Fuck You, The Rude Press Isn't Dead

One of the more annoying consequences of getting older is that you end up hearing the same complaints recycled every 15 years by a new generation of dumbstruck whiners. "Oh, woe is me," they complain. "Our way of life has disappeared and my world will suck forever." Luckily, these realizations are almost always wrong. Unfortunately, they're generally not done quietly.

The apparent end of Deadspin has spawned a number of hot takes this week arguing that the type of modern-day gonzo journalism practiced by that outlet's best writers has been wiped off of the face of the internet by a mix of private equity funds and programmatic advertising. Deadspin is certainly worth celebrating and they had a staff of extremely gifted and sometimes prickly journalists. But despite what you might have heard, the clusterfuck that was Deadspin does not mark the end of aggressive publications publishing writers won't don't give a damn about the powerful.

Today's entry in the "that's it, we're doomed" genre of journalism comes from Alex Pareene in the New Republic, who weighs in with a story headlined "The Death Of The Rude Press." In the piece, Pareene lumps the journalistic strip-mining at Deadspin with the collapse of alt-weeklies and other alternative outlets of journalism:

But writers whose insufficient deference to power rendered them unemployable by The New York Times still had, until recently, hope of finding employment elsewhere. When I was growing up, every major American metro area had both a polite press—the local dailies—and a rude one: the alt-weeklies. The alt-weeklies were funded by advertisers the family-friendly media wanted nothing to do with. Craigslist put a large dent in that revenue (and the government has now effectively banned much of it), and Facebook vacuumed up the rest of it, leading to the alternative press’ rapid decline. But it was not merely the market speaking: In the end, many of these publications were also simply killed by rich idiot owners or corporations that routinely purchase publications and ruin them out of both greed and incompetence. And so we (mostly) don’t have alt-weeklies anymore.

While there is truth to this (and journalism as an industry is certainly struggling right now), it's also the case that these extinction-level events happen on a regular basis. Industries falter, job categories disappear and there will be times in your career when you'll feel about as useful as a paddle-boat captain after the rise of the transcontinental railroads. The first time it happens, you'll feel adrift and certain life has sentenced you to a long and financially insolvent career in retail. But if you're lucky, you lick your wounds and find a new way onwards.

I'm so old that the first money I made in journalism was publishing a bootleg zine devoted to the "real story" of what happened at my high school in Southern Indiana. I've lived through the death of zines, the end of most live radio DJ's, the collapse of the stand-up comedy boom, the radio consolidation that wiped away most talk radio jobs, the disappearance of most smaller print magazines, the near end of newspapers, and the evaporation of more than one digital news site. And tbh, I'm sure I've missed a few more career changes along the way.

I am not going to lie, all of this change is more than just jarring to the soul. It can alter the trajectory of your life. I've had times when I was $10 away from being homeless. At one point my marriage was just hanging on by the flimsiest of  threads and I've lived through days when I probably would have killed myself if I had been able to scrape together the ambition to get off of my couch. I've lived in more than a dozen cities and in more rental apartments than I can count.

I'm not minimizing the horrific changes we're going through in journalism. When I say that I know what the writers at places like Deadspin are going through, I really am familiar with that level of anger at your bosses that burns in the depth of your soul like a rancid sun. But things aren't as bleak or as simple as Pareene describes in this paragraph about blogs:

Unfortunately, for all the early aughts talk of blogs taking over the world, the era of independent blogs turned out to be a brief one, and attempts to professionalize the blogging genre required stamping the iconoclasm out of it. To give one example: Web portals like Yahoo and MSN make content licensing deals with publishers like the former GMG, splitting ad revenue on stories they republish for their still-massive audiences. Splinter had such a deal with Yahoo—until, after Yahoo repeatedly complained about headlines containing swear words, the portal ended the arrangement. Deadspin had similar problems. At one point, according to a former employee, MSN began adding “OPINION” to every Deadspin headline, until GMG asked the company to stop doing so without permission. A news outlet cannot have a distinct point of view and be given the same privileges as the ones that don’t.

Fuck you. First of all, while they weren't mainstream media companies like Buzzfeed, Splinter and Deadspin aren't "blogs" in the traditional sense. They are (were) small media companies. There are still a few independent blogs around - hey, you're reading one right now. But you know the biggest reason why there aren't more of them. They're hard. 

I didn't launch this site because I thought to myself, "You know, I'd like to work 70-hour weeks and wake up every morning feeling like my guts have been nibbled on by angry wolverines." I did it because it was my only option. I was an out-of-work 50-something journalist who had a resume one recruiter had described to me sadly as "eclectic." It became clear to me that either I was going to spend my remaining years telling strangers "Thanks for visiting Walmart," or I was going to carve out my own unique destiny.

AllYourScreens isn't Deadspin-rude, but it has its moments. But I've managed to develop a mix of pieces that attracts enough of an audience to pay my bills. I make a lot more money than I ever did as a full-time mainstream digital journalist. But I also work a soul-sucking amount of hours for a guy who is now older than any of the original cast of the movie "Cocoon." 

My story might not sound like a particularly joyful ending, but I share it to know that when like strips you of everything that matters, the answer isn't to drunk tweet and write thinkpieces about how journalism is never going to be the same. 

Instead, gather up all that festering resentment and hot take-creating energy and focus it on the one that really matters. 

Becoming enough of a success that you can tell the world to fuck off.

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