Red Emma’s

_Owned _is the story of the underreported and growing collusion between new wealth and new journalism. In recent years, right-wing billionaires like Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Marc Andreessen, and David Sacks have turned to media as their next investment and source of influence. Their cronies are Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi—once known as idealistic and left-leaning voices, now beneficiaries of Silicon Valley largesse. Together, this new alliance aims to exploit the failings of traditional journalism and undermine the very idea of an independent and fact-based fourth estate.

_Owned _examines how this shift has allowed spectacularly wealthy reactionaries to pursue their ultimate goal of censoring critics so to further their own business interests—and personal vendettas—entirely unimpeded while also advancing a toxic and antidemocratic ideology.

A rich history of the decades-long rise of this new right-wing alternative media takeover, Owned follows the money, names names, and offers a chilling portrait of a future social media and news landscape. It is a biting exposé of journalistic greed, tech-billionaire ambition, and a lament for a disappearing free press.

“This book offers a dogged accounting of how prominent left-liberals joined an ascendant choir of far-right voices, providing insightful analysis of how a group of reactionary tech billionaires have backed this transformation. We can only escape this nightmare if we understand how we got here. Owned shines some much needed light into the darkest recesses to today’s mediascape.” —Edward Ongweso, podcast co-host of This Machine Kills

Eoin Higgins is a journalist and historian from New England. His work has appeared in many publications, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Intercept, The New Republic, The Nation, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), Common Dreams, The Outline, Splinter, Deadspin, _and many others. Additionally he writes for Morning Brew’s tech newsletter, IT Brew, with an audience of nearly 100,000. He can be found at his Twitter account (@eoinhiggins\, nearly 80,000 followers), where he engages regularly with a large audience on tech and U.S. and world politics.

Maximillian Alvarez is the Editor-in-Chief of The Real News Network and the host of Working People, “a podcast about the lives, jobs, dreams, and struggles of the working class today.” Prior to joining The Real News, he was an Associate Editor at The Chronicle of Higher Education and graduated with a dual-PhD in History and Comparative Literature from the University of Michigan. His work has been featured in a range of outlets, including The Nation, In These Times, Boston Review, Truthout, and The Baffler. He has a book of interviews with OR Books titled THE WORK OF LIVING: WORKING PEOPLE TALK ABOUT THEIR LIVES AND THE YEAR THE WORLD BROKE.

Osita Nwanevu is a contributing editor at The New Republic and a columnist at The Guardian. He is a former staff writer at The New Republic, The New Yorker, and Slate, and his work has also appeared in The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, The Nation, Harper’s Magazine, the Columbia Journalism Review, and Gawker. His first book, The Right of the People: Democracy and the Case for a New American Founding, will be published by Random House next year. Nwanevu is a former editor in chief of the South Side Weekly, a Chicago alternative newspaper. He is a graduate of the College at the University of Chicago and the Harris School of Public Policy. He lives in Baltimore.