New york

This article is in The Spectator’s December 2019 US edition. Subscribe here. New York ‘What are you working on?’ is a standard and annoying question often asked of creative types. Finally, I have a good answer: ‘Nothing.’ That was my response at a recent New York dinner party at the home of the Italian journalist Mario Platero and his British wife, Ariadne. The Plateros have been entertaining the New York media class for decades and many of their long-time guests are even older than I am. But they are all still announcing projects. More power to them. They are fighting obsolescence. I’m embracing it. For one thing, it is hard not to be fatalistic if you are a journalist.

When I moved to New York City in 2006 to take a job in digital media, it seemed like you could fit everyone who worked for a startup or online media outlet in the city into a single room. If you worked in 'technology', you probably worked for a telecom, Bloomberg LP, or maybe an advertising technology company. New York’s startups in the original tech boom had been notably flimsier than those in the Bay Area, so few had made it through the early 2000s, and then there had been the September 11 terrorist attacks. For those of us who actually did work for startups (or in proximity to them, as I was a satellite-office journalist covering the industry for a Bay Area-based outlet) we had a distinct inferiority complex in a city that notoriously likes to be second to no one else.

Let's get ready to rumble! Two viral sensations are squaring off on the Twitter. In the blue corner, from Massachusetts Bay, Barstool Sports president and whole pizza-eating aficionado David 'Davey Pageviews' Portnoy. And in the red corner, all the way from the Bronx, it's fiery congresswoman Alexandria 'The Red Scare' Ocasio-Cortez. The spat concerns the hottest new trend in New York media besides developing a substance abuse problem and getting fired: unionizing. Nothing offers comfort to an overcaffeinated 23-year-old fresh out of a liberal arts college quite like a big 'union' laptop sticker on a battered MacBook Air. Springsteen would be proud. The latest cluster of journavists to attempt this strategy hail from sports site The Ringer, a Barstool competitor.

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