Defector Publishes What Corporate Media Won't

Earlier this year, Defector published a profile of skater, actor, and photographer Jason Lee. It is stylishly written, recounts his improbable career trajectory, and gives you a real sense of what makes him tick. And then, about halfway through, Lee melts down in response to a gentle question about his relationship with Scientology.

This profile was originally slated to run in a national magazine, but that magazine’s editors killed the story after Lee’s publicist invoked lawyers. So although Lee is the nominal subject, the piece doubles as a profile of contemporary PR tactics and the browbeaten media ecosystem in which they are deployed.

Being willing to ask Jason Lee about Scientology is not quite publishing the Pentagon Papers, but the lack of proportionality between the innocuous question and over-the-top response tells you how busted that corner of media is. These are the late stages of what Patrick Redford called the triumph of marketing over journalism; it is one reason the authorized celebrity documentary has become a defining form of this moment.

Defector can publish work like this profile for two main reasons. First, unlike National Glossy Magazine Co., we don’t need to preserve access to future potential profile subjects who share representation with Lee. And second, our subscribers enable us to pay for lawyers of our own to fend off nuisance suits threatened in response to our reporting.