Thread by @f__kvice

1/ Finally reading Jill Abramson's Merchants of Truth (not the uncorrected 'galley proofs' others bemoaned). It tracks NYT, WaPo, Vice and BuzzFeed between 2007 and now.

This thread will be Vice.

I'll tweet things of interest and call out any errors. a.co/dGI4Wu0

2/ The book was officially released this morning.

https://twitter.com/JillAbramson/status/1084938243974619137

3/ Search results for "not vice", "notvice" and "voshart" have no results. 😶

4/ "VICE I" Chapter has an early paragraph similar to my article on Shane. Makes sense: we both cited Joe Rogan and Spike Jonze interviews of Shane Smith BSing about his upbringing.

Blue: Merchants of Truth
Green: 🔗notvice.com/shane-smith-bi…

5/ "Images Interculturelles" is in Montreal. Montreal has a large Haitian population. This small error still appears to be in the book.

Also highlighted is the passage from Gavin's 2012 book "How to Piss in Public"

H/T

https://twitter.com/mcmoynihan/status/1084900273846476801?s=19

6/ Later paragraph about Shane is a mishmash between an anecdote first reported by Chuck Johnson in @DailyCaller (2013) and a quote from Lisa Gabriele in @CANADALAND (2014).

Both are linked to in my "Ten Critical Views on Vice".

I had to update it when Chuck Johnson made a non-critical appearance on InfoWars.

Chuck doesn't write for Daily Caller anymore. He formed "Got News" and started to align with Alt-Right ideas.
🔗notvice.com/ten-critical-v…

7/ More quotes of Gavin from @CANADALAND podcast.

Maybe I'm old-school, but you should really cite your sources.

cc: @JillAbramson @JesseBrown

8/ This appears to be another anecdote from @lisagabrieletv in the "VICE: an oral history" @CANADALAND podcast but one copy has turned into a few hundred.

9/ An interesting anecdote about Vice's "Racist Issue". I doubt Jill went through all the issues cuz it's similar to @biggeidea's 2007 Masters Thesis.
(Jill cites Bigg's work later in the book for circulation numbers. But not this paragraph.)
🔗webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache… (p.111)

10/ I can't quite decypher Jill's citation of pages 39-40 of Bigg's thesis (last image). Bigge mentions $350,000 in ads per issue on p.9 (citing Masthead Magazine).

Pages 39-40 only mention a circulation of 350,000 and nowhere do I see the number 150,000.

Confusing.

11/ Yeah, I might have been generous in saying "similar"

https://twitter.com/f__kvice/status/1092822004380680193

12/ We need an 🚑

https://twitter.com/lmatsakis/status/1092806020060139522

13/ This book is pretty disappointing. No number for Gavin's payout. 😒

Just "far more modest" than $59 million.

14/ "VICE II" (Chapter 6). Getting to the @Babyballs69 chapter of #MerchantsOfTruth. There will be a lot of she-said-he-said here.

I'll try to sum up the main points from Thomas Morton's Medium post. medium.com/@thomas.morton…

15/ I actually think Thomas is OK. I've parodied his work.

vimeo.com/121639159

I'm going to assume he isn't lying about anything to save face...

16/ Jill writes that Thomas Morton wrote a gushing letter to Gavin McInnes.

Thomas says he wrote the letter to the general Vice email account.

17/ This disagreement over facts is weird. There is no "streetwear store" in my copy of the book. "streetwear shops"? Whats going on @Babyballs69?

Jill doesn't record interviews so who knows what was said.

18/ A disagreement over what the office looked like in 2004. This could be solved with a picture.

My guess is Jill was talking to Gavin who fondly remembers his late friend Dash Snow. Therefore, what we are seeing is a mix of what Thomas said and what Gavin said. 😖

19/ This is where Thomas Morton got his name "Baby Balls".
#TheMoreYouKnow

20/ Thomas calls out Jill for dipping into "Fra-Bro Libel" but she has a pretty solid anecdote about "the Gross Jar" which seems frat-like.

I don't think the Frat-Bro thing is libel. I think Thomas' loyalty clouds his judgement.👇

https://twitter.com/f__kvice/status/1090270876635938816

21/ "one media critic deemed it"🤔

22/ What really stands out about this book is how out-of-touch Jill is with internet culture. You could almost post some paragraphs on r/OldPeopleFacebook

23/ What shines in #MerchantsOfTruth is @JillAbramson's respect for the wall between editorial and advertising.

24/ Clearly there is no wall between advertising and editorial at Vice.

25/ How much was the @CreatorsProject Intel deal worth?

$ 40 million (Shane 2016)
🔗qz.com/776628/shane-s…
$ 25 million (NYMag 2018)
🔗nymag.com/intelligencer/…
$ 40 million (#MerchantsOfTruth)

(Jill believes Shane's number)

26/ "Virtue [...] the engine driving 90% of the company’s revenue, native ads, or branded content, as it was also called"

Citation?
Liberation 2013?
🔗liberation.fr/ecrans/2013/07…
(Chance find when reading articles mentioning Alex Detrick - even french ones)
🔗notvice.com/branding-vice-…

27/ Yes Jill, I also find great pleasure in figuring out narrative structure.
🤨
📷🔗thecut.com/amp/2019/02/ho…
📷🔗#MercantsOfTruth
📷🔗notvice.com/branding-vice-…

28/ Pretty sure the stories of Shane having "snuck into" N. Korea are BS.

29/ This 💯% @vicenews take note.
(p.171)

30/ "I have an almost photographic memory" -@JillAbramson to @TheCut
🤨🤨🤔🤔 (Page 172)

https://twitter.com/f__kvice/status/1090126963166138368

31/ Thomas didn't say "the drunkest place on earth"

Only the most generous interpretation of "Morton's claim" (ie: he is the host and must take ownership of other people's words in it) can explain this as being true.

Basically Jill is wrong.
#MerchantsOfMistakes

Re: 28/ These were comments in Shane's Reddit AMA about North Korea:

I can't vouch for their accuracy but I can say credibility of anonymous internet comments == Shane
🔗reddit.com/r/IAmA/comment…
🔗
🔗
🔗reddit.com/u/cgillett

32/ Hey @Babyballs69, how did your relationship "was in ended"?

📷P.180, Abramson
📷Thomas Morton
🔗medium.com/@thomas.morton…
📷P.173, Abramson
📷🔗Leptospirosis, Wikipedia. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leptospir…

And what's up with the tropical disease thing? Uncorrected version?

33/ Oh, strange.

Skipping ahead again to "VICE III" (Chapter 11)

Great tweet to choose in opening the chapter. Must be common. I've seen it before.

📷P.346, Abramson
📷🔗medium.com/thoughts-on-me…
📷🔗Shane's Twitter 2013 (he blocked me, can't link)
📷Google search

34/ I'm sure Jill just read through thousands of tweets (with replies) and found the same one from five years ago.

Because photographic memory or whatever. 😑

Re 25/ Ok, the number is now $ 50 million but I guess it's because more time has passed?

35/ Jill cites 10 tweets throughout her book. None cite Shane Smith... which is interesting because my blog linked to imgur-- not twitter.

I suppose **it's possible** we both don't want traffic going to 5 y/o tweet with zero likes or RTs. 🤔

36/ The next part -- the mythical transgender host -- has already been picked apart 👇

https://twitter.com/adrs/status/1085174289547046912?s=19

37/ Interesting: apparently Vice on HBO is a loss leader. (Not profitable)

38/ There's an incredible but embarassing story of Suroosh in Karachi inserting himself into an interview that was already filmed by a producer earlier. (P.351)

At least it wasnt greenscreened or deepfaked with a stunt-double. 😂

(I'll try to find it later)

39/ The producer who objected and later quit was Andréa Schmidt. m.imdb.com/name/nm5040585…

She sounds ethical and awesome. Check out her work:

40/ ⬆️The interview never aired.

41/ Jill Abramson goes into detail about Jason Mojica.

One anecdote ends with "...she had to fend him off with an umbrella"🌂

42/ Jill has all the important details execpt one:

Jason Mojica's glasses are fake. No prescription.

It's a sixth sense 👓👇

https://twitter.com/dvoshart/status/1066006040737652736

43/ This is a remarkably long thread and I can never tell if anyone is reading.

Congrats on making it this far.

15 more tweets. Promise.

Quick tangent: some emojis I bet you've never seen tweeted:

📠📟📜⚗️🚱🔛🔘🎽🎛️🖲️

44/ Wow, appears Jill let Shane Smith off easy in the Merchants of Truth. (See my pinned tweet)

"Smith seemed to have reformed himself in recent years..."

"...the very wealthy founders had lost touch with the young masses..."

45/ Cool, she met with Shane for lunch and let him spew a bunch of numbers that are now printed in a book. 😕

46/ "The wealthy founder stopped touching the young masses" FTFY

https://twitter.com/f__kvice/status/1093213262659887105

47/ Done 3rd and final VICE chapter in Merchants of Truth.

Let me rewind to pages 367 & 346 to harp on a few numbers that are absolutely BS:

🚫3,000 employees
🚫7,000 different pieces a day
🚫in more than 40 countries

48/ Jill Abramson scored a hat-trick of re-reporting innacurate numbers.

🚫3,000 employees

Vice has never had 3,000 "employees". Never has, never will.

Someone plz screenshot the number on the "insider" worldwide staff directory.

https://twitter.com/f__kvice/status/1091386418507722753

49/ 🚫7,000 different pieces a day.

Lordy, more like Merchants of Bullshit.

From Shane's mouth, to a 2016 @THR article, to Jill's book of "Truth".

I guess she didn't read my *whole* blog or she would have read this: notvice.com/vice-daily-con…

49/ TLDR: If you understand “7,000 pieces of content” to mean ‘unique news stories and videos’ then the number is closer to 70 — 1% of 7000.

(In 2015, Shane gave a number over 9,000 on @joerogan podcast --14,000!)

50/ Maybe 🚫7,000 was because of tweets?

Nope. I did an analysis of their 67 twitter accounts (only 58 are active) and found ~450 tweets a day -- including duplicates.
notvice.com/vice-twitter-b…

51/ 🚫in more than 40 countries.

This one is funny. Sure, Vice has an offices in some major cities but after the top 10 (in the rare instance an address is even given) Google Streetview shows some random house.

Accurate would be "we have ten offices and contributors abroad"

52/ Conclusion: @JillAbramson has few unique anectodes about Vice.

She confuses authority with accuracy and Shane's lies get plenty of ink.

She talks about ethics but pickpockets others w/o citation.

For a book with "Truth" in the title it makes a fuckton of mistakes.

2/10

53/ Some more examples of pickpocketing. (Includes an example already in this thread)

https://twitter.com/mcmoynihan/status/1093290257896869888

54/ Looking back at the last line of my response email ... 🤔

55/ Wow, this is getting heated

https://twitter.com/IanFrisch/status/1093321152951472128

(Also, kinda weird the formatting is the same as @mcmoynihan's thread. Coordinated?)

56/ Response from @simonschuster

https://twitter.com/brianstelter/status/1093358627174469633?s=19

Will ebooks get updated with proper citations? Is a 2nd Ed. download free?