When I worked at Newsweek, when it was a part of the Washington Post family, Donald Graham used to appear in the office every few weeks. Everything you hear about the guy seemed to be true. He had to be pointed out to me — a gangly, awkward, fellow in a terrible suit. He seemed shy, and smiled the same way to everyone he passed in the halls, from our big cheese world-beating editor in chief to me, a nobody on the absolute bottom of the corporate ladder.
Part of my job was to sit in on the editorial meetings and report on them for our far-flung foreign affiliates. This meant standing in the back of the room, and quietly taking notes. Sometimes I'd perch on the window sill, overlooking Eighth Avenue and Columbus Circle. A few times, Mr. Graham ended up perched next to me, just watching, deflecting whatever remarks or questions were aimed at him.
And I remember looking at the guy, amazed that he ran a global, powerful media empire, and was the steward of one of the most important institutions in American journalism. There was so much resting on his metaphorical shoulders, I thought, as I wondered if that was dandruff I spotted resting on his actual shoulders. It was amazing that so many vital human endeavors ultimately came down to one actual person. And thank goodness that at that time and place the guy who signed my checks was decent and dedicated to the same mission that I was.
And now he sold it. Instead of that one man, who was really part of a family, he sold the thing to another man, Jeff Bezos. It wasn't to a private equity firm, or any of the many bottom-feeder newspaper chains still sulking about, which is good (they've long since sold off Newsweek, whose sordid afterlife as an increasingly unloved old nag was shaping up to be the big media story this month before the sale).
The Post sale, along with the Globe being snatched up by John Henry, raises a ton of questions that high-flying media folk like to publicly mull over. The emerging consensus, I think, is that these are pretty awesome developments. At last, fabulously wealthy, smart business leaders realize the value of "old media." Don't dwell too long on the depressing fact that they were able to buy major metropolitan and national institutions with as much thought and sacrifice as most of us buy new iPods, and what that says about what we value. These guys are new, and they "get it." The can negotiate change, and aren't used to failing. And becoming beholden to a person, a personality, is way way better than the fate most newspapers face, in which some market buys the papers on leverage and cuts them to death. The nagging voices chime up that these men represent such vast bundles of conflicts of interest, that the basic mission of fair and honest reporting is doomed. There's the essential plot development of uncertainty.
But I would like to take the long view. The media-land conversation is fascinating in New York, Washington, Silicon Valley, and among the dwindling corners of the industry where people still make a decent living. In other words, this is the one percent talking to itself. In the broader view, this is a snapshot of life in our present plutocracy, in which most of us can only look on and shrug.
I'm going to wander around a moment, but bear with me. In college I had a close friend who was full of ridiculous ideas that were pretty funny at the time, but I keep thinking about. Both of us were English majors, and very interested in topics like the future of poetry and the role of the arts in society. Sometimes this friend was eerily prescient: he said it would be a good idea to write about vampires, which were an enduring human theme and destined for a comeback (at that moment Stephenie Meyer was still only a receptionist who had never written a word). He thought hip-hop and opera were destined to meet someday (and perhaps it did, if you think R. Kelly counts. We can argue about whether that's a good thing). But one of his sillier idea was that the less profitable arts, like poetry, would have to revert to a model you saw in Renaissance Italy, of finding patronage from powerful families or institutions. The bizarre example he gave was that Bill Gates and Microsoft could be talked into needing a court poet. This spawned a million jokes about Pindaric odes to celebrate the arrival of Windows 95.
What my friend grasped far earlier than I did, was the cynical reality of how we live. I was too busy being earnest and judgmental to see that things don't really change much. I was alive to the idea that the story changes, but didn't realize that it usually happened in ways that I was able to anticipate. I remember in one of my poetry classes talking to a senior who had just accepted a job at a company in Seattle that sold books over the internet. I was sure that was the stupidest idea on earth — who'd deal with that when there was a Borders or a Barnes & Noble on every block? I was just about to start a summer internship at my hometown newspaper — a family run, essential service for my community that was as permanent as the mountains. That was how I'd build a stable and reasonable future. Joke's on me (that college friend I mentioned, by the way, is a investment banker now. He's doing alright).
For all the talk of change, things aren't changing, and to take a much, much broader view, there is great peril lining our future. Consider Venice, which for hundreds of years was a true merchant republic, governed by an evolving and surprisingly fluid class of wealthy businessmen, with the occasional nudge or shove from an angry mob. Unlike the rest of Europe, where wealth and power and social order was determined by land and conquest, Venice was about commercial skill, political dexterity, and luck.
It worked for a long time, until the 13th century when the ruling class decided to pull the ladder up behind them. They restricted access to the circles of power to families that already had it, who over time became a formal self-perpetuating, autocratic nobility. That came with all the nonsense that entails — inbreeding, the creation of surplus offspring that loiter about at parties and in convents and waste resources, and an ossified, entitled, unimaginative ruling class that props itself up until something new and vibrant knocks it over.
Venice slammed shut the door just over 500 years into its existence. Our American republican experiment just hit year 237.
Part of my job was to sit in on the editorial meetings and report on them for our far-flung foreign affiliates. This meant standing in the back of the room, and quietly taking notes. Sometimes I'd perch on the window sill, overlooking Eighth Avenue and Columbus Circle. A few times, Mr. Graham ended up perched next to me, just watching, deflecting whatever remarks or questions were aimed at him.
And I remember looking at the guy, amazed that he ran a global, powerful media empire, and was the steward of one of the most important institutions in American journalism. There was so much resting on his metaphorical shoulders, I thought, as I wondered if that was dandruff I spotted resting on his actual shoulders. It was amazing that so many vital human endeavors ultimately came down to one actual person. And thank goodness that at that time and place the guy who signed my checks was decent and dedicated to the same mission that I was.
And now he sold it. Instead of that one man, who was really part of a family, he sold the thing to another man, Jeff Bezos. It wasn't to a private equity firm, or any of the many bottom-feeder newspaper chains still sulking about, which is good (they've long since sold off Newsweek, whose sordid afterlife as an increasingly unloved old nag was shaping up to be the big media story this month before the sale).
The Post sale, along with the Globe being snatched up by John Henry, raises a ton of questions that high-flying media folk like to publicly mull over. The emerging consensus, I think, is that these are pretty awesome developments. At last, fabulously wealthy, smart business leaders realize the value of "old media." Don't dwell too long on the depressing fact that they were able to buy major metropolitan and national institutions with as much thought and sacrifice as most of us buy new iPods, and what that says about what we value. These guys are new, and they "get it." The can negotiate change, and aren't used to failing. And becoming beholden to a person, a personality, is way way better than the fate most newspapers face, in which some market buys the papers on leverage and cuts them to death. The nagging voices chime up that these men represent such vast bundles of conflicts of interest, that the basic mission of fair and honest reporting is doomed. There's the essential plot development of uncertainty.
But I would like to take the long view. The media-land conversation is fascinating in New York, Washington, Silicon Valley, and among the dwindling corners of the industry where people still make a decent living. In other words, this is the one percent talking to itself. In the broader view, this is a snapshot of life in our present plutocracy, in which most of us can only look on and shrug.
I'm going to wander around a moment, but bear with me. In college I had a close friend who was full of ridiculous ideas that were pretty funny at the time, but I keep thinking about. Both of us were English majors, and very interested in topics like the future of poetry and the role of the arts in society. Sometimes this friend was eerily prescient: he said it would be a good idea to write about vampires, which were an enduring human theme and destined for a comeback (at that moment Stephenie Meyer was still only a receptionist who had never written a word). He thought hip-hop and opera were destined to meet someday (and perhaps it did, if you think R. Kelly counts. We can argue about whether that's a good thing). But one of his sillier idea was that the less profitable arts, like poetry, would have to revert to a model you saw in Renaissance Italy, of finding patronage from powerful families or institutions. The bizarre example he gave was that Bill Gates and Microsoft could be talked into needing a court poet. This spawned a million jokes about Pindaric odes to celebrate the arrival of Windows 95.
What my friend grasped far earlier than I did, was the cynical reality of how we live. I was too busy being earnest and judgmental to see that things don't really change much. I was alive to the idea that the story changes, but didn't realize that it usually happened in ways that I was able to anticipate. I remember in one of my poetry classes talking to a senior who had just accepted a job at a company in Seattle that sold books over the internet. I was sure that was the stupidest idea on earth — who'd deal with that when there was a Borders or a Barnes & Noble on every block? I was just about to start a summer internship at my hometown newspaper — a family run, essential service for my community that was as permanent as the mountains. That was how I'd build a stable and reasonable future. Joke's on me (that college friend I mentioned, by the way, is a investment banker now. He's doing alright).
For all the talk of change, things aren't changing, and to take a much, much broader view, there is great peril lining our future. Consider Venice, which for hundreds of years was a true merchant republic, governed by an evolving and surprisingly fluid class of wealthy businessmen, with the occasional nudge or shove from an angry mob. Unlike the rest of Europe, where wealth and power and social order was determined by land and conquest, Venice was about commercial skill, political dexterity, and luck.
It worked for a long time, until the 13th century when the ruling class decided to pull the ladder up behind them. They restricted access to the circles of power to families that already had it, who over time became a formal self-perpetuating, autocratic nobility. That came with all the nonsense that entails — inbreeding, the creation of surplus offspring that loiter about at parties and in convents and waste resources, and an ossified, entitled, unimaginative ruling class that props itself up until something new and vibrant knocks it over.
Venice slammed shut the door just over 500 years into its existence. Our American republican experiment just hit year 237.
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