Behind the Blog: Overhyped Tech and Valuing Journalism

This is Behind the Blog, where we share our behind-the-scenes thoughts about how a few of our top stories of the week came together. This week, we discuss journalism that has value, the business ballgame, and soft AI boosters.

SAM: We’ve gotten a lot of press since launching, all of it very good and charitable and optimistic, including this article that came out in the Columbia Journalism Review yesterday. In it, a journalism professor says, “The best journalists in the world may not know anything about running a company. It’s a much different ballgame when you are talking about keeping on the lights, as opposed to making sure your FOIA doesn’t go years and years without an answer.” 

I don’t know anything about what goes on in J-school, and am not about to start that conversation, because it’s long and boring once it gets rolling. I didn’t go to one and neither did any of my co-founders. 

I talked for a while with the journalist who wrote the CJR story about how it is a “different ballgame,” and how it’s been a challenge and a learning opportunity to juggle business admin stuff—which I have very little experience with; Jason and Emanuel blessedly have more—alongside daily reporting. I never thought I’d own part of a business, and it wasn’t necessarily a dream of mine. And if the state of the industry wasn’t so absolute shit, and I didn’t believe in this being one of very few ways to keep journalism alive and journalists thriving, and if I didn’t have the other three to do this with... I would never have imagined doing it. 

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