If you watch #HouseofCards, then you know there is an innovative, cool new website on the show which is transcending Washington, DC and putting everyone on notice known as #Slugline. It's a site which continues to break major stories, but is very different and alternative from other news sites and organizations which exist including the newspaper which the main character, Zoe Barnes, used to work for and CNN, which Barnes is slowly stepping her foot into.
Now, part of that has to do with the fact that Barnes is having an affair with a manipulator of news, Frank Underwood, but that's another story for another day. For the first time, we might have a real version of #Slugline which exists that is known as #NSFWCorp.
No word on where the name originates from, but this is a site started by a former writer from TechCrunch named Paul Carr. According to an interview Carr gave to Betabeat.com, the site seeks to give longform accounts of stories which have not been looked into as in-depth as they should be.
The site took center stage this week as one of it's main writers, Olivia Nuzzi, guest wrote for the New York Daily News, summarizing bits and pieces of news which she has been writing for the site without much notice about the antics of Anthony Weiner and his interns.
She was the first to break the story of how most of Weiner's interns only working there to get to Huma, his wife; and possibly to a potential Hilary 2016 campaign. She also told an hilarious story on how Weiner tried to remember the names of his interns and ended up calling all of them "Monica".
She even broke some news on NSFWCorp after that article was published saying that the reason Weiner's campaign manager quit was due to the fact that Weiner had lied to him about the timing of his transgressions.
After looking through NSFWCorp, I was astonished with the different articles it has written about topics I haven't really heard about in the mainstream media.
One difference between #Slugline and #NSFWCorp is that although most of Slugline's writers tended to drift towards the liberal side, they weren't open about it through their writing. Based on my observations, NSFWCorp seems to be providing the facts but also giving readers it's progressive perspective openly. The key though, which is refreshing, is that they're giving you the facts first.
This week ended up being a great week for NSFWCorp to break stories with all the attention it was getting, and they utilized it wisely breaking the news that Rupert Murdoch is considering bringing back "News of the World" exclusively online to compete with "Daily Mail", which is steamrolling other online newspaper websites in views. This is the same newspaper which got Murdoch caught in a wild phone hacking scandal not too long ago.
They also broke some news on Cory Booker's main opponent in the NJ Senate Democratic primaries, Rush Holt, calling Barack Obama and his administration, "un-American". In the past, they've also revealed some connections between BuzzFeed's editor Ben Smith and Koch Industries, one of the Republican Party's biggest donors.
I'm sure there's more news they've broken which I've probably missed. When House of Cards originally came out and we all became enamored with the idea of Slugline, BuzzFeed was the first real website that came to everyone's mind when trying to think of something which is similar to Slugline. But BuzzFeed is not as lax and above the rules as Slugline and NSFWCorp seem to be.
NSFWCorp has an interesting model where you can subscribe to their website and all their stories for $3 a month and share a certain amount of stories online for free via social media to your friends. If I were to think of any underground website which could possibly become a major gamechanger in DC if their writers get the right sources, it's not Politico or Buzzfeed but definitely NSFWCorp.
Watch out folks, because without a doubt, they soon might become not safe for work.
POSTSCRIPT: Some people have said that Ms. Nuzzi's writing about Weiner's campaign show that she's an attention whore just trying to get on TV. Well, I think that's a very stupid criticism to make! First of all, if you're an intern for a campaign that aspires to be a journalist and you end up leaving the campaign and don't write about it, then what kind of journalist are you?
The best journalists are the ones who educate and inform the populous about their experiences and give readers the option of deciding how they're going to respond to that written piece of work. Also, so what if that's what her intentions were. In today's world, you have to do whatever it takes to gain recognition to eventually land a job in the industry. Being pretty is only going to do so much.
Good thing for Ms. Nuzzi, a junior at Fordham University, she has the looks and intelligence.
My response to this article in the Atlantic and the idiot on Weiner's campaign who called Nuzzi a "slutbag".
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