nymag | The confusion inherent to any start-up has been exacerbated by
Omidyar’s ruminative style. This spring, he went through a period of
deep thinking, highlighted by a summit with news-industry veterans at a
hotel he part-owns in Laguna Beach, California. Under “Chatham House
Rules,” no one was to talk directly about what was said. “He’s a true
believer, I believe,” says Ken Doctor, a media analyst who attended.
Many of those who have heard Omidyar and his aides, at that summit and
other meetings, have come away thinking his plans sounded naïve and not
fully baked. Sandy Rowe, a former editor of the Oregonian who was
brought on as a consultant, says the fuzzy vision gives Omidyar
flexibility. “This is a man who, since he said he would put down this
$250 million, has never said, ‘Here is my plan.’ ”
The absence of a plan, however, contributed to dissension within
First Look, and chatter began to emanate from behind its wall of
operational secrecy. There was an East Coast–West Coast feud, a divide
between the journalists and the technologists. Omidyar’s loyalists out
in California and Hawaii grumbled as Greenwald traveled the world,
promoting a book, picking up awards, and speaking out of turn. Poitras,
meanwhile, was immersed in finishing a documentary on Snowden. There was
an internal battle over budgets, which stalled hiring and hindered
journalistic output. The Intercept initially published at a piddling
rate. In June, the three co-founders of the Intercept and Taibbi wrote a
joint letter to Omidyar demanding freedom to proceed with their
expansion.
Omidyar then published a blog post
saying he had “definitely rethought some of our original ideas and
plans.” Instead of quick expansion, he announced that First Look would
be in “planning, start-up, and experimental mode for at least the next
few years,” focusing its immediate efforts on the Intercept and Racket
while working to develop new journalistic technology and design with a
team in San Francisco. He also appointed a confidant as First Look’s
editorial boss: the former Civil Beat editor John Temple. “I think that
the message,” Temple told me in August, “is that we’re not trying hard
enough if we’re not failing a little bit, if we’re not saying things
that don’t bear fruit.”
The shift proved beneficial to the Intercept, which is no longer under the day-to-day management of its founders. Omidyar lured editor John Cook
away from Gawker to run the site, and after a publication pause and a
redesign, it has been gaining momentum, breaking big stories about the NSA’s surveillance of American Muslim leaders and the seemingly arbitrary standards of the government’s terrorist-screening system.
The latter disclosure reportedly came from a leaker other than Snowden;
the FBI recently searched the home of a government contractor suspected
of being the source.
The factional conflicts within Omidyar’s enterprise, however, seem
far from settled. In August, Temple spoke enthusiastically about Racket,
which he said had broadened its focus to include political topics. But
as its launch date neared, Taibbi disappeared from the company
amid disputes with First Look higher-ups. Omidyar announced Taibbi was
leaving and that First Look would now “turn our focus to exploring next
steps” for Racket, a project that a spokeswoman said had cost him $2
million over its eight months of development. In the wake of the
tumultuous departure, the Intercept published a remarkable inside account
describing “months of contentious disputes” between Taibbi and his
superiors over his management, including a complaint from an employee
that he was “verbally abusive.” But the journalists did not spare
Omidyar from blame, describing what they called “a collision between the
First Look executives, who by and large come from a highly structured
Silicon Valley corporate environment, and the fiercely independent
journalists who view corporate cultures and management-speak with
disdain.” The iconoclasts even questioned Omidyar’s “avowed strategy” of
hiring “anti-authoritarian iconoclasts.”
Even before the turmoil, Temple hinted that a strategic
reconsideration was under way. “It will be more complex,” he told me,
“than an organization of iconoclasts.” He says that Omidyar sees
journalism as “the third phase of his professional life,” bringing
together his technology experience and philanthropy, and is prepared to
be patient, even if it perplexes outsiders. Temple says there is no
incongruity between Omidyar’s communitarian ideals and his financing of
an insurgency. “It’s not all about civility,” Temple says. “It’s about
having a healthy and open society.” There’s a tangible insight buried in
that amorphous sentiment: Omidyar’s interest in journalism is
mechanistic. He wants to aggregate to himself the power to declassify
and to bring about the “greater good,” as he defines it.
In October, the founding Intercept gang — minus Omidyar — got
together for a party at Mayday Space, a loft in a graffitied section of
Bushwick. The Snowden saga had entered its Redford-and-Hoffman phase
with the premiere of Poitras’s documentary Citizenfour,
which was partly financed by Skoll’s Participant Media and looks
destined for Oscar consideration. A DJ spun songs next to a huge
propaganda-style poster reading WHISTLE-BLOWER! KNOW YOUR PLACE … SHUT
YOUR FACE. Smokers congregated on the balcony, which had a distant view
of the Empire State Building, lit red. Greenwald hinted of further
scoops. “Stay tuned, is all I can say,” he told me.
Greenwald says that he and Omidyar plan to finally meet later this
month, when they will appear at a very different sort of gathering: an
invite-only event called Newsgeist, co-sponsored by Google and the
Knight Foundation. Billed as an “unconference,” it has no agenda other
than “reimagining the future of the news.” Greenwald told me “top
editors, executives, moguls, and founders” are expected to attend,
including Dean Baquet of the New York Times. I asked the
organizer from Google about other attendees and speakers, but he said he
could disclose no further details, to “protect the privacy and security
of our invited guests.” It seems that the Newsgeist is very hush-hush.
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