Paul Carr asks: Genuine question: what the hell is happening at Pierre Omidyar and Glenn Greenwald’s The Intercept?

I say “genuine question” because, as other writers have discovered, it’s impossible to ask questions about Greenwald without being accused by his army of fans of being an NSA shill or worse. Any suggestion that all might not be well in Glennville, or Pierretown, or whatever cute geographic nickname you prefer, is met with howls of “LEAVE GLENN ALONE!”

Which is perhaps why other media commentators have been reluctant to point out that the Intercept, the flagship site of Omidyar’s new $250m journalism empire, hasn’t posted a new story in almost ten days. This while its biggest target — the NSA — stands accused of exploiting perhaps the biggest Internet security flaw ever discovered. [Continue reading…]

Update: The Pando post appears to have kicked The Intercept off standby mode — at least until its editor, John Cook, heads off to seder at 3pm before which he sends his “Passover Greetings” (I’m not really sure what his point is about religious observance.)

Cook explains that the recent lack of activity was “on purpose,” so presumably the lack of communication about this lack of activity was also on purpose.

He says, “you shouldn’t expect to be hearing from us on much aside from the very specific work of the [NSA] documents, which is itself time-consuming and exacting, for some small, indeterminate, but discrete period of time as we get the site set up to operate for the long term.”