Can Greenwald's digital magazine Intercept help to reinvent journalism?/ The Guardian.

Can Greenwald's digital magazine Intercept help to reinvent journalism?

Founder plans non-hierarchical newsroom and wants to build First Look Media on collaboration

Ben Cardew

The Guardian, Sunday 2 March 2014 / http://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/mar/02/glenn-greenwald-first-look-intercept

With $250m in funding from eBay founder Pierre Omidyar and some high profile journalist hires, First Look Media has set itself the lofty task of reinventing journalism for the digital age, starting with the traditional hierarchy of newsrooms.

Glenn Greenwald, the former Guardian journalist who broke a string of stories about widespread electronic surveillance by the National Security Agency based on files leaked by whistleblower Edward Snowden, was first on board the Omidyar-backed venture and launched the new company's first "digital magazine", the Intercept, on 10 February. The online title will initially concentrate on the NSA, with the longer-term goal of producing "aggressive and independent adversarial journalism" on issues ranging from civil liberties to media.

Greenwald was joined last month by Rolling Stone contributing editor Matt Taibbi, who has built a formidable reputation for his reporting on the financial crisis. Taibbi will launch First Look's second online title later this year, focused on the ongoing economic crisis and the political machinery that surrounds it. Greenwald, co-editor of the Intercept alongside documentary maker Laura Poitras, who previously worked with him on the NSA leaks, and Jeremy Scahill, formerly of the Nation, says the opportunity to build a news organisation from the ground up will allow him to put his theories on media into practice.

Among these is a belief in reorganising the newsroom. "We want to avoid this hierarchical, top-down structure where editors are bosses and obstacles to being published," Greenwald explains. "We are trying to make it much more collaborative. Our journalists have a variety of tools to make their writing better and one of them is the editor. We also want journalists to help to hire editors."

This spirit of collaboration extends to the site's readers. Initial page traffic has been "huge – in the hundreds of thousands", Greenwald says, with each article attracting hundreds of reader comments. "Journalism becomes ossified and corrupted where it is just a monologue, speaking down to your readers in a passive format," he adds. "I see [comments] as a vital form of accountability."

It is, of course, still early days for the Intercept, which Greenwald says launched "earlier than in an ideal world because we felt an obligation to get on with our reporting of the NSA documents, even though we weren't really ready". As a result, the look of the site – built on a basic WordPress template – is as yet merely functional. What's more, Greenwald says the "digital magazine" tag that the Intercept employs is essentially branding, arising from the difficulty in describing what Omidyar wants to do with the new company. First Look Media will create what its backer calls "multiple digital publications", each dedicated to a specific topic and each led by an experienced journalist. A flagship First Look Media site will launch later this year featuring original content, curated news and articles aggregated from this family of outlets.

The venture is funded by Omidyar's wealth, which Forbes estimated at $8.5bn last year. He invested $50m in First Look in December 2013, with a further $200m to follow. Omidyar has, however, said that he wants First Look to be self-supporting, promising to "experiment with new and old revenue sources and create entirely new ones". One of these sources will be a separate technology company within First Look that will develop new tools for the company's media properties and other markets, and whose eventual profits will support its journalism.

Greenwald argues that being financially independent will help First Look's titles to defend press freedom. "A lot of news organisations are desperate to avoid litigation with governments and big corporations because it is expensive to do that," he says. "Or they are afraid to publish aggressively about huge corporations for the fear of getting sued. Part of the idea of having a really well-funded news organisation is [being] someone who has the resources to defend these principles."

Ken Doctor, a news industry analyst, says this philanthropic model has several parallels in the media world (not least the Guardian, owned by the Scott Trust). "We've seen foundations and individuals bankroll, for start-up and beyond, sites from ProPublica to the Center for Investigative Reporting to MinnPost to Texas Tribune," he explains. "Non-profit philanthropically funded journalism has gotten new life in the digital world. It will work as long as the money flows."

Could First Look Media, then, provide a model for the future of journalism (billionaire owner and star journalists aside)? "I think I see us as a model not the model," Greenwald replies. "There are different ways that journalism can innovate and get better. But I hope that some of the things that we do will inspire people to work out how to do journalism the way that they want. And to be fearless."

Doctor urges caution, however. "We'll have to see how many sites of what nature – all advocacy, or only some? – roll out of First Look to see what kind of civic or political impact it generates," he says. "It could become a major employer of journalists. That, though, in itself doesn't portend life-changing models in the news world. Just three years ago, AOL's Patch hired more than 900 journalists – more than anyone else in the world – and it is now fading into the historical woodwork."