With Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes working to keep The New Republic out of the obituary section, another tech star has dug deeper into journalism.
This morning, First Look Media, the journalism enterprise by Ebay founder Pierre Omidyar, announced Reported.ly, a real-time newsroom.
As Mashable reported, the creation of Reported.ly is the first publication since First Look shuttered Racket and laid off its staff. Reported.ly comes with a longish manifesto that hits all the journalism ethical high points (editorial independence, the truth matters, etc.). The company’s flagship publication is The Intercept.
Meanwhile, over at The New Republic, there has been a public brawl of words between the journalism and tech communities.
One outgoing TNR editor told the New York Times, “We don’t know what their vision is… It is Silicon Valley mumbo jumbo buzzwords that don’t mean anything.”
Hughes, in an op-ed in the Washington Post, defended his vision of a media company as far from a tech-infused fantasy:
I’ve never bought into the Silicon Valley outlook that technological progress is pre-ordained or good for everyone. I don’t share the unbridled, Panglossian optimism and casual disdain for established institutions and tradition of many technologists. New technologies and start-ups excite and animate me, but they don’t always make our lives or institutions better.
This interesting cultural divide comes at a time when more tech stars are entering journalism either as owners (Jeff Bezos) or as investors in media startups (Buzzfeed, Vox).
On his blog, Jay Rosen, who teaches journalism at New York University, says there is often a disconnect between journalists and technologists over the idea of “product.”
Megan McArdle with Bloomberg View says all is not lost:
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