"In the spring semester of 2002, Denton helped an old source from Budapest teach a class at the Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. The course, which Denton now describes as “a great example of contrasting journalistic approaches,” was called “Freedom of the Press: Political Change and the Media in Hungary.” Denton was at the time the chairman of a company called Moreover Technologies, an early news aggregator. His co-teacher, Peter Molnar, was a former member of the Hungarian parliament who had drifted away from politics and into academia as the progressive youth movement that he had founded got co-opted by populist right-wing elements. “I was brought in to provide a bit of ‘Here’s how it works in the real world,’ ” Denton said. “So he would talk in class about the plight of the Gypsy minority, and then I would say, ‘Yeah, except no one’s going to actually commission that piece, so, to the extent that you actually want to make a career out of journalism, which I assume you do, you’d do well to find topics of more interest to your audience.’ ” The course involved a weeklong field trip to Hungary. Molnar wanted the students to investigate human-rights issues relating to free speech; Denton encouraged travel-section features about spa culture. “He got quite acrimonious,” Denton said."
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Nick Denton, Gawker Media, and journalism’s future
Probably the most revelatory paragraph in this piece. A classic example of spoilt, dogmatic cynicism. Relativism and subjectivism are part and parcel of the postmodernism still in vogue today, but neither denies that we can’t make something beautiful by believing in it. Denton represents the worst in the now old-guard of the for-profit media.
How will the old Nick Denton see himself, staring at his wrinkles and decaying body? Will his puerile materialism furnish him yet another answer to the last and greatest of life’s challenges?
