David Carr vs. Some Guys from VICE

The current top story on vice.com, “Inside the Christian Nationalist Church Where Proud Boys Go to be Baptized,” is a bit thick. “Meaner, faster, and more dynamic.” Ha! David Carr had their number off the bat: ▶ this video

Your observation reminds me of a fun 2010 interaction between Vice and NYT illustrating some tension then between the two outlets that is featured in the documentary Page One: Inside the New York Times . (David Carr and Shane Smith would later laugh together about the exchange during a panel at Vanity Fair's New Establishment Summit in 2014.) Excerpt: ▶ this video Full: link

There's an interesting confrontation over that piece in the NY Times 'Page Six' documentary, which filmed David Carr, the Times's then media correspondent, interviewing the Vice Founders: ▶ this video I think part of the Vice pitch was always that it was a disruptor of the old-fashioned media narratives, uncovering the stories to which boring old media was blind. I tend to agree with Carr's implicit critique here that we undervalue the journalistic, societal value of the sort of unglamorous coverage in which traditional media invests and at which it excels.

Perhaps this is now old, but everytime Vice is brought up all I can think of is this piece with David Carr from Page One (2011) - ▶ this video

Why should the Gawker network do "actual journalism" if that need's already met by major outlets? Granted, there are listicle happy properties (Lifehacker), but Gawker et al. filled a void with it's meta-criticism of news. It's not rare for Gawker to cover topics that are too risky for major outlets. Take for example the sports property, deadspin. I read deadspin and the deadspin writers broach newsworthy topics that would get an ESPN writer not only "banned from the clubhouse" but suspended by HQ in order to appease the team/league. Deadspin provides signal that major outlets would otherwise avoid or over-cook. Not to over-shill for Gawker, but the commenters are pretty educated and won't let the authors off the hook if the author leaves holes in their argument. I submit that your poop should flow further down the news hill to sites like Vice.com where NYT super-journos call them out for looking at poop[1]. [1] ▶ this video

One of the best scenes from Page One: ▶ this video Carr talks to the Vice guys about their deal with CNN: "Just because you put on a fucking safari helmet and looked at some poop, doesn't give you the right to insult what we do."