https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/31/business/media/media-tech-companies-facebook.html

THE MEDIA EQUATION

Learning to Live With Mark Zuckerberg

Journalists and tech executives seem to be fighting each other to a draw in a battle that has no end in sight.

By Ben SmithOct. 31, 2021

After Mark Zuckerberg announced, in a goofy video on Thursday, that he was changing his company’s name to Meta and shifting its focus to the creation of a digital space called the metaverse, he granted interviews to just four media outlets, including exactly zero of the great American legacy publications.

For the outlets receiving a golden ticket, it was a big get. It was also a little embarrassing: What did you do to ingratiate yourself to one of journalism’s biggest targets, just as your competitors were feasting on a leak of thousands of internal company documents?

Only one outlet with access to the Facebook documents — the tech site The Verge — got an interview with Zuck. The other three were The Information, a tech news site, and a pair of relatively sympathetic newsletter-ers, Ben Thompson and Dylan Byers.

The message of this short list was clear: Silicon Valley doesn’t really need East Coast media anymore.

It has been more than half a decade since coverage of the tech industry, once known for its boosterism, turned adversarial, with Facebook often at the center of the story. As the battle between tech companies and the news media continues, Mr. Zuckerberg appears to be acting on the view, increasingly common in his circle, that journalists are just another hostile interest.

As the opposing sides were digging into their trenches, I thought it would be interesting to talk with Jessica Lessin, a journalist and media executive who often finds herself in an awkward spot somewhere between the battle lines, and who also has an unusually charitable view into both camps. She is the founder and editor of The Information, which started in 2013 as the Silicon Valley’s savvy and nimble answer to The Wall Street Journal, where she had been a star reporter.

“Bigger publications would like to make a stink that he’s going to the indies and not the big guys, which is frankly absurd,” she said. “What’s really happening is a recognition that there are many different audiences.”...https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/31/business/media/media-tech-companies-facebook.html