Industry Mass Media Website First Look Media Founder Glenn Greenwald Type Nonprofit organization | Parent First Look Headquarters New York City Founded 2013 | |
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Founders Pierre Omidyar
Glenn Greenwald Products Investigative Journalism, New Media Subsidiaries The Intercept, The Nib, Field of Vision Similar Freedom of the Press Foundation, Omidyar Network, Reporters Committee for Freed, Electronic Frontier Foundation, The Marshall Project Profiles | ||
First Look Media is a news organization founded by Pierre Omidyar that was first announced in October 2013 as a venue for "original, independent journalism." The organization is incorporated as a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt charitable entity.
The project is a collaboration with Glenn Greenwald, Jeremy Scahill, and Laura Poitras with a promised $250 million in funding from Omidyar. The organization has announced plans to support multiple publications, the first of which is The Intercept, which launched in February 2014. On March 10, 2014, the company announced the addition of Gawker editor John Cook as editor-in-chief of The Intercept as well as Natasha Vargas-Cooper and Andrew Jerrell Jones as writers for the site. In June 2014, it was announced that Morgan Marquis-Boire was joining First Look Media as the Director of Security.
A second publication was announced in February 2014 that would focus on financial and political corruption, headed by Matt Taibbi. Although the name of the publication has not been publicly announced, the name Racket has been reportedly chosen. The publication was to be launched autumn 2014 but in October, it was reported that Taibbi was on leave after “disagreements with higher-ups”. On October 28, Omidyar stated in a press release that Taibbi had left First Look.
In December 2014, First Look Media announced the launch of Reported.ly, a social media news service led by Andy Carvin. In August 2016, Reported.ly said FLM has "chosen to part ways with us," and was planning to shut down.
In February 2015, senior investigative reporter Ken Silverstein, who'd been hired in December 2013, announced his resignation. Writing in Politico, Silverstein described First Look as "a slowly unfolding disaster, not because of editorial meddling from the top, but because of what I came to believe was epic managerial incompetence. … For all of the bean counting and expense account-approving that Omidyar's organizational structure imposed on us, they were shockingly disinterested in the actual journalism. … Top management was so aloof that it was hard to figure out who was in charge."