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. 

Opportunities 

Here are some new opportunities featured in Opps Finder:

-SFGATE is hiring a part-time copy editor based in SF to "raise the standards of the site for clean, concise prose." Candidate should have at least two years of copy-editing experience, including “professional experience with standard style guides, such as the Associated Press Stylebook.” The salary range is between $33,000 and $36,000. 

-TechCrunch is hiring a senior writer/reporter to cover enterprise companies and technology, both dominant and emergent. Candidates should have at least five years of experience in tech journalism, ideally with an enterprise/B2B tech focus. The salary range is $72,750.00 - $151,250.00. “We're a fully remote workplace, Bay Area preferred but not mandatory for this one.”

-Architectural Digest is hiring a Senior Commerce Editor to “support the brand’s shopping efforts across several critical categories—specifically sleep, soft goods, furniture, decor, and bedding.” Candidates should possess a fascination with design and decor as they show up in our everyday lives and the culture at large, as well as “a passion for service journalism and product recommendations that support our readers.“ The salary range is $85,000.00 - $110,000.00.

-Bon Appétit/Epicurious is hiring a designer with “experience in brand strategy, multiplatform design, typography, and creative ideation. Candidates should have at least three years of relevant experience and a “strong design portfolio and sophisticated aesthetic that reflects multi-platform design experience.” This is a guild position, and the salary range is $65,000.00 - $71,000.00.

-Gigs for Writers is always looking for pitches of “real stories from working writers, particularly personal essays between 500-800 words that are brilliantly written and shed light on the world of writing for a living.” All stories are paid a flat rate of $200. Send pitches to [email protected]. 

Independent Newsletter Spotlight: Samantha Grasso of Discourse Blog

By Daniel Spielberger 

Discourse Blog was founded in March of 2020 by eight former staff members of the news site Splinter, who wanted to build an  independent platform to cover politics from the left.

The story of Splinter is all-too familiar: a beloved website accrued a loyal audience only to get chewed up and spat out by private equity pitbulls. In 2019, Univision’s Fusion Media Group sold it to G/O Media, which shuttered the website a mere few months later due to “finite resources,” laying off its entire staff. (Earlier this year, Splinter was revived along with Jezebel by Paste Magazine). 

When Samantha Grasso, a former Splinter staffer and now a co-owner of and the art director for Discourse Blog, was laid off three months into the pandemic, prospects were dim: media outlets were panicking, shutting down, and dumping staff left and right. For a time, she worked as a contractor at AJ+. With a nothing-to-lose mindset, she and her former colleagues made a WordPress, seeking to restore and continue the “rowdy, confrontational, weird as hell, leftist”spirit of Splinter. 

Now publishing on Substack, the four-year-old Discourse Blog is an independent, worker-owned newsletter, known for its combative, bloggy commentary, which is both deadly serious and perfectly silly (also, their Friday “Bird of the Week” posts). They’ve accrued over 17,000 paid and free subscribers, and pay their staff of seven part-time employees with a subscriber revenue-based model. 

“This is truly a passion project. Because we are reader supported and subscription based, we’re able to sustain this project, and dictate what we do with it ourselves,” Grasso told Study Hall.

With no advertisers or objectivity-obsessed bosses to please, Discourse Blog posts with a care-free abandon (“Bari Weiss Is Full Of Shit,” “We Owe It To Ourselves to Shun These People Mercilessly”) and an unflinching commitment to leftist politics refreshing even among progressive magazines. The outlet  has found beats in anti-war coverage, scrutinizing the Democratic party and media criticism, skewering CNN’s coverage of pro-Palestine protests and the presidential debate’s handling of the war in Gaza. As seasoned journalists—Discourse’s writer-owners include alumni of or current staffers at The Nation, Slate, Mic and Rolling Stone among other outlets—they can pull it off. 

Study Hall spoke to Grasso about Discourse Blog’s approach to the 2024 election, holding legacy media accountable, and what media workers should know about founding a new publication. 

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. 

What is Discourse Blog’s approach to covering politics?

I never saw myself becoming a politics journalist. I never saw that as accessible. When I was younger, I was writing about intersections of identity and race and class and gender. I had this very, like, neoliberal idea of how these things are independent from politics, but actually everything is impacted by politics.

Traditionally, politics come off as being inaccessible,  from voting to city council meetings. Maybe, it's because we're a blogger generation. But we bring our perspective directly to people, and we make it accessible and understandable in a way that isn't talking down to them. It's engaging with people on an even playing field, and not making the power structures ambiguous. 

A big problem with media and news across the board is that we're pretending as if there aren't these power imbalances. For example, when we're covering housing, we've got landlords and tenants both being given equal air and both being validated by the media. But we know that there is actually a distinct power differentia. We don’t shy away from that. We're very explicit about it.

How has Discourse Blog kept up with the pace of the 2024 election?

The chaos of the moment has really brought up different reactions. I don’t know if it's better or worse. There’s not a large need to worry about organizing coverage. A lot of pieces come about organically. We’ve made a distinct choice to not be a publication that does horse-race coverage for any election. Previously, we’ve done streams and things that have been more interactive. We shine when we are able to provide a different perspective than the mainstream talking points. For example, with the coverage of the Trump assassination and Biden rescinding his candidate, we did a night of blogs. Jack Mirkinson has done a really good job of taking a beat to extrapolate what people are saying about this moment, and [calling out] what is really not the case. For example, there is this “Biden is a hero” narrative going on: correcting the record on that is a perfect example of how we operate. 

Plug Your Work

Please check out the “Plug Your Work” feature on our member site. We are giving boosts to members’ work on our blog, social media channels, and Digest newsletter. 

Reporting On The Strange World of 21st Century Butlers With Will Coldwell

For 1843 Magazine, Will Coldwell wrote about the experience of students at an elite training school for butlers. According to Coldwell, “The story examines why such a profession prevails – and asks whether the fantasy of the role can ever live up to the reality of a career in servitude to the super-rich.” 

Coldwell’s writing has appeared in FT Magazine, WIRED, and The Guardian.

Maggie Downs Wrote About Making Lasting Travel Memories

For  the Wall Street Journal, Maggie Downs wrote about how we can make travel memories that last. She told Study Hall, “I’ve often been curious about the nature of memories — why our brains hold fast to some moments while others are forgotten — so I harnessed that into a piece.”

For the piece, Downs spoke to seasoned travelers and a scientific expert specialized in memory retention. 

Downs’ writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Al Jazeera.

C.M Crockford Wrote About Why David Cronenberg Should Be Considered A Romantic

For Strange Matters Magazine, C.M Crockford did a sweep of David Cronenberg's extensive filmography and wrote about what makes his movies so “moving, romantic, and meaningful in the 21st century.”

Crockford writes, “Over the course of nearly two dozen feature films, Cronenberg has evolved as steadily as Seth Brundle or Saul Tenser, moving out of psychological determinism and towards existentialism. He is ever fascinated by what we mean to one another, by monogamy and nonmonogamy, sexual jealousy, fluidity, and whether those connections weaken if one party literally becomes someone – or something – else entirely.” 

Crockford’s writing has appeared in Genrepunk Magazine, Massachusetts Review, and Paste Magazine.