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In reply to the discussion: The Inside Story of Matt Taibbi's Departure From First Look Media [View all]Blue_Tires
(55,445 posts)Every September, for a siren-snarled week, much of midtown Manhattan surrenders to a pair of occupying powers: the United Nations and the Clinton Global Initiative. The U.N.s annual General Assembly brings in the foreign excellencies and tin-pot dictators, but its Bill Clintons event that attracts the billionaires. This years edition, co-sponsored by, among others, a Greek shipping magnates wife and a Ukrainian oligarch, took place inside the barricaded Times Square Sheraton, where the Clintons made evangelical calls to action on issues like water scarcity and womens empowerment.
One evening, in conjunction with CGI, Pierre Omidyar threw a reception across the street. Omidyar, the programmer who created eBay, is one of Americas richest men, a 47-year-old philanthropist intent on giving away the fortune he made when he was 31. He is on collegial terms with the Clintons and has been a partner in their charity work. His guests, sipping wine inside a vaulted glass atrium, represented foundations and banks, governments and NGOs, tech start-ups and McKinsey. Omidyars foundation had just unveiled a $200 million Global Innovation Fund, established in partnership with the U.S. Agency for International Development. The announcement was timed to coincide with President Obamas speech to the conference that afternoon on nurturing civil society.
Omidyar was late to the party, however hed spent much of his day hatching plans with some of Obamas most uncivil opponents. Down in the Flatiron District, he has been building a digital-media organization dedicated to a scorching brand of fearless, adversarial journalism. Its prime target is the U.S. intelligence apparatus, and its marquee voice is Glenn Greenwald, the columnist who shared a Pulitzer Prize this year with documentarian Laura Poitras and others for obtaining and publishing Edward Snowdens leaks about NSA surveillance. Since that story broke, Snowden, Greenwald, and Poitras have become heroes of a crypto-insurgency. More quietly, Omidyar has become the movements prime benefactor, financing an operation to disseminate government secrets.
Earlier this year, Greenwald, Poitras, and a third comrade in arms former Nation writer Jeremy Scahill launched a website called the Intercept. It is meant to be the prototype for a fleet of publications funded by Omidyars flagship company, First Look Media, to which Omidyar has initially committed $250 million. We have the luxury of doing something different because we have this kind of infinite-resource backer, Greenwald told me on the phone from Brazil, where he is based. Were thinking about how to do journalism structurally differently. At the time of Omidyars visit, a second site, Racket, was also revving up for its launch. Headed by the polemical magazine writer Matt Taibbi, it was going to offer scabrous satire of the financial industry and politics.
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/10/pierre-omidyar-first-look-media.html
http://ohtarzie.wordpress.com/2014/11/03/i-read-the-new-york-magazine-omidyar-article-so-you-dont-have-to/