🚩🌻 (@AFCC_Esq) October 31, 2020

Beyond that, conveniently omitted by Max, the retweeting Aaron Maté and the re-retweeting Mona Holland, is that Reed is not just editor, but editor-in-chief. And had 16 years of various editorial experience at The Nation before that

I've also, when possible, subjected myself to some degree of at least "proofreading-plus" myself. That's both on stories AND columns, on the writing, and on layout. At my current pair of weeklies, my former office manager now ad salesperson and more looks at stories I write, my columns, obits, and a semi-regular column from a school district superintendent. She primarily looks for grammar (actually good on commas and even knows subjunctive usage!) and formatting, but will make occasional editorial suggestions.

I don't always accept them. BUT, I do normally give them due consideration.

I have joked at times that, like Pontius Pilate, "What I have written, I have written," but that's not totally true. And not just in Old Media.

At this and various other blogs in Gnu Media, I sometimes start a post a week or more in advance to give it time to percolate. Now, here, my normal schedule is once a week plus other occasionals, so, I may write in advance by several days anyway. But, at other sites, where I may blog daily, at least on weekdays, this is indeed true. I'll jot out a rough draft of a blog days, weeks, even a full month or so in advance on serious items that I think need blogging but also need an extended thought process.

Per the NY Mag piece, I think that, on some of his news stories, Glenn doesn't like to let things percolate, and he definitely doesn't like parts of the editorial process that force him to percolate.

I'll venture nobody regularly proofreads, edits or fact-checks Blumenthal, either. And, I KNOW that at least one other Gnu Media maven in his general orbit, Jordan Chariton, has refused to correct major errors on claiming many black men's deaths this summer were murders when they were indeed suicides, and at a rate not significantly different than statistical averages.