BY PAUL CARR 
ON APRIL 20, 2013

A few days ago, in an interview to promote his (genuinely excellent) co-written study/manifesto on “Post-Industrial Journalism“, Clay Shirky had this to say about me, and NSFWCORP…

“You get a lot of people saying that their model is the best and that everyone else has got it wrong. Or they are unwilling to admit what exactly their business model is. Take Paul Carr – I disagree with much of the content of his work, but he’s just a brilliant writer: He never says that nsfwcorp is bankrolled by Tony Hsieh. He doesn’t go out and say, ‘my organization works because a millionaire thinks I’m great and other newspapers cannot necessarily replicate that.’”

I can’t tell you how grateful I am to Clay Shirky for saying those words. Not just the kind ones about my writing (although, in point of fact, Clay, I’m not just a brilliant writer. I also cook a mean beef stroganoff) — but also for setting my mind at ease, apropos the Future of Journalism (With Jokes).

To think, for the past few months, I’ve lived the constant near-panic of a start-up founder: obsessing over cash flow spreadsheets (which I update sometimes a dozen times a day), tweaking and re-tweaking freelance budgets, agonizing over healthcare options and waking in the middle of the night from nightmares of having to close down the entire company because of some miscalculation I’ve made during commissioning or hiring.

And all for nothing! Because everything is totally fine. Thanks to our millionaire benefactor, Scrooge McHsieh (John D Hsiehafeller? Bill McHsiehates?), I can rip up those cashflow forecasts, tear down our paywall and pour the team another pint of Krug 1928. Happy days are here the fuck again.

Careful readers will have detected my sarcasm in the lines above. I wonder, though, if my anger and frustration are coming through clearly enough?

In just a few smug words, Clay Shirky, one of our most respected media commentators, dismisses the entire business model of NSFWCORP — our paywall, our print edition, our ebooks, Conflict Tower — as a gimmick, a fig leaf to distract from the comfortable reality: that NSFWCORP is nothing more than a rich man’s plaything. We’re not the future of anything, we’ve solved nothing. At best, we’re lucky; at worst, frauds.

That’s just the kind of cuttin’-through-the-bullshit tellin’-it-like-it-is statement for which Shirky is famous, and for which institutions like Columbia and NYU keep cutting him checks. And, by happy coincidence, it allows Shirky to neatly slot NSFWCORP into the broader premise of his report: that no-one has yet figured out a viable business model for journalism in the Internet era. But maybe — just maybe — if we follow Clay Shirky’s advice then one day we might. (There’s actually a name for institutions — media pundits, say — trying to preserve the problem to which they are the solution. It’s called the Shirky Principle.)

Few people are better informed on the collision of media and technology as Clay Shirky, even if he is a little obsessed with the idea that EVERYTHING HAS CHANGED. Likewise, he’s absolutely entitled to have his doubts about the viability of NSFWCORP. God knows, I share many of them (more on that in a moment). But there’s just one problem with his demand that I acknowledge his description of our financial position.

It isn’t true.

In fact, it’s embarrassingly, infuriatingly, dangerously wrong.

Shirky says I should be honest about how NSFWCORP works, that I should “go out” and explain how the company is financed and what exactly our business model is. Well alrighty then….

NSFWCORP has raised a total of $640k from three investors, including Tony Hsieh’s Vegas Tech Fund (VTF), all of whom invested on exactly the same terms, as covertible debt. VTF is by far the largest investor, responsible for $600k of that total (the other $40k came from CrunchFund and Judith Clegg. It’s all disclosed here.) VTF’s $600k takes us right up to the maximum amount the fund invests in startups, and the fund’s partners have made absolutely clear: that’s it. Indeed, when I last saw Tony and asked for advice on future funding, his advice was that we shouldn’t raise any money if we can avoid it but if we did need to, he could introduce us to another possible investor. That’s it. There is no more money coming from Tony or Vegas Tech Fund. We are not “bankrolled” by anyone, except in the same way as any other company that has ever raised a seed round.

(Another important point, and I mean this as a positive thing: since we started publishing I have not once had a conversation with Tony about the content of NSFWCORP. In that regard, he is absolutely the perfect media investor.)

How am I doing so far, Clay? Honesty-wise?

Great! Let’s go on…

NSFWCORP was founded with two goals: 1) to create a brilliant news magazine (with jokes) and 2) to prove that it is still possible to build an innovative, independently profitable journalistic organisation: one that treats its journalists well, allowing them to produce great work which readers are willing (eager even) to pay for.

Journalistically, I think we’re doing pretty great. Earlier this week, the chancellor of Appalachian State resigned, just days after we published David Forbes’ exposé on how the university covers up rape and sexual assault by athletes. On Wednesday, NSFWCORP’s Yasha Levine broke the story of how California parents are being “empowered” by billionaires to destroy public education. Our first print edition featured Mark Ames’ first-hand account of being spied on by the ADL — the same issue in which we published the definitive list of the 100 people most culpable for misinforming the public in the run up the Iraq war.

How about innovation? Our entire publishing platform was built in-house, including our paywall that allows subscribers to “unlock” paid content for outside sharing. We’ve launched “Desknotes”, allowing subscribers to eavesdrop on our internal editorial discussions, and Conflict Tower to ensure transparency for everything we do. We’ve launched a nightly radio show and a monthly print edition. And that’s just the start: our product road map reaches from here to the moon.

Financially — well, I wish we had a millionaire benefactor. To put our funding in perspective, the total amount raised (converted to 2013 dollars) would barely cover the New York Times’ weekly payroll in 1916, or the cost of producing a single issue of Scanlan’s in 1970.

And yet… our entire business is perilously close to breaking even, thanks to the thousands of people who have signed up for monthly subscriptions ($3 for web / $7 for web and print) or our Conflict Towers membership program. (Conflict Towers “residents” can buy a virtual room for anywhere between $3 and $1500 to support our work. Residents get a lifetime subscription to web and print and a public profile on the site. Starting this summer, we’re hosting a series of Future Of… dinner parties for Conflict Tower residents and their guests, in cities across the US and internationally. Buy a damn room already.)

This month, even after paying good salaries to our reporters, paying the hilariously high travel costs required for serious reporting, finally setting up a healthcare plan for full-time staffers andexpanding into print, our burn rate will drop to under $25k. Three months ago it was three times that high. We only need to sell 4000 more print subscriptions, or a dozen or so more floors in Conflict Tower, and we’ll break even.

That — that, Clay — is the honest truth about NSFWCORP’s business. We, like every other publication since the beginning of time, have raised a relatively modest amount of start-up capital, mostly from a fund in which Tony Hsieh is a partner. But what we’ve built with that start-up cash is a real, fiercely independent journalistic enterprise, delivering scoop after scoop (with jokes) for a growing audience across multiple platforms (while, by the way, solving the problem of porous paywalls, and proving that print isn’t dead).

So all of the above is why Clay Shirky’s comments make me feel like being sarcastic. Now here’s why they make me feel frustrated, and angry…

As founder and editor in chief, I am terrified, TERRIFIED of fucking this up. The closer we get to profitability, the more terrified I get. We are so close to pulling this off. So close to proving that it is possible to pay brilliant journalists a good salary (with full benefits) to do great work, in a profitable, sustainable way. And yet, with no immediate prospect of raising more money (I mean, what? Is now a good time to ask Mike Arrington for more cash?), I’m acutely aware that we’re going to take this right down to the wire.

All it takes is one unexpected expense — a rise in print costs, a story that goes over budget, or any one of a thousand other calamities that I failed to account for — and I’ll have to close the doors and lay off the best team of people I’ve ever worked with, all of whom risked their careers to help prove that great journalism has a profitable future.

It’ll only take a few thousand more subscribers for us to reach profitability, but it only needs a similar number to think “oh, NSFWCORP doesn’t need my support right now… they have their own pet millionaire” in order to doom us. With the stakes that high, Clay Shirky’s blithe, inaccurate claims could become the precise opposite of a self-fulfilling prophesy.

So, Clay, maybe next time you smack me and my business in the face with a velvet-wrapped two-by-four, you could at least pick up the phone first to check that we’re really as rich as you think we are.

Or better yet, buy a Conflict Tower room and you can ask me in person at one of our residents’ Dinner Parties. Appropriately enough, the first one is themed around The Future Of Journalism. I suspect we’ll have a lot to talk about.

[Illustration by Brad Jonas, NSFWCORP]

Paul Carr

Paul Carr is author of "The Upgrade: A Cautionary Tale of a Life Without Reservations" and "Bringing Nothing to the Party: True Confessions of a New Media Whore". He has written for a variety of publications, including The Guardian, and TechCrunch. He is the founder of NSFW Corporation.

 

 

Copyright ©2013 - PandoDaily All Rights Reserved

2013 Formula 1 calendar

LAS VEGAS — Beyond the booze-soaked Strip, past a thicket of pornography stores and near the Heart Attack Grill, where people who weigh more than 350 pounds eat for free, sits one of the world’s foremost clinics for ... brain health?

Debauchery still reigns here, but Sin City long ago became more than a place where brain cells go to die. There are serious people doing serious things, and one of them is Larry Ruvo, an alcohol distribution titan by trade who has turned part of downtown into a major center of research and treatment for diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.

The Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health, an $80 million Frank Gehry-designed building, is conducting 32 clinical trials, one of the largest such endeavors anywhere. The four-year-old center, named after Mr. Ruvo’s father, is run in partnership with the renowned Cleveland Clinic.

But this is still Las Vegas. Give them the old razzle dazzle remains the go-to operating philosophy, even for high-rolling philanthropists like Mr. Ruvo, 66. When in doubt, throw in a showgirl or six.

Last weekend, for instance, Mr. Ruvo, who comes across a bit like a more caffeinated George Clooney, was auctioning off Cindy Crawford’s pie to 1,700 dinner guests at the MGM Grand Garden Arena. The former supermodel had offered to bake and host a luncheon in support of Mr. Ruvo’s foundation, Keep Memory Alive.

Sold! Mr. Ruvo, dressed in a black shirt and black suit (no tie), beamed when the bidding hit $130,000. “Isn’t this a great city?” he shouted. Attendees at his annual Power of Love Gala, which is televised locally, nodded as they tried to dismantle heart-shaped chocolate desserts that towered a foot in the air. (Liberace would have approved.)

By that point in the evening, Bono had already crooned “I’ve Got You Under My Skin.” Coming up were performances by Chaka Khan, Stevie Wonder and Jennifer Hudson —“incredible entertainment the likes Las Vegas has never seen,” in the words of Mr. Ruvo’s pal Robin Leach, who narrated the evening in his singsong “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous” voice.

The event, which raised more than $11 million and was attended by Hollywood A-listers like Will Smith and Amy Poehler, honored Michael Caine and Quincy Jones, a pairing that is less odd than it seems: the two men were apparently born seconds apart 80 years ago and are longtime friends.

“Celestial twins,” Mr. Ruvo deemed them from the stage before blowing a dramatic kiss in their direction: “Mmphwah!”

Mr. Ruvo became a philanthropist by accident in 1995. His father, Lou, had just died following a battle with Alzheimer’s. Lou Ruvo was a character, a former Niagara Falls tour driver who moved to a mobbed-up Las Vegas in 1955 to open an Italian restaurant. About 35 friends and family members had gathered at Caesars Palace to pay tribute to his life.

At some point, John Paul DeJoria, a founder of Paul Mitchell hair products, turned up and blurted out that he planned to donate $5,000 to Alzheimer’s research, as the story goes. Before the wine stopped flowing that night, $35,000 had been raised. A more organized charity dinner followed the next year; contributions that time totaled $375,000.

These dinners grew into the annual Power of Love Gala, an affair that stands out as over the top even in a city that holds Siegfried and Roy as royalty. “As you can see, anything goes,” Mr. Ruvo’s stunning wife, Camille, said during the cocktail hour in reference to people’s attire, which ranged from tasteful to tacky — Grammys lite.

Mr. Ruvo would be one of the most powerful men in Las Vegas even without his philanthropic work. After graduating from a community college, he headed straight into jobs at places like the Playboy Club and the Frontier Hotel, where he became friends with one of its stakeholders, Steve Wynn. Mr. Wynn founded a liquor distribution company in 1970, and Mr. Ruvo became a partner.

That company, Southern Wine and Spirits of Nevada, is now by far the largest distributor of adult beverages on the Strip. Let that soak in a minute.

Mr. Ruvo, who sits on the board of the American Gaming Association, said it was his experience selling alcohol that led him to Mr. Gehry. “Spirits is a packaging and marketing business,” he said during a tour of his clinic. “If I built a normal building, nobody in the medical world would have taken me seriously.”

He was explaining this while standing about eight inches from my face. Mr. Ruvo, who comes scented with expensive cologne, is not intimidating, but — like most good salesmen — he uses proximity to put exclamation points on his message. He is also a fan of the grand gesture; he had assigned a clinic employee to program my name into an electronic marquee.

“I didn’t have time, but please tell him you saw it,” she said. I did.

But back to the tour. Clutching my elbow, Mr. Ruvo turned us toward a 20-foot-tall James Rosenquist mural called “Brain Space.” “Steve walked in, saw the wall, took out his cellphone and called his art dealer,” Mr. Ruvo said, referring to Mr. Wynn. “Three weeks later James Rosenquist was standing right there.” (Mr. Wynn did not respond to interview requests.)

One of Mr. Ruvo’s favorite stories involves Mr. Gehry, who began their first meeting by bluntly saying he was not interested in the commission. Nothing personal, he advised. He just wasn’t particularly fond of Las Vegas.

“I won’t use the vernacular I used because there are ladies here,” Mr. Ruvo said, motioning toward two Cleveland Clinic public relations executives. “But I put my finger in his face, and I said: ‘You are the meanest, nastiest guy I have ever met. Who the hell are you to not even listen?’ ”

Mr. Ruvo smiled sweetly and paused for dramatic effect. “My 45-minute appointment turned into three and a half hours,” he said triumphantly.

The finished clinic has a kitchen personally designed by Wolfgang Puck and an airy, high-tech patient examination and research wing modeled on Moroccan cliff dwellings. But it was Mr. Gehry’s soaring, curving event space (rentals raise money for the clinic) that Mr. Ruvo was especially keen to show off.

“Where’s Theresa? Theresa! Open the drapes, please?” With the push of a button, the coverings on 199 uniquely shaped atrium windows started to retract. The moment needed music. “Can you fire up that song?” he asked a staffer. “Where’s Alan? Eileen, can you get me Alan?” Mr. Ruvo’s cellphone rang.

“Hello?” It was Michael Milken, the former junk bond king turned philanthropist who is one of Mr. Ruvo’s closest friends. Will.i.am, a founder of the Black Eyed Peas, needed a lift to Las Vegas from Los Angeles for the gala, and Mr. Ruvo had reached out to Mr. Milken for a favor. Might he bring the singer along on his jet?

Mr. Milken’s response, according to Mr. Ruvo, was fast: “Anything for you, Larry.”

Copyright. 2013 The New York Times Company. All Rights Reserved

The brother of Krystle M. Campbell, one of the three people killed in the Boston Marathon terrorist bombing, tonight welcomed the arrest of suspect Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev, but said his capture does not change the painful reality that his sister is gone.

“It’s not going to bring her back,” William Campbell III, whose 29-year-old sister was killed when the bombs went off at the marathon finish line on Boylston Street Monday. “I’m happy that nobody else is going to get hurt by these guys, but it’s not going to bring her back.”

Speaking by phone tonight after Tsarnaev was captured in Watertown, Campbell said he followed today’s rapid developments -- where nearly a 1 million people were ordered to stay in their homes so police could search Watertown and other communities for the bombing suspect -- “off and on.’’

But added that he has “been trying to shut out reality a little bit by turning off the TV. It was nice when the power went out here for a little while.”

As for the rest of the family, including Krystle’s father, William Campbell Jr., and mother, Patricia Campbell, “they’re happy they got the guys, but basically they feel the same,” he said.

“You can only get so angry,’’ he added. “And you then know she’s not going to be here anymore.”

The family of Martin William Richard, the eight-year-old Dorchester boy murdered during the terrorist bombings, last night expressed their thanks to the public safety community and the public as a whole for their intense commitment to solving the bombing case.

“Our family wishes to salute the thousands of officers and agents from the Boston, Cambridge and Watertown Police & Fire Departments, Massachusetts State Police, FBI, ATF, and other police departments and agencies who worked and collaborated around the clock to bring the perpetrators of Monday’s attack to justice,’’ the Richard family said. “We also thank the citizens and businesses that shared images and footage with investigators in hopes of advancing the investigation.”

The family said that the communal effort “worked, and tonight, our community is once again safe from these two men.’’

The family noted, however, that their lives were changed forever by the bombing.

“None of this will bring our beloved Martin back, or reverse the injuries these men inflicted on our family and nearly two hundred others. We continue to pray for healing and for comfort on the long road that lies ahead for every victim and their loved ones,’’ the statement said. “Tonight, our family applauds the entire law enforcement community for a job well done, and trust that our justice system will now do its job.’’

Bryan Marquard can be reached at bmarquard@globe.com.

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Behind you: Lewis Hamilton has vowed to chase down Fernando Alonso

On top: Fernando Alonso earned his first victory of the season as he came home to win the Chinese Grand Prix

Sporting the colours: Alonso waves the Ferrari flag

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BOSTON — About 100 feet from the end of the 26.2-mile Boston Marathon, explosions shook the street and sent runners frantically racing for cover. The marathon finish line, normally a festive area of celebration and exhaustion, was suddenly like a war zone.

Multimedia

“These runners just finished and they don’t have legs now,” said Roupen Bastajian, 35, a Rhode Island state trooper and former Marine. “So many of them. There are so many people without legs. It’s all blood. There’s blood everywhere. You got bones, fragments. It’s disgusting.”

Had Mr. Bastajian run a few strides slower, as he did in 2011, he might have been among the dozens of victims wounded in Monday’s bomb blasts. Instead, he was among the runners treating other runners, a makeshift emergency medical service of exhausted athletes.

“We put tourniquets on,” Mr. Bastajian said. “I tied at least five, six legs with tourniquets.”

The Boston Marathon, held every year on Patriots’ Day, a state holiday, is usually an opportunity for the city to cheer with a collective roar. But the explosions turned an uplifting day into a nightmarish swirl of bloodied streets and torn-apart limbs as runners were toppled, children on the sidelines were maimed, and a panicked city watched its iconic athletic spectacle destroyed.

The timing of the explosions — around 2:50 p.m. — was especially devastating because they happened when a high concentration of runners in the main field were arriving at the finish line on Boylston Street. In last year’s Boston Marathon, for example, more than 9,100 crossed the finish line — 42 percent of all finishers — in the 30 minutes before and after the time of the explosions.

This year, more than 23,000 people started the race in near-perfect conditions. Only about 17,580 finished.

Three people were killed and more than 100 were injured, officials said.

Deirdre Hatfield, 27, was steps away from the finish line when she heard a blast. She saw bodies flying out into the street. She saw a couple of children who appeared lifeless. She saw people without legs.

“When the bodies landed around me I thought: Am I burning? Maybe I’m burning and I don’t feel it,” Ms. Hatfield said. “If I blow up, I just hope I won’t feel it.”

She looked inside a Starbucks to her left, where she thought a blast might have occurred. “What was so eerie, you looked in you knew there had to be 100 people in there, but there was no sign of movement,” she said.

Ms. Hatfield wondered where another explosion might occur. She turned down a side street and ran to the hotel where she had agreed to meet her boyfriend and family after the race.

Amid the chaos, the authorities directed runners and onlookers to the area designated for family members meeting runners at the end of the race. It was traditionally a place of panting pride, sweaty hugs and exhausted relief.

But on Monday, it became a place of dread, as news of the attack spread through the crowd and people awaited word. One woman screamed over the din toward the streets roped off for runners: “Lisa! Lisa!”

Some saw the explosions as clouds of white smoke. To others, they looked orange — a fireball that nearly reached the top of a nearby traffic light. Groups of runners, including a row of women in pink and neon tank tops and a man in a red windbreaker — kept going a few paces at least, as if unsure of what they were seeing.

Some runners stopped in the middle of the street, confused and frightened. Others turned around and started running back the way they came.

“It is kind of ironic that you just finished running a marathon and you want to keep running away,” said Sarah Joyce, 21, who had just finished her first marathon when she heard the blast.

Bruce Mendelsohn, 44, was at a party in a third-floor office above where the bombs went off. His brother, Aaron, had finished the race earlier.

“There was a very loud boom, and three to five seconds later there was another one,” said Mr. Mendelsohn, an Army veteran who works in public relations. He ran outside. “There was blood smeared in the streets and on the sidewalk,” he said.

Mr. Mendelsohn could not be sure how many people had been killed or wounded, but among the bodies he said he saw women, children and runners. The wounds, he said, appeared to be “lower torso.”

As Melissa Fryback, 42, was heading into the home stretch, she realized she was on pace for one of her best times ever. She steeled herself for the last three miles and finished in 3 hours 44 minutes. She met up with her boyfriend, and the two had made it about two blocks from the finish line when they heard the blasts.

“I can’t help but wonder that if I hadn’t pushed like that, it could have been me,” she said.

Boston hospitals struggled to keep up with the flow of patients. Massachusetts General Hospital admitted 29 patients, 8 of them in critical condition; several of them needed amputations, a spokesman said.

Late Monday night, Brigham and Women’s Hospital said it had seen 31 patients who were wounded in the explosions, ranging from a 3-year-old to patients in their 60s. As many as 10 were listed in serious condition, and 2 were in critical condition.

The Rev. Brian Jordan, a Franciscan priest based in Brooklyn, said he was in Boston to say a pre-race Mass near the starting line for a group of about 100 friends who were running. The group included Boston firefighters, Massachusetts State Police officers and several Army soldiers recently returned from Iraq.

Father Jordan, a veteran runner of 21 Boston Marathons himself, was about a block away from the blasts when they occurred, heading toward the course to watch his friends finish the race.

“I never heard that type of sound before,” he said by telephone. “It was like cannons.”

He said he made his way through the fleeing crowd toward the explosions. “I saw some blood,” he said.

He realized he could be more effective wearing his Franciscan habit, so he returned to the firehouse and donned the brown robe of his order, and then headed back out into the streets.

“All I could do was try to calm people down,” Father Jordan said. “Marathons are supposed to bring people together.”

Jeff Constantine, 46, ended his first marathon a mile from the finish. It took 10 minutes to find out why. He was planning to finish the race at almost exactly the time that the bomb went off.

“If I didn’t freeze up, if I hadn’t been slow, I would have been right there,” he said.

His family had traffic to thank. They were running late after watching Mr. Constantine run up Heartbreak Hill, the race’s most challenging stretch, and never made it to the finish line.