News broke this afternoon courtesy of Buzzfeed that Glenn Greenwald Will Leave Guardian To Create New News Organization:
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.”
Politico also reported, “The new venture, described by a source familiar with it as “rather extraordinary,” will be web-based and funded by a philanthropist.”
Greenwald didn’t give many specifics on the venture, but did offer some limited information to Buzzfeed.
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.”
“When people hear what it is, there is almost no journalist who would say no to it,” Greenwald told Buzzfeed.
Of course, I was busy collecting tweets for this post to bring you everyone’s speculation on the matter. But before I could even finish this post, Reuters just reported that the venture will be funded by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar – according to people familiar with the matter, it says.
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