Matt Taibbi

i know they have an HBO show and they do some good foreign affairs footage as of late imo, but what is the huge business? this is probably just not my world of young ppl i'm imagining bc they seem like smaller than buzzfeed to me.

― Mordy, Wednesday, October 29, 2014 2:43 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

It's valued at like $2.5 billion and they may do an IPO soon. They're supposed to break $500 million in revenue this year. Rupert Murdoch owns a stake.

Yeah, I'd assume that if the CIA was in the business of influencing news outlets, Vice would be fairly high on the list for the same reason that Murdoch sank $70m into it. Even if it doesn't make any financial sense (and it may not) it's the kind of thing that people think is important in the post-print media landscape, etc.

But all actions we might consider “imperial” are not equal, as Bady argued. When Gadhafi invests in infrastructure in Chad — even though it seems like a dick move to have it bear his name — it is still an anti-imperialist action. When Chávez funds political movements in Bolivia — even though they serve to reinforce his influence on the continent — this is still anti-imperialist action. This is because all of this is done in the face of the biggest imperial force: The West, The Empire. Washington and its closest, most murderous allies such as the UK and France are omnipresent, their roots snaking through the soils and breaking the pavements of almost literally every single country on the face of the earth. The kind of left that equates Russian state funding of RT America with Soros funding of “civil society” organizations in Georgia is not serious about even talking in opposition to the ideology that allows the West to remain astride the world’s peoples.

i admit there was a time in my life that this paragraph would've gotten me really hot

pando is worthless and i occasionally thought nsfwcorp would be less than worthless but it always disappoints

ames has written some first-rate stuff about the history of the nsa and john dolan is consistently great. but i kinda gave up checking back on that site more than once a month because of their obsession with discrediting greenwald and co. feels like a microcosm of the condition of the u.s. left -- two factions who basically agree with each other on almost everything but can't stand each other for reasons so convoluted even regular readers can't understand them. would still take either pando or intercept over counterpunch, which has totally gone off the rails, seems like half the ppl writing for them are militia-nut libertarians.

& pando has Thiel money, is that right? So their position is… 'we take libertarian billionaire money but we're upfront about it, and we're critical of our billionaire sometimes?'

counterpunch still has the most journos i can trust.

ames just seems to overpromise his stunning revelations and rarely pays off, so now i don't feel he's worth the effort.

pando is hardly 'left' in any sense. its a silicon-valley libertarian-leaning insular trade-mag for the startup scene. basically a next gen wall st journal for the sf tech scene.

That Silicon Valley strain of young plutocrats is gonna become its own mini Koch propaganda industry.

Pando hasn't taken any money from Thiel in a while and have said there was always a clear understanding that investment could not buy editorial influence, though they have come down hard on people with more tangential links to billionaires than that.

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/10/30/inside-story-matt-taibbis-departure-first-look-media

^^ what a mess

Yep. It was pretty much sold as a hands-off project for Omidyar at the start but spending a quarter of a billion dollars to let Matt Taibbi write what he wanted never exactly added up.

I applaud the Intercepts transparency about all this, but do wonder if Omidyar won't just pull the plug soon because of all this.

I don't know a lot about the man, but seeing to taxi receipts etc when you injected $ 250 million into a new media company... I don't know. Is he that bored?

who would have guessed that taibbi would be hard to work for, total shock

Here's a relevant blast from the past:

http://observer.com/2000/06/from-russia-with-lust/

letting taibbi write what he wanted is one thing, but -- at least given his public persona -- making him a manager seems like a poor decision by both sides

also, a lede somewhat buried:

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.

No question Taibbi is difficult to work with probably, but the same probably goes for Greenwald and more Intercepters. What I find remarkable is that they use Taibbi's departure to openly criticize Omidyar, and they're not trying to do it subtly either.

I have to say that as much as I love Taibbi's writing, it would not surprise me at all to discover the complaint had merit.

XXp that is indeed somewhat buried

Wonder if Jay Rosen jumped ship at First Look because of this too. He left a couple of weeks ago, supposedly because there was "nothing to do" for him.

The Intercept piece is positioning it as a dispute over corporate culture rather than a far more damaging issue of editorial interference.

well sure but what it doesn't say is that the colleagues that matt was abusing were CIA plants

just skipped to p4reene's endnote

the strange death of liberal bloggers

On a Saturday night in May, Mark Ames and Matt Taibbi were drinking Pepsi and smoking American Spirits in a one-bedroom apartment in a high-rise near Times Square. They took turns leaning over a plastic compact disc case, snorting lines of speed.

i enjoy reading taibbi but no fucking way would i enjoy working with much less for him

can't tell if this was a d-bag move by Greenwald et. al. putting out all this stuff about Taibbi and making themselves look like the reasonable good kids, or that they knew First Look would leak the accusations against Taibbi and wanted to get in first with a more accurate version of events.

There's going to be an NY Mag 'expose' over the weekend, aiui, and this is getting their side of the story out first.

well hey this has kept taibbi and pareene quiet in the run-up to the 2014 midterms -- good show, pierre!

cld tell this thing was gonna be a shit show by how they were calling it a "digital magazine"

A "digital magazine" sounds like a place you'd go to read articles about Atari Teenage Riot

amazing how lingo tells you guys everything you need to know

sorta like "Hope" i guess

wld hope so

now you reminded me of hope partlow!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9qBziX7ugc

@pareene
A person had an issue with Matt. That person is in no way responsible for this outcome. Competent management would've resolved it easily.

@pareene
Finally, I want to make one thing clear: Actually this is about ethics in games journalism

curious how taibbi/pareene are going to cover the republican congress

with a fire blanket

sounds to me like First Look decided to put all their eggs in the Intercept basket and found some reasons to push Taibbi out

burning hot take

oh thanks! where can I pick up my ILE Pulitzer?

just click the flag post link next to yr name

My name is not Permalink

wow rude

with a fire blanket

and bucket of water hopefully

and . . . he's back!

http://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/oct/31/matt-taibbi-rolling-stone-first-look-media

http://racketteen.tumblr.com

Vanity Fair's Sarah Ellison:

Confirmed. @johnjcook leaving @intercept to return to @Gawker. Please DM or email me any news or tips.

huh wow this shit goin down in flame