Episode 21 - Critiquing Open Debaters with Gabe Schneider

Diversity Hire

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Hello and welcome to episode 21 of Diversity Hire.

Today we talked to Gabe Schneider, the assistant managing editor Vote Beat and the co-founder of The Objective, a Substack newsletter that focuses on media criticism and covering communities ignored by mainstream journalism. We talked to Gabe about the Substack economy, what it was like to publish a rebuttal of the Harpers letter, what’s the deal with ‘open debaters’ who are deathly afraid of cancel culture, what it was like covering the presidential election, the sorry state of media criticism, and much more. Kevin and Arjun also talk about the latest corporate media merger, the NBA draft, and Kevin’s love of Mad Magazine.

Thanks for listening.

* Arjun and Kevin talk about media news (0:00)

* Gabe Schneider introduces us to his dog (10:02)

* Gabe talks about how he started a student-led campus blog (12:19)

* How Gabe became a Washington correspondent (15:44)

* What led Gabe to start The Objective (17:48)

* The response to the Harpers Letter (re: “A More Specific Letter on Justice and Open Debate,” The Objective, 2020) (20:16)

* On the “Open Debaters”: Fang, Greenwald, Stephens, Weiss, Williams, et al. (re: “How to erase Black journalists,” The Objective, 2020) (22:10)

* The Open Debaters’ move to Substack (24:50)

* Is anyone buying this “Substack is the savior of media” bullshit? (re: “The Substackerati,” Clio Chang, CJR, 2020) (27:20)

* When will the Substack business model burst? (30:12)

* What is the future of the Objective in a broken media industry? (32:00)

* The Open Debaters’ skewed view of objectivity (34:00)

* The wide latitude that tends to be offered to white journalists (re: “Re: About Your Tweet,” The Objective, 2020) (36:18)

* Negative responses about The Objective (38:17)

* The failings of diversity & inclusion (39:54)

* The business model of The Objective (41:14)

* On Vote Beat (42:15)

* On covering the elections as a Washington correspondent for MinnPost (44:16)

* Arjun’s Feelings Don’t Care About Facts Corner (47:15)

* The Diversity Tribunal (51:21)

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