New Yorker writer jumping to Genius shows how media changes in unexpected ways

You might remember a post I wrote early last year about Netscape founder-turned venture capitalist Marc Andreessen’s optimism about the news business, which we can also call the journalism or content business.

Here’s a snippet:

Andreessen argues that industry growth, even if a lot of that growth is made of “crap,” can lead to higher quality work. “The more noise, confusion, and crap,” he writes, “the more there is an increase of, and corresponding need for, trusted guides, respected experts, and quality brands.”

A high-profile hire this week highlights that kind of change at work. Music critic Sasha Frere-Jones, who’s been at the New Yorker for a decade, left the magazine to join Genius, formerly Rap Genius, a startup with the ambition to, in the words of its tagline, “Annotate the world.”

Genius is a great example of new media forms and formats developing seemingly out of nowhere. It was launched in 2009 as Rap Exegesis by some college friends. The idea was to annotate rap lyrics. It expanded into other musical genres and now, according to the New York Times, “has received $55 million of venture capital funding and broadened its mission beyond music.”

Here’s Sports Genius. How can annotations help tell a sports story? Well, Genius addressed “What happened With Dez Bryant” by annotating the relevant rule in the NFL Rule Book. Interesting.

I’ve seen worse ways of wrapping up a sports tournament than this Genius-style recap of the Copa del Rey 2014-15 round of 16.

Is Genius the future of media? Heck, I don’t even know if it’ll still be around this time next year. But would you have thought five years ago, or one year ago, that a site built on often snarky explanations of rap lyrics would be hiring writers away from the New Yorker?

This is the kind of thing that makes predicting the future of media awfully tricky, except to say, “Expect the unexpected.” And try to be ready for it.