The Media and Silicon Valley Are at War
menofsteel.substack.com
menofsteel.substack.com
The author assumes that "the media" are some homogenous lump that all thinks the same and pumps out the same content.
Each media company has a target audience, and it optimises for that audience continuously. Their viewers or readers like that "property" because it's views/biases/style reflects their own.
> "The media is becoming more progressive"
that's a broad sweep. The demographic is changing and the various properties are changing to reflect that. Granted, there is some leeway in a media organisation pushing it's audience to one side of a debate or other. However it needs the audience to go with it. However there is no evidence provided that this is the case.
I think the bigger issues is that people have realised that a small number of business are increasingly becoming arbiters of _everything_. Be that Tv shows, what opinions are penalised, who can trade where and for what price. (See the backlash from Facebook's fucking stupid PR spat against apple.)
In short, I don't think the author was able to fully express their claim without making broad unsupported statements. Finally I don't think a16z's media push is going to get overly far _unless_ they provide content that people want to consume at the correct price and place.
If you want to see what I mean, just look at what happened to the "let's disrupt hollywood" Effort, which amounted to nothing. (hollywood is disrupted, but by the pandemic, disney, amazon and netflix, not a startup)
By and large it is https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentration_of_media_owner...
Well in the eyes of the "advertiser" - the money - they are indeed a homogeneous lump that sell their advertising inventory to some DSP... while Facebook/Google have extremely valuable inventory due to the data granularity.
And you might say, "oh this has nothing to do with advertising!". Let me tell you that I've witnessed the inner workings of large old media protecting some advertisers, as well as pilling up to attack tech giants.
Media and Silicon Valley are at war since the share of media budgets accelerated towards tech giants, departing from "old" media. The media started to feel the urge to compete with user generated content when faced with this reality that reflected as lower CPMs for their inventory, and started to pump content (news/opinions/etc) - the "truth" became irrelevant as long as they are the first, or have the snappier header to grab clicks.
The media is as much to blame for the status quo as any other player.
I have too, but I'll say it's very rare and built-in mechanisms of good journalistic institutions tend to prevent it.
Specially on protecting advertisers, it's very rare (sometimes even if advertiser pulls a tantrum and strips off budget).
But on the subject of attacking tech giants, if find that to be recurrent - and in the "old media" defense most of it is well deserved. Still, they pile up with some enjoyment.
But they're happy to push whatever cultural changes boost the bottom line, regardless of whether or not they're conservative.
What "demographic?"
This jumped out at me too. It's interesting that some of the reflection on the NYTimes internal changes, specifically, is credited to people coming from "tech companies".
> The insurrectionists, meanwhile, had often come from digital outlets or tech companies or advocacy groups and could imagine leaving the place at any time.
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/11/inside-the-new-york-...
By and large, they're also correct that mainstream media is moving to the left.
This is clear, if you follow media bias analyses from non-partisan sites like: https://www.allsides.com/unbiased-balanced-news
There are zillion examples of this becoming more and more true. Increasingly often, articles are written to support shared meta-narratives, regardless of what's happening in reality. From just last few days, here is NYT and CNN drawing completely idiotic parallels between r/wallstreetbets and MAGA:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/29/style/gamestop-wallstreet...
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/savingandinvesting/gamestop-...
This is borderline self-parody. The fact that several major outlets wrote something of this sort should raise red flags for anyone paying attention.
If only you knew how bad things really are.
A more nuanced take would have engaged more with the various segments of the media. On the other hand, there's a great sociological article by Kieran Healy called Fuck Nuance. As he writes:
"Nuance is not a virtue of good sociological theory. Although often demanded and superficially attractive, nuance inhibits the abstraction on which good theory depends. I describe three “nuance traps” common in sociology and show why they should be avoided on grounds of principle, aesthetics, and strategy. The argument is made without prejudice to the substantive heterogeneity of the discipline."
I believe that models at different levels of abstraction have value and that sometimes too high a resolution picture obscures useful patterns at a higher level. In this case, I think there are things that can be usefully be said about the mainstream media - in particular that there is something of a culture clash, that many journalists are struggling or went through a period of struggle to get where they are and that there is some level of jealousy towards overpaid programmers straight out of college.
-Sir Humphrey Appleby, 1986
Technology might have advanced a zillion times in the past 35 years. Media and the Press have remained largely the same.
Similarly, just because you write code and live in the greater Bay Area doesn't make you part of the "Valley," either. It usually means having wealth from investments in seed and early stage tech companies.
For a16z to create a public relations arm just means they're diverging, and the old east coast elite monopoly on granting media status is just one of the few slow moving dinosaur taboos ripe for disruption.
In other words, if I and my "adversary" are wrong, it will all sum up to being right. Right?
Let's consider a few (made up) scenarios:
A is right and B is right, but they show two different sides of the story - for example a description of hurdles of two different social groups from the insider perspective, and description of a conflict between them using that perspective. Reading both is clearly good, because your understanding of the issue is deeper than just following your bubble's narrative. So far so good.
A is wrong and B is wrong. For example A says, that if we let the tribe FOO win the election, it will cause the economical collapse, and B says that if we won't let the tribe FOO win the election, it will cause the economical collapse. Both (in this hypothetical scenario) are just putting a bogeymen to advance some narrative - you are not smarter from reading them, even more, you may truly believe either A or B and have your opinion altered by a cynical actor. Not so good, but still - you may think - since both say something completely opposite, then maybe the truth is somewhere in the middle; then you benefit from the fact, that there are two (not one) - just as you said in the parent comment.
A is right and B is wrong. Say one group says, that FOO is good for you (and it is an opinion supported by some amount of evidence, and in our artifical example it is true that FOO is good for you), but B says that it is very very bad for you - be it ignorance or cynical narrative incited by Mordor-funded trolls :-) Clearly with one source of information (that is A) we are better of.
So please let me reiterate - I'm not saying that sourcing information from multiple outlets is good (or wrong), only that saying that "averaging" the information gives you a more correct opinion seems dubious to me.
How will I get a chance to figure that out too, unless both sides are presented? Surely, I'm not just supposed to trust you, right?
You should it read it like this:
_given_ [ A is right and B is wrong ] this and that _may_ happen
with emphasis put on the word "given".
In real world are usually more than two actors and multiple mutually exclusive narratives; authors even when deliberately lying include some truth to make it more believable etc etc, my point of the previous post was that adding a new source with an agenda usually does increase the noise, but not _necessarily_ the signal.
On some stories the tech sceptical media will present the more persuasive take on other stories the tech optimists will have it.
I'd like that war to be won by the public, not media or SV. Society's means of communication and coordination should be equally open to all, under rules decided by all.
I'm not seeing how this makes sense at all.
A similar thing happened in liberal-arts academia ( and tangentially K-12 education). The slog to tenure is so horrible, that anyone who pursued critical analysis and scholarship has fled/pivoted to more rewarding industry positions. The only ones remaining are ones who care too much for the labels (Professor) or those for whom activism is a primary motivator.
Thus, institutions that cater to someone of a certain education level are quickly diverging from the expectations the said consumer has from these institutions. The activists at the institutions want to impose their dogma which is exactly what a large portion of the deserters were fleeing in the first place.
These people have been loosely referred to as 'The Grey tribe'. SSC figured this out a decade before and put in better words than I can. However, I recon there is far greater mutual resentment between the industry workers and institutional activists than is acknowledged by the media. Institutional activists hate tech, not due to moral reasons, but existential reasons. They know, that the power they wield is fickle. It is build on moral high-ground, virtue signalling and reputation. On the other hand, tech wields real power; power lend to them by money.
Why won't they fight the war in the open ? Because media is fundamentally intertwined with politics. The Democrats and Republicans have mutually alienated each other in a manner that reconciliation isn't on the horizon. Republicans win on voter turnout. Democrats rely on receiving both the captive voter (blue tribe) and most of Grey-tribe, who hate Democrats less than Republicans. An out and out moral war leaves room for Republicans to pivot towards grey-tribe favored moderation. (Unlikely, but stranger things have happened). At the end of the day, the 'prestige' media still relies on the 'prestigious'(D.C. royalty) to bestow that prestige on them. They cannot run afoul of them entirely.
IMO, the war is raging fiercer than ever. It is like two dogs who are leashed, stretching the limits of their freedom. The only reason blood hasn't been drawn, is because there are bigger masters holding the reigns (Tech - Profit motive and regulation threat. Media- Politicians and the appearance of fairness)
That also avoids them having to introspect and see how much their deference and connivence with the George W. Bush and Obama presidencies cost them in credibility. If you are going to get crap fake journalism, you might as well get the free one served by Google et al rather than pay for it.
> (Aren’t their worldviews essentially the same? No, see Freud’s Narcissism of Small Differences. What matters is proximity - both coexist within the bubble of educated professionals.)
Which set of over-educated, under-cautious, overly self-actualized, out-of-touch know-betters will lead the country to Truth (TM)? Choices choices.
Without the anti-capitalist ideology journalists popularize, with stories about 'Amazon the exploiter' for example, the laws that violate their employers' contract liberty, and consequently provide unionized journalists with above market wages and protection from competition from other workers, would not exist.
Case example, for years Vox writers published articles arguing for laws limiting the gig economy, like this one:
https://www.vox.com/2016/10/26/13349498/gig-economy-profits-...
Fast forward three years, a new anti-gig-economy law forces Vox to let go of hundreds of gig economy freelancers, thus reducing competition to the unionized journalists who agitated for the law:
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/12/16/vox-media-to-cut-hundreds-of...
Collective bargaining in a free market, where the union and employer both freely choose to engage in it, is not exploitive. Under current laws, employers can be forced to engage in collective bargaining, thus limiting their options, and making it a tool for exploitation.
"They can freely choose to engage in it. Nobody forces them to rely on wage labor."
But that's not contract liberty. If you have contract liberty, you can choose to "rely on wage labor", as you put it, without entering into collective bargaining. The laws the unions rely on restrict contract liberty, i.e. freedom of association, and they're based on socialist constructs like "wage slavery".
"Competition goes both ways, not just top down. If you choose to compete with your workers on company resources (AKA wage labor) then you deal with the consequence that these workers use their leverage just as much as you use yours if they have to."
I honestly don't understand what you're trying to say or what argument you think I'm making that this is relevant to. For example, I have no idea what this is referring to: "If you choose to compete with your workers on company resources (AKA wage labor)".
Could you 1. reiterate to me what you think my argument is, and 2. elaborate on and clarify your point so that I may better understand it?
You're misunderstanding what I'm saying.
"A company is not forced to use wage labor" does not mean "they can choose to employ workers under any kind of contract without push-back".
Competition goes both ways, not just top down. If you choose to compete with your workers on company resources (AKA wage labor) then you deal with the consequence that these workers use their leverage just as much as you use yours if they have to.
The fall of unions may not be inevitable.