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friday, march 13 , 2020. washingtonpost.com/style eZ re kk C
BY PAUL FARHIIn the span of just a few weeks,
the top editors of two leading
digital-news outfits called it
quits. Ben smith, who ran Buzz-
Feed news for eight years, took a
job writing a column at the new
York Times; Lydia Polgreen is
leaving HuffPost to oversee a
podcast company.
Two does not make a trend, but
it does raise a question: Do their
departures — smack in the mid-
dle of the busiest news cycle in
years — say something about the
troubled state of the digital news
media?
Both editors answer with a
firm no. They say their decisions
were personal, not an extension
of some larger industry malaise.
nevertheless, it’s impossible not
to notice the context.
HuffPost and BuzzFeed were
once the shooting stars of the
new-media galaxy, innovators
that showed “legacy” media orga-
nizations how news could be
edited and packaged for the
young and digitally savvy. The
former pioneered high-volume
commentary, almost entirely lib-
eral, and eventually coupled it
with some first-class reporting,
becoming one of the first digital-
only news organizations to win a
Pulitzer Prize. The latter began as
a purveyor of “listicles,” quizzes
and other clickbaity content but
under smith developed into a
newsroom that broke several im-
portant stories but also famously
flopped in its reporting about
special counsel Robert s. Mueller
III’s investigation of President
Trump.
These days, however, the sky
no longer seems the limit, not just
for BuzzFeed and HuffPost butfor the entire field of digital-news
sites that had once seemed to be
journalism’s future.
Digital publishers face the
same issues that have beset, and
decimated, whole swaths of the
traditional media, particularly lo-
cal newspapers. Digital ad rates
have fallen steadily for years
amid an unending supply of com-
petitors and slow-growing de-
mand from sponsors. Looming
over the entire business are the
twin colossi, Facebook and
Google, which collect about
60 percent of every dollar spent
by digital advertisers.
Video streaming, once thought
to be a savior, turned out to be a
high-cost investment with mixed
returns. And few digital publish-
ers have been able to convert
their visitors into regular sub-
scribers, which seem to be a key
see new media on C2Two high-profile departures illustrate
worries about viability of ‘new media’
Drew angerer/getty images
buzzFeed news editor ben smith hands out copies of his site’s one-time special-edition newspaper in
march 2019. He recently left buzzFeed for that most traditional of news sources, the new york times.BY KRISTEN MILLARES
YOUNGWhen complex human stories
are carved into the style of a
thriller, the probability of reduc-
tionism increases. With his fifth
book, “Amnesty,” Aravind Adiga
examines systemic and individu-
al impunity through one bad day
of a working man’s life. But does
Adiga create characters only to
exploit their paradigms?
Highlight-
ing his hair to
appear mod-
ern, hiding his
accent along
with his un-
documented
status, the
Ta mil protago-
nist, Dhanan-
jaya Rajarat-
nam, lives as
Danny.
Caught in a
double bind fa-
miliar to many
migrants, Dan-
ny entered
Australia on a student visa to
attend a for-profit academic in-
stitution that he was soon con-
vinced would convey neither a
good education nor access to real
jobs. Afraid to be indebted with-
out r ecourse, he dropped o ut and
plowed his a chievement mentali-
ty into becoming a “Legendary
Cleaner.”
He cannot shake what he has
left behind. To rtured in sri Lan-
ka, D anny’s t rauma i s made man-
ifest by a raised scar on his
forearm, which he touches re-
peatedly, plagued by the memory
of a police officer’s burning ciga-
rette. To r isk a pplying for Austra-
lian asylum could invite deporta-
tion to that same fate.
Danny operates in a state of
constant surveillance that goes
unrecognized by people desensi-
tized to the comforts of their
citizenship. “Mimicking a man
with an Australian spine, wear-
ing shorts in public, enjoying the
low-class thrill of looking like a
child again,” Danny does his best
to pass as someone he is not. But
$47.50 highlights cannot obscure
his cracked teeth.
Danny wants to relax enough
to enjoy the forced assimilation
over which he pretends to have
agency. For that, Adiga needs a
foil — a legal, leftist, vegan,
Vietnamese A ustralian g irlfriend
named sonja, her “eyes eager for
otherness,” whose affections are
too precarious for Danny to dis-
close either his undocumented
status or his proclivity for eating
meat. Disappointed that he’s not
Muslim, which would, i n Danny’s
eyes, compel Australian sympa-
thy for his refugee status, sonja
see book world on C2Book worldA migrant
f aces an
impossible
choice
Amnesty
By aravind adiga
scribner.
272 pp. $26movie reviews in weekend
the Hunt the film about people hunting people is gruesomely, inanely violent — and not political. 27 First Cow kelley reichert’s movie is a subtly consciousness-altering frontier parable. 28
swallow Haley Bennett gets a breakout role as a woman descending into extremes of self-harm. 30
BY PETER MARKSNEW YORK — Broadway was ordered Thursday to shut its
41 theaters, a decision bringing an immediate halt to
long-running hits and new shows alike and delivering a
potential blow to the financial health of a key new York
industry. The houses will remain dark through at least
April 12.
The move was in line with a broader shutdown of major
performing and visual arts institutions in the city. Lincoln
Center, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Carnegie Hall
all announced temporary closings Thursday, with officials
noting t hat the action came, as L incoln Center put i t, “ in an
effort to mitigate the spread of the covid-19 virus and to
prioritize the health of our communities.”
n ew York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) announced the
shuttering of Broadway — a decision without modern
precedent with the exception of the days after 9/11 and
see broadway on C3Broadway to dim
lights for a month
BY PEGGY MCGLONEThe s mithsonian museums and t he national Gallery of Art
will close starting saturday, and the Kennedy Center has
canceled all performances and public events through March
31, the latest high-profile cultural organizations in Washing-
ton t o go d ark because of the increasing threat of the spread o f
covid-19.
smithsonian officials did not announce a reopening date
for its museums and the national Zoo, saying it will provide
updates on a weekly b asis. The national Gallery of Art expects
to reopen April 4.
Kennedy Center President Deborah Rutter said the board
approved the plan in a meeting l ate Thursday afternoon. The
Kennedy Center campus and all facilities, including the
re staurant and c afe, will be c losed a s of Friday.
“We need to be a part of the larger national effort to contain the
spread of the virus,” Rutter said Thursday. “ This is a really challeng-
see arts on C3Cultural institutions
across D.C. closing
istockDeep-seated anxiety
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