Scan barcode
A review by elpanek
Merchants of Truth: The Business of Facts and The Future of News by Jill Abramson
4.0
For anyone interested in the transformation of journalism and the news landscape that took place from 2000 to 2020, this book is a must-read. It's a reminder not just of the societal value of traditional journalistic norms, but also of the value of books. There are thousands of articles about the "death" and future of journalism/newspapers/truth/objectivity/etc. Some of them are written from the perspective of legacy media traditionalists while others are written by digital native disrupters. All of them can only scratch the surface, not only because of their brevity but also because of their lack of an undervalued good in the information marketplace: access.
That's the greatest virtue of Merchants of Truth: the access Abramson provides to the news landscape at the start of the 21st century. As Executive Editor of The New York Times in the midst of the industry's transition to digital, she was privy to the meetings and personalities that are as much a part of the observed trends in journalism as the much-hyped technologies of the internet and social media. The writing is accessible and engaging without pandering or striving for perfectly objective detachment.
The book is divided into parts examining three phases of four news organizations: The New York Times, The Washington Post, Buzzfeed, and Vice. It's a nice balance of legacy media and disruptors, and Abramson's accounts of the organizations with which she had no direct experience are no less detailed than her account of the Times. So much writing on the social and economic trends wrought by the internet is subject to presentism and obsessions with futures and deaths of industries. By zooming out and looking at 20 years of evolutions of four entities, Abramson gives us a much richer understanding of how large organizations - old and new - adapt over time. Neither Buzzfeed nor Vice were flashes in the pan, but they didn't kill off the legacy news organizations. There is no tidy narrative here, which makes it feel more like the truth.
Where the book seems to wander furthest from the truth is when it examines the role of Facebook in the news marketplace. No doubt Facebook was as much a part of the transformation of news as any other entity, but Abramson's single chapter on its role is overheated, repeating oft-misinterpreted research on its impact and generally piling blame on the world's favorite whipping boy circa 2020, Mark Zuckerberg. In these moments, Merchants of Truth falls victim to the same biases it observers in the digital attention economy. The need to point pitchforks at the powerful often outstrips the desire to understand a complex world, regardless of whether one is writing clickbait headlines or a book.
The book is at its best when it tracks the careers of reporters and editors. Surprisingly, legacy media and disruptors have a lot in common: star reporters like Ezra Klein bounce from legacy to digital back to legacy organizations, and all struggle with remaining relevant and solvent over the long term. Journalism hasn't died and its "futures" (too complex to be predicted, at least for now) say more about our present hopes and fears than the actual future. Better to set aside the think-pieces and spend time with an experienced, intelligent, witty writer like Abramson.
That's the greatest virtue of Merchants of Truth: the access Abramson provides to the news landscape at the start of the 21st century. As Executive Editor of The New York Times in the midst of the industry's transition to digital, she was privy to the meetings and personalities that are as much a part of the observed trends in journalism as the much-hyped technologies of the internet and social media. The writing is accessible and engaging without pandering or striving for perfectly objective detachment.
The book is divided into parts examining three phases of four news organizations: The New York Times, The Washington Post, Buzzfeed, and Vice. It's a nice balance of legacy media and disruptors, and Abramson's accounts of the organizations with which she had no direct experience are no less detailed than her account of the Times. So much writing on the social and economic trends wrought by the internet is subject to presentism and obsessions with futures and deaths of industries. By zooming out and looking at 20 years of evolutions of four entities, Abramson gives us a much richer understanding of how large organizations - old and new - adapt over time. Neither Buzzfeed nor Vice were flashes in the pan, but they didn't kill off the legacy news organizations. There is no tidy narrative here, which makes it feel more like the truth.
Where the book seems to wander furthest from the truth is when it examines the role of Facebook in the news marketplace. No doubt Facebook was as much a part of the transformation of news as any other entity, but Abramson's single chapter on its role is overheated, repeating oft-misinterpreted research on its impact and generally piling blame on the world's favorite whipping boy circa 2020, Mark Zuckerberg. In these moments, Merchants of Truth falls victim to the same biases it observers in the digital attention economy. The need to point pitchforks at the powerful often outstrips the desire to understand a complex world, regardless of whether one is writing clickbait headlines or a book.
The book is at its best when it tracks the careers of reporters and editors. Surprisingly, legacy media and disruptors have a lot in common: star reporters like Ezra Klein bounce from legacy to digital back to legacy organizations, and all struggle with remaining relevant and solvent over the long term. Journalism hasn't died and its "futures" (too complex to be predicted, at least for now) say more about our present hopes and fears than the actual future. Better to set aside the think-pieces and spend time with an experienced, intelligent, witty writer like Abramson.