New management at Nautilus
When an email landed in my inbox declaring that the beleaguered science communication magazine Nautilus would be “acquired by ownership group of super-fans”, I thought it was going to become a cooperative. It was only when I read the extended statement that I realised the magazine was undergoing a transformation that wasn’t at all new to the global media landscape.
A super-group of investors has come to Nautilus‘s rescue, bearing assurances that publisher John Steele repeats in the statement without any penitence for having stiffed its contributors for months on end, in some cases for over a year, for pieces already published: “Together we will work even harder to expand the public’s knowledge and understanding of fundamental questions of scientific inquiry, as well as their connection to human culture.” Steele also appears to be blind to the irony of his optimism when the “craven shit-eating” of private equity just sunk the amazing Deadspin (to quote from a suitably biting obituary by Alex Shephard).
The statement doesn’t mention whether the new investment covers pending payments and by when. In fact, the whole statement is obsessed with Nautilus‘s commitment to science in a tone that verges on cheerleading – and now and then crosses over too – which is bizarre because Nautilus is a science communication magazine, not a science magazine, so its cause, to use the term loosely, is to place science in the right context and on occasion even interrogate it. But the statement mentions an accompanying public letter entitled ‘Science Matters’. According to Steele,
The letter is a public commitment by the Nautilus team, its staff, advisors, and its contributors; leading thinkers, researchers, teachers, and businesspeople; and the public at large to tirelessly advance the cause of science in America and around the world.
Huh?
By itself such commitments don’t bode well (they’re awfully close to scientism) but they assume a frightening level of plausibility when read together with the list of investors. The latter includes Larry Summers, his wife Elisa New, and Nicholas White. One of the others, Fraser Howie, is listed as an “author” but according to his bio in the Nikkei Asian Review, “He has worked in China’s capital markets since 1992.” His authorship probably refers to his three books but they’re all about the Chinese financial system.
Everyone here is a (white) capitalist, most of them men. Call me cynical but something about this doesn’t sit well. For all the details in the statement of the investors’ institutional affiliations, it’s hard to imagine them sitting around a table and agreeing that Nautilus needs to be critical of, instead of sympathetic to, science – especially since the takeover will also transform the magazine from a non-profit to a for-profit endeavour.
