Tuesday 15 October 2013

Glenn Greenwald: Quo Vadis?

Glenn Greenwald, the lawyer and blogger who brought The Guardian the biggest scoop of the decade, is departing the London-based news organization, for a brand-new, large-scale, broadly focused media outlet, he told BuzzFeed Tuesday.

Greenwald, 46, published revelations from former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden about the extent of American and British domestic spying and about officials’ deception about its scope. He said he is departing for a new, “once-in-a-career dream journalistic opportunity” with major financial backing, the details of which will be public soon.

“My partnership with The Guardian has been extremely fruitful and fulfilling: I have high regard for the editors and journalists with whom I worked and am incredibly proud of what we achieved,” Greenwald said in an emailed statement. “The decision to leave was not an easy one, but I was presented with a once-in-a-career dream journalistic opportunity that no journalist could possibly decline.”

Greenwald said that because the news had leaked “before we were prepared to announce it, I’m not yet able to provide any details of this momentous new venture.” It will, he said, “be unveiled very shortly."




...Greenwald declined to comment on the precise scale of the new venture or on its budget, but he said it would be “a very well-funded … very substantial new media outlet.” He said the source of funding will be public when the venture is officially announced...

“My role, aside from reporting and writing for it, is to create the entire journalism unit from the ground up by recruiting the journalists and editors who share the same journalistic ethos and shaping the whole thing — but especially the political journalism part — in the image of the journalism I respect most,” he said.

Greenwald will continue to live in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, he said, and would bring some staff to Rio, but the new organization’s main hubs will be New York City; Washington, D.C.; and San Francisco, he said.

The venture, which he said had “hired a fair number of people already,” will be “a general media outlet and news site — it’s going to have sports and entertainment and features. I’m working on the whole thing but the political journalism unit is my focus.”

Greenwald said he looked forward to creating a new organization with “no preexisting institutional strictures on what you can do.”

And he said his move is driven solely by the opportunity presented.

“When people hear what it is, there is almost no journalist who would say no to it,” he said.


BuzzFeed.

How amusing that this news was leaked.
Fagburn can exclusively reveal that he doesn't know what this is all about, yet.

PS There's a rumour his wealthy benefactor is the billionaire eBay founder, Pierre Omidyar. [No idea if this other story is reliable].

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