Yesterday, to some fanfare, the food journalist, prolific recipe demystifier, and former New York Times columnist Mark Bittman announced that he had partnered with Medium on a new online-only food magazine called Salty. Insofar as it has a mission statement, it seems to be “Food should be fair to people and animals, affordable for everyone, and procured in a way that respects our natural resources.” That sounds like it could be cool, a nice addition to a post-Lucky Peach world, or possibly a vanity project. The site is already populated with a fairly wide range of stories, from the silly (“The Grown-Up’s Case for Kid Food”) to the heftier (a profile of a Chicago restaurant that specializes in roasted goat).
The problem? There’s already a newsletter called Salty, and their logos are quite alike.
That other Salty — the first Salty, that is — seems to take its name from the slang term meaning defiantly agitated. It’s a dating-and-relationship site that is “for (and by) sex and body-positive women, trans, and nonbinary people,” many of them people of color. In other words, it’s a little slice of the culture that’s carving out a niche for the most marginalized among us.
A THREAD PLS RT:
1)Salty amplifies the voices of women, trans + non binary people, & centers the perspectives of woc. We launched a year ago, & now have 25,000 nl subscribers, 54K insta followers & hit 1.6 mill monthly impressions. We’re not on twitter much because it is unsafe. pic.twitter.com/UlsEbe5OoC— Salty (@Saltyworldbabes) March 19, 2019
3) So when @medium @ev @bittman invests in and launches a “new” platform called Salty -with an eerily similar logo and led by an old white dude no less, and which is ALSO exhalted with a profile in the NYT.. we think “HMMMMM. Something is awry here.” pic.twitter.com/UBvGRHXdYF
— Salty (@Saltyworldbabes) March 19, 2019
4) That something is what women, trans & non binary people say everyday – the deck is stacked against us. The media doesn’t care about our stories. Investors will not fund us. They copy us. (The NYT didn’t run our pitch about Salty when we sent it to them a year ago. Surprised?) pic.twitter.com/IrZG8gE1is
— Salty (@Saltyworldbabes) March 19, 2019
5) At this point, we are 100% volunteer created. We are BEYOND BOOTSTRAPPED. The institutional and financial roadblocks we’ve faced in getting this project off the ground are significant. We’ve just opened our seed round so we can launch our membership program & podcast network.
— Salty (@Saltyworldbabes) March 19, 2019
6) @ev will you invest in us too?? Supporters and readers: If you want to help raise awareness about Salty – please RT this story, please SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER here: https://t.co/3zQoZEqmzL DONATE HERE: https://t.co/sESR0fOpaO follow us on insta here https://t.co/ZQKSBM23HG pic.twitter.com/bgeqhcdRF8
— Salty (@Saltyworldbabes) March 19, 2019
In all likelihood, no one intended to undermine other people’s creative endeavors. And this is a world in which there are two entirely different films called The Avengers and also two totally separate Michelle Williamses. But the Bittman-Medium team certainly didn’t do its due diligence here. And irrespective of what anyone meant to do or meant not to do, it plays into the dynamic by which straight, cis, white men can frictionlessly trample over the labor of others — in this case, a trans and gender-nonconforming people of color whose product frankly looks a lot cooler.
Hi. Please DM me. Thanks.
— Ev (@ev) March 19, 2019
This story could end happily, however. Maybe Ev Williams, who wants to fix the internet by helping writers and creative people make a living, could do some real good here. But somebody stepped on a rake.
