7 ms·

Greenwald exits Guardian for new Omidyar media venture

111 points by NonEUCitizen 13y ago

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
matthewbadeau 13y ago
Civil Beat is a really incredible news source that has done some really deep reporting on Honolulu's local politics. If Glenn Greenwald will be joining CB then it's likely the website will grow out of its regional roots into a more national news site. I'd love to see the same investigative reporting done at a national level.
- rhizome 13y ago
  It's a new venture.
  - matthewbadeau 13y ago
    Ah! My mistake.. I was a little too excited when I saw Civil Beat in the article.
    - ohashi 13y ago
      Hopefully this new venture is a bigger version of CB though.
redthrowaway 13y ago
I'm interested to see what the financing model will be. One of the biggest structural problems with the MSM is their reliance on advertising and the editorial constraints that inevitably imposes. While I respect and admire Greenwald, a key takeaway from the NSA leaks is that a system that relies on the beneficence of its key actors is a system that will be abused. If the only defence against editorial degradation is the personal ethics of Greenwald and Omidyar, then it's only a matter of time before the venture's editorial oversight is captured by its financial interests. As much as I dislike paying for news, I'd far rather see them model themselves after the Economist than CNN.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
judk 13y ago
Does this mean that he is done with the "first wave" the of Snowden revelations, and or that he doesn't trust me The Guardian, and or that he wants to to capitalize at his peak popularity moment? Was this planned before the Snowden story?
- Amadou 13y ago
  No, he's stated that Omidyar made him an offer too good to refuse. He's very pleased with the Guardian, he's just looking out for #1 here.
- foobarqux 13y ago
  I wouldn't trust the Guardian if I were him either. They go to some effort to make it clear that he is not actually an employee.
  - panacea 13y ago
    Like the front page article that he's leaving The Guardian as an employee?
    - foobarqux 13y ago
      Which article? From the horse's mouth: "I'm not on the Guardian staff and have never been an employee." https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/387938465955868672 https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/387938465955868672
- ploocas 13y ago
  Good point, does he take the snowden documents with him, or is that "owned" by the guardian?
  - werid 13y ago
    he hasn't given all the documents to guardian. only greenwald and poitras have them.
balabaster 13y ago
Hopefully this will see integrity return to real, good quality investigative journalism in the media in general instead of "news" being used as fodder for political and commercial interests. It becomes tiring having to scroll through Fox, CNN, CBC, BBC, Al Jazeera, The Guardian, The Times and other news agencies trying to piece some form of the truth based on reading between the lines of half truths and unchecked "facts" put in place to suit the story rather than the other way around. Perhaps I've romanticized journalism in my mind and see the past through rose coloured glasses as we all tend to from time to time, but I feel like journalists used to have integrity and that we could once trust that when they put pen to paper, we could believe in what they wrote... or perhaps we never could and its only as age removes our naivety that we see the world's media for what it is, a sham designed to further political and commercial interests. I for one should like to see a news agency that spends their time chasing down the facts like CSIs to present the cold hard truth rather than some dumbed down version of events designed to have some political sway. Lets hope the vision for whatever venture this may be is that. Perhaps I can dream.
- foobarqux 13y ago
  To answer your question: Mainstream news has had a structural bias since at least the 60s as Chomsky and Herman describe in their book "Manufacturing Consent".
  - dil8 13y ago
    Yeah, while I have respect for Greenwald's work, I struggle with the notion that a news organisation with a billionaire as its backer can maintain a fully independent editorial policy. Chomsky and Herman point to five distorting filters which I think are prevalent in most mainstream news organisations. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent:_The_Political_Economy_of_the_Mass_Media#Editorial_bias:_five_filters http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent:_The_Poli...
    - foobarqux 13y ago
      Of course the news organization will be biased in favor of the financier and his interests. But those interests are presumably far narrower than the interests of a mainstream news organization that has to contend with a wide breadth of advertisers and political entities.
brymaster 13y ago
> Beat aimed to create a new online journalism model with paid subscriptions and respectful comment threads Well good luck with that. To lose faith in humanity, one has to look no further than comment threads on news sites. The current comments on the Reuters article are already facepalm-inducing.
- Cthulhu_ 13y ago
  I don't think one should judge humanity based on comments on the internet. The people behind those comments would respond (and debate) much differently in real life, when they get direct feedback (verbal and/or nonverbal) for the opinions they unfilteredly and impulsively spout onto the interwebz.
  - jnbiche 13y ago
    That's exactly the point: these are people's unfiltered thoughts, and it makes me lose faith in my fellow man (or at least fellow American) whenever I read such comments.
adventured 13y ago
Worth noting that Pierre Omidyar has been a non-stop critic of the NSA's spying activities since the Snowden leaks first broke: https://twitter.com/pierre https://twitter.com/pierre Given the extraordinary power of the villains on the other side of this, Omidyar seems to be taking a lot of risk here. It's trivially easy for the US Government to burn a billionaire on any number of trumped up SEC charges. Whoops, small trading rule infraction, better be careful not to declare your innocence in a way that materially affects a stock price or it's off to prison for you.
rnernento 13y ago
This is disappointing to me. I see it as Greenwald using his new found publicity for a better deal. After reading the recent Guardian profile in the New Yorker it's hard not to root for them. It's also upsetting that this will dilute and interrupt the NSA reporting, something Snowden has worked so hard to avoid.
- Thomas_Ellers 13y ago
  Greenwald only had a New York Times Best Selling Book on the Bush Administration and its abuses of power. And he had one of the most-read blogs on the Interent, after 9 months of blogging. If Russ Feingold can read from his blog during Censure hearings, he can handle a little bit of well-deserved fame for his hard work.
nicholassmith 13y ago
I read a few weeks back that Greenwald has wanted to publish more information at a higher pace, and The Guardian didn't as they thought it'd be too much. It's probably a golden opportunity for him to publish as much as he wants, whenever he wants. Either way it'll be interesting, I certainly can't see The Guardian stopping with it's interest in the security apparatus even without Greenwald.
vijucat 13y ago
I wonder what happens if Snowden decides to stick with The Guardian? :-)
- tel 13y ago
  I'm sure this decision wasn't made without Snowden's consent. Further, originally Snowden sought out Greenwald himself not the Guardian at large.

111 points by NonEUCitizen 13y ago

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

Civil Beat is a really incredible news source that has done some really deep reporting on Honolulu's local politics. If Glenn Greenwald will be joining CB then it's likely the website will grow out of its regional roots into a more national news site. I'd love to see the same investigative reporting done at a national level.

rhizome 13y ago
It's a new venture.
- matthewbadeau 13y ago
  Ah! My mistake.. I was a little too excited when I saw Civil Beat in the article.
  - ohashi 13y ago
    Hopefully this new venture is a bigger version of CB though.

redthrowaway 13y ago

I'm interested to see what the financing model will be. One of the biggest structural problems with the MSM is their reliance on advertising and the editorial constraints that inevitably imposes. While I respect and admire Greenwald, a key takeaway from the NSA leaks is that a system that relies on the beneficence of its key actors is a system that will be abused. If the only defence against editorial degradation is the personal ethics of Greenwald and Omidyar, then it's only a matter of time before the venture's editorial oversight is captured by its financial interests. As much as I dislike paying for news, I'd far rather see them model themselves after the Economist than CNN.

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]

judk 13y ago

Does this mean that he is done with the "first wave" the of Snowden revelations, and or that he doesn't trust me The Guardian, and or that he wants to to capitalize at his peak popularity moment? Was this planned before the Snowden story?

Amadou 13y ago
No, he's stated that Omidyar made him an offer too good to refuse. He's very pleased with the Guardian, he's just looking out for #1 here.
foobarqux 13y ago
I wouldn't trust the Guardian if I were him either. They go to some effort to make it clear that he is not actually an employee.
- panacea 13y ago
  Like the front page article that he's leaving The Guardian as an employee?
  - foobarqux 13y ago
    Which article? From the horse's mouth: "I'm not on the Guardian staff and have never been an employee." https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/387938465955868672 https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/387938465955868672
ploocas 13y ago
Good point, does he take the snowden documents with him, or is that "owned" by the guardian?
- werid 13y ago
  he hasn't given all the documents to guardian. only greenwald and poitras have them.

balabaster 13y ago

Hopefully this will see integrity return to real, good quality investigative journalism in the media in general instead of "news" being used as fodder for political and commercial interests. It becomes tiring having to scroll through Fox, CNN, CBC, BBC, Al Jazeera, The Guardian, The Times and other news agencies trying to piece some form of the truth based on reading between the lines of half truths and unchecked "facts" put in place to suit the story rather than the other way around. Perhaps I've romanticized journalism in my mind and see the past through rose coloured glasses as we all tend to from time to time, but I feel like journalists used to have integrity and that we could once trust that when they put pen to paper, we could believe in what they wrote... or perhaps we never could and its only as age removes our naivety that we see the world's media for what it is, a sham designed to further political and commercial interests. I for one should like to see a news agency that spends their time chasing down the facts like CSIs to present the cold hard truth rather than some dumbed down version of events designed to have some political sway. Lets hope the vision for whatever venture this may be is that. Perhaps I can dream.

foobarqux 13y ago
To answer your question: Mainstream news has had a structural bias since at least the 60s as Chomsky and Herman describe in their book "Manufacturing Consent".
- dil8 13y ago
  Yeah, while I have respect for Greenwald's work, I struggle with the notion that a news organisation with a billionaire as its backer can maintain a fully independent editorial policy. Chomsky and Herman point to five distorting filters which I think are prevalent in most mainstream news organisations. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent:_The_Political_Economy_of_the_Mass_Media#Editorial_bias:_five_filters http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent:_The_Poli...
  - foobarqux 13y ago
    Of course the news organization will be biased in favor of the financier and his interests. But those interests are presumably far narrower than the interests of a mainstream news organization that has to contend with a wide breadth of advertisers and political entities.

brymaster 13y ago

> Beat aimed to create a new online journalism model with paid subscriptions and respectful comment threads Well good luck with that. To lose faith in humanity, one has to look no further than comment threads on news sites. The current comments on the Reuters article are already facepalm-inducing.

Cthulhu_ 13y ago
I don't think one should judge humanity based on comments on the internet. The people behind those comments would respond (and debate) much differently in real life, when they get direct feedback (verbal and/or nonverbal) for the opinions they unfilteredly and impulsively spout onto the interwebz.
- jnbiche 13y ago
  That's exactly the point: these are people's unfiltered thoughts, and it makes me lose faith in my fellow man (or at least fellow American) whenever I read such comments.

adventured 13y ago

Worth noting that Pierre Omidyar has been a non-stop critic of the NSA's spying activities since the Snowden leaks first broke: https://twitter.com/pierre https://twitter.com/pierre Given the extraordinary power of the villains on the other side of this, Omidyar seems to be taking a lot of risk here. It's trivially easy for the US Government to burn a billionaire on any number of trumped up SEC charges. Whoops, small trading rule infraction, better be careful not to declare your innocence in a way that materially affects a stock price or it's off to prison for you.

rnernento 13y ago

This is disappointing to me. I see it as Greenwald using his new found publicity for a better deal. After reading the recent Guardian profile in the New Yorker it's hard not to root for them. It's also upsetting that this will dilute and interrupt the NSA reporting, something Snowden has worked so hard to avoid.

Thomas_Ellers 13y ago
Greenwald only had a New York Times Best Selling Book on the Bush Administration and its abuses of power. And he had one of the most-read blogs on the Interent, after 9 months of blogging. If Russ Feingold can read from his blog during Censure hearings, he can handle a little bit of well-deserved fame for his hard work.

nicholassmith 13y ago

I read a few weeks back that Greenwald has wanted to publish more information at a higher pace, and The Guardian didn't as they thought it'd be too much. It's probably a golden opportunity for him to publish as much as he wants, whenever he wants. Either way it'll be interesting, I certainly can't see The Guardian stopping with it's interest in the security apparatus even without Greenwald.

vijucat 13y ago

I wonder what happens if Snowden decides to stick with The Guardian? :-)

tel 13y ago
I'm sure this decision wasn't made without Snowden's consent. Further, originally Snowden sought out Greenwald himself not the Guardian at large.