A couple of weeks ago, I quit my semi-regular column at the Mike Moritz-funded SF Standard.

I still love the writers and editors there and still think they’re doing a better job covering the whole city than the Chronicle. Also, they paid me astonishingly generously by online publication standards and in return I wrote (so they tell me) some of the most read opinion pieces they ever published. These are all very good things.

And yet. After the recent “pushback” (read: pathetic tantrum) from Ben and Felicia Horowitz over the Standard’s excellent reporting on their recent MAGA-conversion, I got the distinct feeling that the publication is feeling gun-shy when it comes to criticizing tech billionaires. Particularly tech billionaires who have links – for good or ill – to Mike Moritz. 

A column I wrote about billionaire midlife crises, that mentioned Horowitz? Spiked. Another I pitched about tech dudes (including Moritz and Marc Andreessen) trying to set up their own city? Rejected, on the basis that the publication has to pick its battles. 

It isn’t just me. Since the Horowitz kerfuffle, the Standard hasn’t published a single op-ed critical of big tech or tech founder. Right now its main front page story is a “bare all” (ew) interview with Sam Altman in which AI’s leading sociopath boldly (and wrongly) claims that Blink 182 is “not a good band.” 

To be clear: Nobody at the Standard specifically told me to “leave Mike and his frenemies alone” and there’s nothing inherently wrong with puffy lifestyle features involving high-profile techies.

But for goodness sake. Not a single critical word about tech billionaires since the Horowitz-Moritz shit fit?

I’ve worked at (and founded!) my fair share of billionaire-funded publications and I’ve always had a firm rule: You have to be more critical of the people writing the checks (and their cronies) than you are of anyone else. It’s the only way to offset the inherent bias of taking their money.

What you definitely cannot do is have people who are off-limits or generally-to-be-avoided in fear of killing the golden goose. Most publications I’ve worked for/founded understood that perfectly well. See my pieces about Peter Thiel at Pando, or Tony Hsieh at NSFWCORP, or my resignation from TechCrunch. 

In the good old days, the billionaires understood the church and state separation too, however much they hated it. Remarkably, Thiel never once complained to anyone at Pando about our coverage (he knew what we’d say if he did). Tony Hsieh and I remained good friends until the end. Sure, sometimes we got threatened with a lawsuit (IIRC our biggest was a threat of an $850m suit from a private equity weirdo with ties to Chris Christie) but when that happened, we fought back.

But those were the good old days, and these are the bad new days. Two of the three publications I just mentioned don’t exist any more, and the one that does is unrecognizable. Tech billionaires own everything now – from the SF Standard to the Washington Post and every editor and journalist is just waiting for the next round of layoffs. Like a Crichton T-rex, Mike Mortiz’s vision is based on movement so it’s always safer to keep still vs flailing around with a flashlight.

Still, it’s healthy to be reminded every so often why I quit journalism to write and sell books. And why so many others are fleeing to Substack, and its less Nazi-enabling alternatives. (Welcome back to my WordPress blog!)

The marketplace of ideas is always, always stronger when the ultimate paying customers are readers rather than billionaires or advertisers.