Every few months, like clockwork, I open my Twitter feed to see that another media organization has laid off some staggering number of its employees, or shut down entirely. This past week, Insider announced it was letting go of 10 percent of its team, and Buzzfeed said it would be shuttering its entire news site. Their owners (like, it seems, pretty much all media executives) still can't figure out how to publish writing online and make money. I learned this from Twitter because (depressingly? inevitably?) I, like many of my journalistic peers, am on it constantly, consuming words that other people have posted for free on a platform limping toward a slow death, owned by a man many people think is kind of abhorrent. Another day on the content farm. Yee haw!
In her 1995 article "Intellectual Value," investor and journalist Esther Dyson puzzled through many of the issues at the heart of today's imploding media landscape. "The problem for owners of content is that they will be competing with free or almost-free content, including their own advertising as well as the output of myriad creators who launch products on the Net," she wrote. "How will people—writers, programmers, and artists—be compensated for creating value? What business models will succeed in this foreign economy?"
As an early-career journalist in 2023, I circle these kinds of questions all the time. I wonder when I will experience my first layoff. I wonder what my work life will look like five or 10 years down the line, or what kinds of tradeoffs I may have to make if and when I want more stability or decide to have a child. I wonder what value my writing has when there is simply too much content on offer all the time. And don't even get me started on generative AI.
Dyson's piece is a striking reminder of how persistent these questions have been since the dawn of the internet age. It's also an interesting look at how intellectual property rights play into all of this, but I'll save that angle for someone else to parse. My question today is for those of you who haven't chosen to work on the content farm. Do these issues feel as simultaneously pressing and well-worn to you? Do you wonder about how good writing and art will survive, and how the people making them will make it work? What's your take on all of this? Let me know in the comments below the story.
See you next week!
Eve
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حبيبي ليس يعدله حبيب *** ولا لسواه في قلبي نصيب حبيب غاب عن بصري وسمعي *** ولكن في فؤادي ما يغيب يا حبيب ...
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