Study Hall Sampler

This is a once-a-week sampling of Study Hall’s collection of tools and resources for media workers.

If you want to try out the new Study Hall, grab 50% off your first 3 months here. 

-Newcomer is hiring a senior reporter and event host “with a demonstrated track record of getting notable financial scoops [and] the charisma and expertise to emcee 200-person events for Silicon Valley insiders.” Candidates should have at least four years of journalism experience “with deep experience covering startups and venture capital.” They must also have some experience moderating panels, appearing on podcasts, and making TV appearances. The salary is $200,000-$300,000 (that's not a typo). To apply, email [email protected] with “SENIOR REPORTER ROLE” in the subject line, a short introduction, two of your biggest scoops, two of your favorite stories, and some thoughts on an insider event that we could build around you.

 -Islandia Journal is looking for pitches of personal essays, criticism, poems, short fiction, and art for an upcoming Miami Vice issue. The rate is $0.25 per word (up to 1,500 words) for essays and criticism that require reporting and research, and $50 per poem or $100 per short story. Send pitches to [email protected] by November 18. 

-The Brag Media's new deputy editor, Conor Lochrie, is always looking for pitches of music features for Tone Deaf and the Australian/New Zealand editions of Rolling Stone and Variety. No further info was given on what he's looking for, but the rates start at $250 AUS per feature, “with [the] rates rising based on word count, etc.”  Send pitches to [email protected].

-Afar Magazine's features editor, Katherine LaGrave, is looking for pitches on “quiet travel—think unplugging, recharging, and resetting.” Their “features and essays enrich, inform, educate, and spark conversation. As well as diving into unplumbed places and parts of the travel experience, Afar’s features and essays expand the definition of what makes a travel story.” The rates start at $0.50 per word for digital. Send pitches to [email protected] by November 13.

-BuzzFeed's SEO editor, Claire Fox, reached out to Study Hall to say she's commissioning “a handful of SEO update writers to add new and engaging content to existing posts (and quizzes!) across a variety of subjects, including TV and movies, celebrities, music, internet trends, lifestyle, and jokes and games.” The rates are $40 per update for around 20 updates per month (with the potential to increase in the future). To apply, please send your resume, a short paragraph about why you’d be a good fit, and a link to relevant writing samples to [email protected] by November 13.

Editorial Endorsement Drama 101: Q&A With Matt Pearce, President of Media Guild of the West

By Daniel Spielberger 

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In the days leading up to the election, the media world delivered a minor October surprise. In a break with tradition, the editorial boards at The Washington Post and Los Angeles Times did not endorse either presidential candidate. In both cases, the editorial boards had drafted endorsements of Vice President Kamala Harris that were subsequently quashed by the newspapers’ billionaire owners. Both Patrick Soon-Shiong, the owner of the Los Angeles Times who has made his fortune in the pharmaceutical industry, and Jeff Bezos, the owner of The Washington Post, offered murky explanations. 

On Twitter/X, Soon-Shiong claimed that he offered the editorial board the “opportunity to draft a factual analysis of all the POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE policies by EACH candidate during their tenures at the White House, and how these policies affected the nation.” But the editorial board refused.  

Soon-Shiong’s daughter said that the decision not to endorse the vice president was attributed to the Biden-Harris administration’s continual support for Israel. However, her father denied that claim. Bezos, on the other hand, wrote an op-ed arguing that the non-endorsement was done as an effort to restore the public’s trust in the media. 

Following the controversy, members of the respective editorial boards have resigned. Both newspapers have been hit with a wave of subscriber cancellations (250,000-and-counting at The Washington Post, 18,000-and-counting at the LA Times).  

To get a better sense of the crisis, I caught up with Matt Pearce, president of the Media Guild of the West, which is the parent union representing editorial employees at the Los Angeles Times. Pearce was a reporter at the Los Angeles Times until earlier this year, when he accepted a buyout during a round of layoffs. He’s been writing opinion pieces about the editorial endorsement crisis on his Substack newsletter. 

In our conversation, Pearce broke down the uniqueness of the editorial boards’ sudden neutrality, what this move means from a labor perspective, and why the surge of subscriber cancellations is troubling. 

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. 

What’s unique about The Washington Post and Los Angeles Times withholding endorsements?

There are multiple things that are unique. First is that they're very top-down decisions. These are not journalists making the decisions here. The second thing that's unique is the timing. You're suddenly putting your hand on the scale right before an election after basically a decade of advocating in one particular direction when it comes to Donald Trump. The third issue that's unique is that it seems like the owners are lying a little bit about what's at stake for them personally, because both Soon-Shiong and Bezos, as billionaires, have an enormous amount of exposure to the federal government in terms of either regulation by federal agencies. 

For Soon-Shiong, that can mean whether the FDA approves the drugs that he's developing. And for Bezos in particular, his other enterprises have gotten very dependent on federal contracting, and there were moments in the last Trump administration where Bezos’s properties seemed to have lost out on government contracts because of retaliation by the Trump administration for coverage by The Washington Post. 

So you have this situation where there's a plausible explanation for why these owners would be suddenly getting cold feet about another Trump administration now that Trump looks like he's got about a 50/50 shot to come back.

Can you elaborate on these conflicts of interests between these billionaires and the respective newspapers they own?

The thing that people need to understand is that the financial losses that Soon-Shiong and Bezos could sustain from a bunch of readers walking out the door [and canceling subscriptions] would be dwarfed by an FDA denial of a major drug or a denial of some major NASA contracts for Blue Origin.  Purely from an economic perspective, even if you have 250,000 subscribers walking out the door at The Washington Post because of Bezos’s singular decision, that could still be a very smart economic play for him if it means he might not lose a ten billion federal contract. Harris is probably not going to be retaliatory in federal contracting the way Donald Trump [would be].  

How does this dynamic of two billionaire owners going against the wishes of their employees illustrate the current state of the media industry? 

I always argue that in the United States, we have a very publisher and executive centric way of looking at companies. We equate The Washington Post with Bezos. We equate the LA Times with Soon-Shiong. 

I'm a trade unionist. Companies are filled with human beings who disagree with their bosses. Personally, I do not think that the owners of newspapers should be seen as speaking for those publications.

I have also advocated against canceling subscriptions to The Washington Post and LA Times because I think it's going to hurt the journalists. Despite the organization essentially making this corrupt endorsement decision, there is still an enormous amount of journalistic autonomy and credible journalism happening in the newsroom, in spite of the bosses, because there still is a culture of transparency and accountability and courage in these institutions. The Washington Post this morning, for example, just published this fantastic investigative story about Bezos and his connections with government contracting and his relationship with Donald Trump and Elon Musk

Building off your point about canceling subscriptions, let’s discuss the consumer. I interpreted these mass cancellations as frustrated consumers trying to make their voices heard. In your Substack, you argued that these cancellations are misguided. Can you elaborate on that? 

I should make a distinction here because when somebody makes a decision to cancel a subscription as a matter of conscience, that's not sort of the thing that I was critiquing or talking about in my blog post. What I was instead [critiquing are] people who think of it more as a consumer activist decision, that we can withhold our dollars from The Washington Post to send a message to Bezos.

What practically all of the journalists at these institutions know and have been trying to say publicly is that subscriber protests like this are not going to change these assholes’ minds. What's instead going to happen is that the depleted revenues at these companies are then going to be turned around on the employees and used to punish the employees for the owners’ mistakes because that's what they always do.

What can readers do to make their voices heard in this very David vs. Goliath scenario between everyday citizens and billionaires? 

My message is you will never go wrong supporting the workers. The Washington Post actually set up an action list for basically swamping the executive leadership. The LA Times Guild had issued some demands of its own editorial leadership, which involved asking Soon-Shiong to publicly correct the record. Honestly, [I suggest] burning up the phone lines, writing letters, writing emails, and just finding ways to deliver the message. 

Support what the unions are doing. Stand with the workers because they're screaming that this is bullshit and that this is not journalistic and doesn't make sense. This is a situation where there aren't good solutions, and it's [one] of the problems [ailing] media more broadly, which is that a lot of the good journalism jobs that are left are working for these kinds of people.

I always keep yelling at Google and Meta [which have taken ad dollars from publications] in the end. Until we fix that market problem, we're just going to be stuck with these institutions with owners with bad incentives, but which still employ a lot of good people.