“Writing is work, and that work deserves payment in Our Capitalist Society. So we just thought, “Yeah, let’s pay everybody,” and if it failed, it failed. People seemed really happy that we were up front [about our budget]. Sometimes people would take their pieces elsewhere, and that’s wonderful. I think everyone should be getting as much money as they possibly can. But a lot of people appreciated that we were just making a gesture, even if it was $25 or $50. It’s not nothing, and that was our goal: to offer people not nothing.”
If you were to toddle over to Digiday, you would see an interview with a woman who possesses some opinions about disruption and writing in these modern times.
“So what is media or news disruption, then?”
“Somebody made a super-good point about what disruption wasn’t, which was to start your job at a huge media concern, and then spin off your own blog under that umbrella or get a ton of VC funding. Anyone who’s starting their own project, like Mikki Kendall and Jamie Nesbitt starting Hood Feminism with their own money, on their own time, without anybody overseeing them — that, to me, looks more like disruption than “The New York Times gave me a lot of money to make this.”
That said, if the New York Times would like to give me a lot of money, I am composed primarily of ears.
Tags: digiday, hood feminism, interviews, MEDIA DISRUPTION, our capitalist society
Related Posts
An Interview with Sarah Jeong, Author of The Internet of Garbage
An Interview With @AfAmHistFail
“Myth is the only way I have to self-identify”: An Interview with Matthew Salesses
An Interview with Alexander Chee
The Convert Series: Kima Jones
Channing Tatum Has Heard Of Roxane Gay And By Extension Is Now An Employee Of The Toast
BRB, rewriting my resume to simply read:
“Fucking delightful!” – Mallory Ortberg
“A really cool bunch of weirdoes.” – Mallory Ortberg
Being one of “a really cool bunch of weirdoes” will make my day, and probably my week.
Yes. Yes we are.
This website is broken – it won’t let me “Like” a Sam the Eagle gif more than once. 🙁
This is clearly against the rules of the Constitution, or something.
A more serious, not me-related comment: Sadly, “writing is work, and that work deserves payment” IS a pretty disruptive, radical idea so three cheers for The Toast, long may you reign, etc.!
Cosigned–I’ve found The Toast offers rates that are not only made of real money, but which are competitive with prestigious literary journals (who also pay all their employees).
Is anyone else seeing the the masthead box thinger cut off so Nicole’s name is missing? Related to this, and to this article, is Nicole… okay? Is Mallory leading a coup or something? (The idea does have some appeal.)
I am GREAT. I just had a strenuous workout and am now enjoying a protein shake and basking in my new ability to ask Nikki Callahan to do things for me!
(Sometimes I do the interviews and sometimes Mallory does the interviews.)
just to be clear, any toast coup would be a good coup.
SHE IS GREAT I also pitched a bit of a shit fit on Twitter a few weeks ago about DISPROPORTIONATE MALE ATTENTION so I got a few interview requests, which explains why Toast interviews/coverage have been a bit ME-CENTRIC lately. Because I WHINGED.
Don’t forget us oldsters! Some of us weirdoes are in our 40’s.
… and we’ve been practicing being fucking delightful for decades.
We have doctorates in Really Cool Weirdness!
And sometimes doctorates in other things, too. (Srsly, this group of weirdos seems to trend graduate degree.)
JUST A BIT
SOME of us are going to turn 50 next year.
*fistbump*
“We do not actively cultivate men at all”
Man, if only there was a word for plant-life that grows without laying down seed or being cultivated. Seems like it would be a good fit.
Ferns?
Haha, I was going to say moss!
Self-seeding? Volunteers?
Mold.
Weeds, I believe?
From a purely statistical perspective, I wonder what the graph of Mallory’s preference between male and female readership would be. Obviously, getting more readers is a good thing – but if somehow the male percentage grew too high from it’s present mid-30s I imagine that would not be a positive thing, even to the point of preferring less revenue in order to keep a more female environment (it presumably goes without saying to women, but I’ll say anyway that the comment sections here are night and day the most intelligent and respectful ones I’ve come across anywhere on the internet – blow the Gawker blogs out of the water, less self-loathingly self-righteous than the AV club, and most places aren’t even worthy of mention).
So like, at 30% male readership, one new male reader is probably as good as one new female reader. But at 45% male readership, one new female reader might be as valuable as two new male readers from a revenue vs. optimal percentage standpoint. In a theoretical world in which The Toast’s readership was 60% men, I could see Mallory/Nicole even wanting to actively drive men away so as to preserve the essential by women/for women concept.
Basically I want graphs of Mallory’s unquantifiable preferences. Woooo. Graphs.
Interesting interview. This website as an entity is rad.
I think the feeling of the comment section is probably more important than the readership numbers, though. If the readership was 85% male but the comment section was still full of discussion about things that affect women and casual misandry, and also devoid of mansplainers, then I think possibly everyone would just be glad that the dudes were increasing the ad views and thus bringing the Toast more money.
And baffled, obviously. Glad and baffled.
Agreed on all counts, the tone is more important than the sex. I still want graphs though.
I also have some hope that getting more men to read The Toast might help combat the insidious male dismissal of things that are “for women,” as if things that are for men are for the norm but things are for women are just for women. If a man wants to dismiss Mallory Ortberg or Clueless or delicious fruity alcohol beverages as “for women,” he’s a clown fool.
Casual misandry is great fun to see and stay out of the way of. I hope someday to be offended by it, as that would be a sign of substantially improved social equality.
That is something I worry about: wanting to engage and be a part of the conversation, but also not wanting to be That Guy on a feminist blog. I think right now the men who regularly comment on The Toast are by and large good dudes who get it and have bought into its mission. And Nicole’s and Mallory’s quickness with comment deletion prevents insidious assholes from gaining any foothold. It’s so refreshing being able to read a feminism-centered blog and not have to cringe in embarrassment about But What About Men?? posts.
ETA: The other thing is that there are so, so, so many wonderful commenters who are women or identify as women that I believe they have the power to just drown our dumb voices. This site doesn’t need a male feminism-whisperer. The women on this site are fucking incredible.
Yes, I love the commenters here TO DEATH AND BEYOND, but Nicole and Mallory being able to delete comments is a huuuuuuge deal and makes me feel safe and warm when I tuck myself in at night.
Aw Emby. You can stay.
I enjoy any website in which “omg you’re a man?” is a shocking revelation.
Basically, men have diminishing marginal utility — that is, the value of each additional man declines as he is added to the set. More on marginal utility here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marginal_utility#Dim…
Though of course, that theory assumes that men have any utility (in the context of this website) at all. That is questionable, though I don’t know enough about ad rates and how that relates to audience to say one way or the other. So perhaps we could postulate that men (in the context of this website) have diminishing marginal inoffensiveness. That is, as each additional man is added to the set, the set as a whole becomes less inoffensive. But, that assumes that all men in the set are equally inoffensive outside of the set (obviously not true.)
Any economists want to take a stab at this one?
Not only are all men in the set not equally inoffensive outside the set, but the inoffensiveness of Man A even within the set is not independent of the inoffensiveness of Man B within the set. So the curve of diminishing marginal utility is hard to estimate, and definitely isn’t linear with so much autocorrelation…there would probably have to be some “Mansplainment Tipping Point” at which the marginal utility of an additional man would suddenly be drastically slashed by virtue of infiltrating the community with enough “Men-who-do-not-live-by-the-toast’s-rules” to constitute a force multiplier on the offensiveness level on all or some of the men. But Mallory and Nicole’s Moody-esque vigilance should keep this place safe from such a horizon. I know I’d stop commenting here altogether if I thought that men here had the capacity or desire to ruin the place.
The corresponding question for women is: do they have constant or increasing marginal utility? I bet it would actually be the latter; an additional woman increases readership AND the female/male ratio, so two women are more than twice as good as one.
Unless you were looking for a female economist (I was a math major, not an economist – so economics to me is easier math except oh no you have to deal with humans what do normal humans do is that a thing), in which case I can sit this one out.
Ok, so there is a natural variance in inoffensiveness, as well as a group effect. Proximity effect? Let’s call it a proximity effect, that sounds fancier. But that should be measurable, I think. I think given that M&N police the comments fairly heavily, we’re unlikely to see the Mansplaining Tipping Point occur as a result of a small number of actors, but it’s worth asking whether we could hit the MTP simply through the presence of a large number of men who individually have high inoffensiveness values but have declining marginal inoffensiveness AS WELL AS the influence of the proximity effect.
I minored in econ, which is as far as I could go without taking a lot of math classes, so if you need lines that meet on a graph, I am all in.
I agree with everything you said, plus the more offensive comments there might be as we approached the MTP, the harder Mallory and Nicole would have to work to police the comments, thereby a) increasing the likelihood that more and more of them would get past the dam and b) taking their time away from writing and editing, potentially leading to a decrease in quality of the site.
Hence the idea of the theoretical “Toast Man,” one who a) can participate respectfully, b) not interject himself into topics he doesn’t know about, c) doesn’t need feminism defined to him, d) doesn’t mansplain things, and e) stands in a united front with the women against a fellow man who fails to meet criteria A-D. I have no doubt that Mallory and Nicole (and the community at large) are more than strong enough to prevent us from reaching the MTP, but the men should (and I think kinda do) police ourselves, so as to leave the womenfolk with more time to write and less time spent making sure we don’t trample the garden of radness created here.
Let’s do some lines! Um…I mean…on a graph…
From an ignorant but graph-loving standpoint, I am delighted by this thread!
“easier math except oh no you have to deal with humans what do normal humans do is that a thing” is the second best definition of economics I have seen. It is only slightly improved upon by the definition my mother gave me when I had to take my first econ class, which was “common sense made difficult”.
How would they drive men away? I mean, men who are interested in the excellent pieces this place has?
Well, they delete comments, which means that the Men We Don’t Want around Here may be reading, but we don’t have to be bothered by their presence.
Thirty is a pleasant surprise and I don’t want any more.
I think it would be pleasing and appropriate to we men and our evil souls if the average Toast reader had .666666 repeating testicles. So, with some variance for trans*, other classifications I don’t know the names for, Lance Armstrong, etc. – maybe we can try to keep it around one third.
Robin Williams used to refer to Lance Armstrong as “The Uniballer.”
“We do not actively cultivate men at all” might, by the by, be my favorite slice of hilarious understatement. My favorite in the whole wide world.
I said much the same on FB when I read the post! Pure fried gold.
From Mallory’s interview, emphasis mine: “Every couple of months, a list like this comes out, and they’re usually pretty predictable: It will be people you already know, people who have impressive jobs at big corporations, people who are generally white men.”
Here is how naive I am: I assumed that the Vanity Fair piece was designed, consciously or not, to coddle readers’ worldview and egos by presenting not-especially-disruptive media presences, but it only just occurred to me that it was also designed to flatter their sense of social insight and savvy by pointing to voices and faces they already know instead of people they might not recognize.
I’m always fond of cliches recast into unexpected clause formations, & the closing line of this post is pretty fantastic. (& of course, I share the general excitement at The Toast’s recent media coverage, because obviously it’s the best.)
I don’t know if you guys are into the idea, but if you ever made a Patreon account I would easily find 15 dollars a month to throw into the well
lol we HAVE a donate page
I’m blind!! I shall find some funds and throw money as soon as I can
If you ever made a Patron account that would be even better.
“our capitalist society” is definitely one of my favourite tags ever.
"Writers die from exposure" is amazing, and I'm going to use it a bunch, if you don't mind (I will totally credit "Pear from the Toast" when I do, because I can't even plagiarize irl).
“It was sort of like, there was a community already in place, and we found it, and they found us.”
Ok, so it’s probably because it’s 12:30 in the morning and I should be in bed, but this is really fucking beautiful. People don’t have to create communities of awesome women; they just have to look around and realize those communities are already there.
Um, me too, and I am, gulp, a guy. But I find the content, tone, sparklebutchness and strong community something uplifting. Plus I have almost zero interest in 'male' interests.