December 7, 2024

Jimmy Wales Is Not an Internet Billionaire

That was Wales’s old life. In his new one, he lives in London with Kate Garvey, his third wife, whom he often describes as “the most connected woman in London.” Garvey doesn’t have a Wikipedia page, but if she did, it would probably note that she was Tony Blair’s diary secretary at 10 Downing Street and then a director at Freud Communications, the public relations firm run by Matthew Freud, a great-grandson of Sigmund Freud, who is also Rupert Murdoch’s son-in-law. And that Blair, in his 2010 memoir, wrote that Garvey ran his schedule “with a grip of iron and was quite prepared to squeeze the balls very hard indeed of anyone who interfered.”

Garvey and Wales were married last October before about 200 guests, including the Blairs, the political operative Alistair Campbell, David Cameron’s former aide Steve Hilton and Mick Hucknall, the lead singer of Simply Red. Garvey’s maid of honor gave a toast teasing her friend for marrying the one world-famous Internet entrepreneur who didn’t become a billionaire. But the wedding was still covered in The Daily Mail and The Sunday Times, much to Wales’s excitement. “Front page, above the fold,” he told me of the latter. Wales pulled up The Mail’s Web site on his MacBook to show me some photographs from the reception. “That was surreal,” he said.

Wales has a complicated time balancing his new life with his old one. That was evident one morning this winter as he bounded into the lobby of the West End building where he rented office space and hurriedly signed himself in at the front desk. Wales, his brown Tumi bag slung over his shoulder, was 45 minutes late, disheveled and a little frantic. He had left the keys to his and Garvey’s Marylebone apartment at his place outside Tampa; the nanny, here in London, was stranded with the couple’s 2-year-old daughter. “I forgot to drop off the key,” he said. Just when Wales thought he might have to run home, his assistant, who is based in Florida, texted that a building manager had let the nanny in. Global child-care crisis averted.

Wales wore a too-tight black turtleneck under a black overcoat with a well-shorn beard, a look that could either read Steve Jobs superhero or Tekserve flasher. Almost any time you see Wales, 46, he looks like a well-groomed version of a person who has been slumped over a computer drinking Yoo-hoo for hours. After he composed himself, he explained that his office was too embarrassingly unkempt for public consumption. (“It’s a room with a couch, it’s a huge mess.”) So he joined me on a cracked sofa in a common lounge area downstairs. With its ratty Oriental carpets and mismatched folding chairs, the space exuded a bohemian chic look that Wales, a savvy purveyor of his own image, seemed to delight in showing off. The building, a condemned former BBC space, had been slated for demolition. Wales would soon be moving. “I’m not the Google guys,” he said.

London is often described as Britain’s New York, L.A. and Washington all in one — the center for finance, entertainment and politics. But there are conspicuously few traces of Silicon Valley. Wales gladly fills the void. Before he showed me his wedding photos, he talked about his new friend, the British model Lily Cole, who rented office space across the hall. Then he took a call from the Boston Consulting Group, the business-advisory firm, to discuss a speech he would be giving at the World Economic Forum. Wales uses a cheap smartphone made by the Chinese company Huawei that a friend bought him for $85 in Nairobi. The phone, which he often shows to reporters, is the perfect prop to segue to his current obsession of expanding Wikipedia onto mobile devices in the developing world. It is not, however, the perfect phone for participating in an international conference call with the Boston Consulting Group. Several calls were dropped. Wales suggested conducting the meeting over instant messenger, an idea that was rejected.

Once the call finally got under way, though, Wales seemed distracted. On his MacBook, he was following his Wikipedia “talk” page, where the site’s volunteers log their discussions and disagreements over entries. The page had lit up with a raging debate about the banning of some editors on the Turkish version of Wikipedia. Wales watched as the online version of a cafeteria food fight ensued.

Amy Chozick is a staff reporter at The Times. This is her first article for the magazine.

Editor: Jon Kelly

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/30/magazine/jimmy-wales-is-not-an-internet-billionaire.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

World Briefing | Europe: Britain: Newspapers Protest New Press Rules

In a statement, the newspaper society representing 1,100 newspapers said provisions for fines of up to $1.5 million on errant newspapers would impose a “crippling burden” on cash-strapped publications struggling against the inroads of the Internet.

“A free press cannot be free if it is dependent on and accountable to a regulatory body recognized by the state,” the president of the society, Adrian Jeakings, said.

Indeed, the conservative Daily Mail commented in an editorial, “The bitter irony is this long-drawn out debate comes when the Internet — which, being global, has no regulatory restraints — is driving newspapers out of business.”

“If politicians had devoted half as much of their energies to keeping a dying industry alive, instead of hammering another nail into its coffin, democracy would be in a healthier state today.”

Newspaper proprietors and editors have not so far signed on to the agreement announced on Monday and say they were excluded from late-night cross-party talks on the new code while privacy campaigners clamoring for tighter press controls took part in the deliberations. Some indicated on Tuesday that they would not be rushed into responding to the proposed restrictions.

“We need to go back a long way — to 1695, and the abolition of the newspaper licensing laws — to find a time when the press has been subject to statutory regulation. Last night, Parliament decided that 318 years was long enough to let newspapers and magazines remain beyond its influence, and agreed a set of measures that will involve the state, albeit tangentially, in their governance,” the conservative Daily Telegraph said.

Lawmakers on Monday “urged the newspaper industry to endorse the new dispensation as quickly as possible,” the newspaper said. “However, after 318 years of a free press, its detail deserves careful consideration.”

The agreement announced Monday creates a system under which erring newspapers will face big fines and come up against a tougher press regulator with new powers to investigate abuses and order prominent corrections in publications that breach standards.

The deal, struck in the early hours of Monday, enshrines the powers of the regulator in a royal charter — the same document that sets out the rules and responsibilities of the British Broadcasting Corporation and the Bank of England.

That ended a fierce dispute, which divided the coalition government, over whether new powers should instead be written into law.

The idea of legislation raised alarms among those cherishing three centuries of broad peacetime freedom for Britain’s newspapers. They included Prime Minister David Cameron, who said a law establishing a press watchdog would cross a Rubicon — Caesar’s point of no return — toward government control because it could be amended to be even stricter by future governments that might want to curb the press.

But victims of hacking, the Labour opposition and the Liberal Democrats — the junior partners in the coalition — pointed to the failures of existing self-regulation and pressed for a “statutory underpinning” to enshrine the changes in law. That was in line with a central recommendation of a voluminous report published last November after months of exhaustive testimony into the behavior and culture of the British press at an inquiry by Lord Justice Sir Brian Leveson. His inquiry was called after the hacking scandal crested in July 2011.

There will be minor legislation to accompany the new system. One law will be amended to ensure that changes to the charter — and therefore to the system of press regulation — can be made only if there is agreement by two-thirds of both houses of Parliament. Another change will make news groups that opt out of the new regulatory system subject to higher fines for defamation. Britain’s existing legislation already includes some of the world’s most stringent defamation laws, along with rules governing what may be published on matters relating to national security and judicial procedures.

Stephen Castle reported from London, and Alan Cowell from Paris.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/20/world/europe/britain-newspapers-protest-new-press-rules.html?partner=rss&emc=rss