Billionaire Pierre Omidyar created a stir with the announcement of his plans to create a major new media venture to be called First Look Media. The impetus for the new venture seems to have been the frenzy created by Glenn Greenwald's publication of the revelations about the NSA with material supplied by Edward Snowden. First Look was announced as a collaboration between Omidyar and Greenwald to begin with it. The plan has been to eventually add other types of content such as financial and entertainment news.
Greenwald's undertaking was launched in February on a site called The Intercept. At the time he was described as being "the editor". Other investigative journalists specializing in security issues such as Laura Portras and Marcy Wheeler joined the team. The plan announced at the beginning was that the initial focus would be a continuation of the reporting of the Snowden material and that coverage would expand to other issues in time.
For a while post of news or commentary were appearing on most days. The last one appeared on April 4th. Then the site went silent. I was wondering what had happened. Today there is a puzzling post from someone named John Cook who describes himself as the editor in chief.
Passover Greetings from the Editor
Hello. My name is John Cook, and as of three weeks ago I became the editor-in-chief of The Intercept. Since then, we haven’t published much material on the site, and that’s been on purpose. I’d like to take a moment to catch interested readers up on where we are and what you can expect from us over the coming weeks and months.
The site launched in February with an announcement from co-founders Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras, and Jeremy Scahill that The Intercept was coming online with an initial short-term focus on stories about the operations of the National Security Agency, based in large part on an archive of documents provided by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. The decision to begin publishing at that point was based on a commitment to continue the work of reporting on, publishing, and explicating those documents. It was not based on an assessment that everything that one needs for the successful launch of a news web site–staff, editorial capacity, and answers to questions about the site’s broader focus, operational strategy, structure, and design–had been worked out.
Those things still have not been worked out, and over the past three weeks I have begun the process of resolving them in collaboration with the remarkably talented team that has already been assembled here. Until we have completed the work of getting staffed up and conceptually prepared for the launch of a full-bore news operation that will be producing a steady stream of shit-kicking stories, The Intercept will be narrowly focusing on one thing and one thing only: Reporting out stories from the NSA archive as quickly and responsibly as is practicable. We will do so at a tempo that suits the material. When we are prepared to publish those stories, we will publish them. When we are not, we will be silent for a time, unless Glenn Greenwald has some blogging he wants to do, because no one can stop Glenn Greenwald from blogging.
So just what is going on there? Greenwald has been on the road to Berlin and New York for journalism awards ceremonies. He seems to have managed to avoid the clutches of the CIA. Whatever is happening, this sort of fitful start is not an effective way to build an audience.