Category Archives: Media

Why I Am Leaving Company X

Posted by under Business, Culture, Internet, Journalism, Media, Pop Culture

In the last 24 hours there has been a firestorm created around a NY Times Op-Ed titled “Why I Am Leaving Goldman Sachs.”

The article itself is a great read, but so are all the other reactions.

There are two reasons this is really interesting. The first is that the original article spawned a series of parody articles. In the past 24 hours this has hit full on meme status. But I can’t help but wonder if this is seriously taking away from the original article. It’s almost trivializing the original article’s substance, but at the same time it is getting people talking about it more.

The other interesting aspect is the article itself. It’s not a good sign when any former employee publicly rips on every aspect of a company’s culture and business. It’s even worse when that person is a really high level employee. I was surprised that Goldman Sach’s response was so soft. I was also surprised it didn’t attempt to resort to ad hominem attacks. They basically just reassert how great they are and how much money they pay their employees.

Interesting stuff to think about and worth reading more into as this continues to unfold.

Do evidence and reason no longer matter?

Posted by under Media

Some academics recently released a study regarding online piracy and box office returns. The results are interesting.

In a paper titled ‘Reel Piracy: The Effect of Online Film Piracy on International Box Office Sales’ researchers from the University of Minnesota and Wellesley College examine the link between BitTorrent piracy and box office returns. As hypothesized, they find that international movie piracy losses are directly linked to the delay between US and foreign premieres.

Does this mean that the MPAA is going to suddenly give up their wildly unpopular legislation and instead change their business practices to solve the piracy “problem?” It seems unlikely.

So why don’t evidence and reason seem to matter anymore? In every segment of society there are examples of people doing things despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. There is a state funded creationism museum and there are parent groups advocating the dangers of wi-fi to their kids health. The list is endless. What is wrong with people?

My theory: there have always been people like this out there and there always will be. They are just made easier to notice in our increasingly interconnected world.

The Rise of Longform Web Journalism

Posted by under Internet, Journalism, Media

Every year Nick Denton (the guy who built Gawker and turned it into a $300m media empire) puts out a memo about the state of journalism and publishing on the web. It’s always interesting to see what someone at the forefront of an industry is seeing and this year’s memo is no different.

Absent from the memo is much talk about longform web journalism. Over the past few years this category has developed into more of a cohesive writing form. Instead of pithy blog entries of only two or three articles, longform has embraced articles that routinely take thirty to forty minutes or more to read. Here are some examples of some good ones I’ve read in the past week or two.

Longform is great for a couple of reasons. It’s interesting and intellectually much more stimulating than a lot of other web content. I love having a cache of long interesting pieces to choose from if I don’t feel like reading my book on my commute every morning. Most importantly, it is legitimizing the idea of “reading stuff on the internet.”

While Denton’s memo points out a lot of other interesting trends, I think longform is definitely one you should look into if you’re not already aware of it. Two great resources to finding articles are Longform.org and Give Me Something to Read.