Everlane & NYT try to brand climate change; Nieman Lab gets SPICY

As everyone’s go-to journalism think tank, Nieman Lab has always been the best, most Harvard-credentialed place to keep up with the biggest trends in the media industry, usually in the form of very in-the-weeds interviews or earnest industry forecasts penned by msm influencers.

But right under our noses, things have gotten markedly (and deliciously)...spicier — you can just SEE the arched eyebrow underlying this take on Apple News Plus, and this “happy bday Facebook” post has some serious frenemy vibes — which means you **absolutely** cannot miss Nieman Lab director Joshua Benton’s latest, The world is on fire, and that makes for good #brand #synergy between a fashion brand and The New York Times, which is so searing that our eyebrows singed from just reading the headline.

Here’s another great tidbit:

But now — thanks to the odd way that corporations and performative wokeness braid into the tapestry of 21st-century consumer capitalism — one fashion brand is teaming up with The New York Times to sell t-shirts, celebrate journalism, save the world from climate change, or all of the above.

For anyone suspicious of this odd new age of advertising partnerships, capitalism in general, or just Everlane’s insistence that oddly cropped pants look good on all of us THEY SWEAR, this piece has got it all in sending up a critical look at the Everlane x New York Time x global warming partnership, pointing out the very real weirdness of being A Brand In 2019 That Cares About Things, Yes, But Mostly Looking Good And Making Money, Lest We Forget (and we’re not just talking about Everlane here…) at a time when, well, the planet is melting.

Plus, objectively, the shirts are bad. There aren’t even pockets???????