Michael Lewis: Sounds Like a Jerk, Makes a Good Point

I have some love/hate issues with Michael Lewis as a writer. He's clearly insanely talented at finding and telling a great story. On a structural level, I heavily borrowed from Moneyball to organize Once You're Lucky, Twice You're Good. If you look closely-- and I don't know why anyone ever would-- Max Levchin = Billy Beane as the spine of the book. The different various entrepreneurs rotate into the narrative the way, individual A's players rotate in to Moneyball. The philosophy of Web 2.0 provides the narrative glue, the way the philosophy of A's baseball provides the narrative glue of Moneyball. It's really borderline shameless.

But one thing I do not borrow from Lewis is his love of putting himself in his books. Ever since Liar's Poker I've found it incredibly self-congratulatory. I know people think I love to promote myself, but note there are about four occurrences of first person in my entire book and each is a passing reference making a bigger point about one of the subjects. Bottom line: If you come to a blog called SarahLacy.com, expect to read about me. If you pick up a book about entrepreneurs, expect to read about them.

So it's not surprising I had mixed feelings about Lewis' recent interview in The Atlantic. (Which, BTW, I'm subscribing to, because I keep getting linked to awesome Atlantic pieces.) The delightfully sassy reporter asked Lewis about the magazine industry, a timely topic, give that ad pages were horrific in the fourth quarter. Lewis smugly responded that he was faring just fine. Exact words below, the reporter in bold:

"And so I wonder what you think about that industry changing over the next couple of years. Especially since you're a guy who does long-form journalism and books, and those are arguably things that translate less well to the internet.

Well my personal experience has been very nice. The market for me has only gotten better!

[Laughs] That's not terribly helpful.

Well it makes it a little hard for me to prophesize doom. And I hate spinning theories to which I'm an exception. So my sense is, there'll always be a hunger for long-form journalism, and that it's just a question of how it's packaged. And that people will always figure out how to make it sort of viable. It's never going to be a hugely profitable business: it's more like the movie business or the car business in that there are all sorts of good non-economic reasons to be involved in it. The economic returns will always probably be driven down by too many people wanting to be in it.
 
But I don't feel gloomy about the magazine business at all.

Well that's nice! I feel pretty gloomy.

It's always inherently in a state of turmoil of one form or another. But let me put it this way: when I write a long magazine piece that gets attention I feel like it's more widely read now than it was ten years ago, by a long way. In fact, it feels excessively well read. Twenty years ago I might get a couple of notes in the mail and I'd hear about it maybe at a dinner party. And that would be the end of it, and it would go away very quickly. Ten years ago it would get passed around by email, and it would seem to have a life to me that would go on a little longer. Now the blogosphere picks it up and it becomes almost like a book: it lives for months. I'm getting responses to it for months. And I don't think the journalism has gotten any better. It's just the environment you publish it in is more able to rapidly get it to the people who are or might be interested in it. They're more likely to see it. So the demand side of things is not a problem. People really want to read this stuff. The question is how you monetize that."

Oh, it's just how to monetize it? Phew, I thought the industry had a real problem. Here's the thing: Lewis isn't wrong about his career; he's wrong to think it in any way reflects what media is facing in the aggregate. Yes, he is doing well and his pieces are more widely read, but that's because Lewis is one of the top writers in his field, and his fame just happens to parallel the increasing media calamity of the past few decades. Business being good for him is a reality, but it has zero to do with the state of media. 

So it comes across as incredibly smug to shrug off the widespread problems that almost all journalists who don't happen to be Michael Lewis are facing. Yes, even incredibly talented and successful ones.

That said, there's an important lesson in what he says: Even in the bleakest economic times, people at the top of their game still do well. While good times lift all boats, the inverse isn't true. It's a reminder to me to stop looking around at the broader economic collapse and panic. Rather, focus on content, content, content and pretend I'm living in my own Michael-Lewis-like bubble, until my income tells me otherwise. It's that fine line between letting panic hobble you and uttering famous last words you'll come to regret.