Billionaires Gone Wild

[Commentary] This is the dark timeline: Journalism-agnostic media investors learn news can’t “scale” and then jump ship just as soon as they’ve finished killing off both the corporate and independent legacy press businesses, leaving the fate of the industry to ungodly rich people with very idiosyncratic personal agendas. What’s happening to the press is reflective of the broader transformation of our society. Rule by supposedly benevolent technocratic elites is giving way—in large part due to the fecklessness of those technocrats—to straight plutocracy.

When a billionaire buys a journalism outlet to shut down the critical reporting they do on politicians and businesses, or pays a dirty tricks specialist to “sting” your publication, it is an endorsement of the idea that journalism matters. That might sound like a rallying cry, but in the absence of any plan to save the industry from the 0.01 percent, it can only be an observation.

[Alex Pareene is the politics editor of Splinter and the former editor of Gawker, Racket Teen, and Wonkette.]