A bit of a tangent, but as to the first half of the above, I think it is a two-way street. It’s not just “get woke, go broke”, but also and likely more the case, “get broke, go woke”.
All this leftward movement in the prestige press came after journalism’s financial peak and did not cause it. Social media companies and search engines siphoned off ad revenue, Craigslist killed the classifieds section, etc. The industry was shrinking, and the number of people that could make at least a middle-class living within it was, too, with the added strain imposed by aggregation of news on free sites and the increased ability of readers to shift to non-local coverage provided by the largest outlets (NYT, WSJ, WaPo, Guardian, FT, etc.)
This downward trend in financial prospects for journalists meets with the accelerating desirability of journalist as a prestige job and the increasing number of journalists who attended a select set of colleges (Columbia, Yale, Harvard, Northwestern, Mizzou, etc.). Gone is the very-old industry joke of, “Please don’t tell my mother I’m a journalist — she thinks I play piano in a whorehouse.” Also, not gone, but largely-diminished, are the kids who graduated from state schools and worked their way up from small beats, with normie political views, because there aren’t enough newspapers and jobs anymore to provide jobs for them, and they can’t list a degree from a highly-ranked J-school on their resume, nor draw on significant networking resources.
What happens when an industry contracts is that you get a lot of people with significant professional experience applying for the same jobs. And then also a lot of kids out of school trying to get their feet in the door against that current. So to Ms. Hoyt’s point, networking is certainly very important and this does make at least not outing yourself as not having “correct” views important. But that follows on the heels of the contraction.
The impact of millennials entering the industry was also two-fold.
(1) In the digital age when revenue was tight, both traditional and online outlets noticed opinion and reaction got as many clicks as first-hand coverage and investigative journalism, and that it could hire millennials just out of school to crank the former stuff out on the cheap. Those millennials had come through American universities that had already gone through their leftward shift, and brought that political orientation with them.
(2) Those millennials would not stay satisfied being cheap fodder as they got older. Paying one’s dues in one’s early twenties is one thing, but many would change careers as they got older. Those that landed choice jobs had to contend with a glut of some straggling boomers and a slew of gen-Xers above them. Twitter and Slack provided spaces for millennial journalists to try and enforce an industry culture. Then the murder of George Floyd sparked nationwide protests while America was doomscrolling during pandemic lockdowns, and the collective national freakout and heightened sensitivities. Millennials were able to pounce and clear out a few older colleagues as the gen-Xers were on aggregate less likely to be up on their intersectionality, id-pol, etc. These incidents while few had a chilling effect that is only now starting to thaw just a little bit. Also, millennial tech staffers at big outlets had enough clout to feel emboldened to weigh in on journalistic matters in company Slack channels. In the pre-digital economic model, editors did not care what anyone in the print shop thought about the paper’s focus of coverage, and also might have to listen to ad salesmen complain, but would not have treated them as peers — would have considered the thought insulting.
Multiple factors have coupled the media’s leftward shift to its digital-age financial decline. It isn’t as simple as normies not liking the leftward shift and withdrawing their attention/subscription revenue.
HouseShoes
1yr ago
Could you link to the OP, or explain why popular rage at a federal authority would push a country towards even larger government?
HouseShoes
1yr ago
My better half’s great uncle, who at the end, was just living off social security, had wonderful end-of-life care at a non-profit, charitable hospice facility.
It was not woke in any way. Just made sure people without means could part this mortal coil with a bit of sympathy and dignity.
We were so impressed/moved we set up a monthly, recurring donation.
I don’t know if you’d ever hear back from anyone in terms of thanks, or that it structurally changes the world for the better, but it quietly helps people during a very difficult time that at that point in their lives can’t help themselves.
HouseShoes
1yr ago
This is a disingenuous view of “regulation”. OP specifically said free market, and broadly YIMBYs push for less restrictive regulations. Just because your single family home gets zoned for a triplex doesn’t require you to build one. You just can’t stop your neighbor from selling the house you don’t own to a developer who will.
HouseShoes
1yr ago
Baldwin shot the deceased. You mention the details on his manslaughter charge are not yet known. You then speculate the charge could be related to his role as a producer on the film on which he shot someone who died. You willfully ignore the possibility that the manslaughter charge is related to Alec Baldwin shooting someone with a gun, but still want this charge to serve as a parallel to anyone who might have been remotely involved in gain-of-function research in Wuhan?
HouseShoes
1yr ago
This. There is little to no overlap between the types of people that sell advice on how to make money in the stock market or real estate and the people who actually make money in the stock market or real estate.
HouseShoes
1yr ago
Cities are dynamic things. Why do you assume everyone will congregate in fewer and fewer of them? Austin was a college town before Dell and Motorola got going, there. Sun Belt cities with low taxes are attracting migrants from other U.S. metros — both people and businesses.
As the adoption of telecommuting was sped up by the pandemic, it has changed how employers weigh a city’s human and cultural capital against what a desk costs in that city. A desk in Jacksonville or Dallas costs way less than one in NYC or SF.
A potential counter to the above might be global warming if it drives people north and a bit inland.
HouseShoes
1yr ago
A decent number of heart-related deaths, here. And given the subject of the list, doesn’t include Fabrice Muamba/Christian Eriksen events where the player survived:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_associaton_football_players_who_died_during_their_careers
HouseShoes
1yr ago
He donated to both parties, and the press is aware, and has an easy narrative. I for one do not concur.
HouseShoes
1yr ago
On a CW note, and thinking out loud, what is going on with men where someone is profiting by branding soap as distinctly masculine? Is this downstream of targeted advertising in the internet age ? I guess Irish Spring’s, “Manly, yes, but she likes it, too,” from the ‘80s suggests this has been around much longer.
I do wish mild ill on that dollar-store T.J. Miller from the Dr. Squatch YouTube ads — like he realizes he bought sweet pickles instead of dill after biting into a sandwich.
HouseShoes
1yr ago
Fine, but what does that say if the underlying example ultimately proves to be wrong? That Baldwin, the triggerman, is only the equivalent of the specific person who let the virus loose?
HouseShoes
1yr ago
There are many influential groups in and around Washington strongly in favor of supporting Ukraine and opposing Russia. Foreign service lifers like the Robert Kagan and Victoria Nuland wing who are neoliberal interventionists, and folks working for the military industrial complex that had to delay buying a second vacation home or remodeling their mansion in northern Virginia when the Afghanistan tap got cut off, to name two of the more powerful. The likelihood that Biden is the primary advocate for the U.S.’s involvement seems slim.
HouseShoes
1yr ago
My book club is currently discussing short stories. It’s wonderful. I still get to discuss fiction, in person, with a group of people once a month. But the time commitment to prepare isn’t much more than an evening or two, to read, re-read and take down my thoughts.
HouseShoes
1yr ago
A tangent on Jim Biden — the seedier folks involved with Dickie Scruggs were tossing Jim’s name around as part of a new lobbying firm they were going to open in D.C. before the feds came down on them.
HouseShoes
1yr ago
I guess I’m really glad we’re donating to the aforementioned one, in that case.
And that was the end of Goldwater's future aspirations…
I think that depends on how you define his aspirations. The odds were against him when he ran for president, but when his speechwriter Karl Hess put what has since been paraphrased as, “Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice. Moderation in pursuit of justice is no virtue,” in his Republican convention acceptance speech, it got him absolutely shit-hammered in the press. A reeling public associated extremism with JFK’s assassination, and regardless of what one thinks of the sentiment or the man, it was a national P.R. blunder that made those long odds far longer.
From there, Buckley takes the helm of American conservatism, gate keeps the Birchers (who Goldwater was repeatedly reluctant to condemn, also doing himself no P.R. favors), and in a few elections’ time Reagan wins the presidency.
HouseShoes
1yr ago
Susceptibility to hangovers. I’m an oenophile and have always been a moderate drinker. The supermajority of days I have a single glass of wine with dinner. But on social occasions in my 20s, three or four glasses over a long evening never caused me any discomfort the next morning. I usually cap myself at two or maybe three, now, because even three is becoming a gamble with worsening odds.
HouseShoes
1yr ago
It’s more exciting if there’s a coordinated effort, but within publications via Slack and industry wide via Twitter, the media is now more connected to one another than they were, before. It’s a lot easier for this terminology to spread, and does not necessarily require a premeditated, coordinated effort.
HouseShoes
1yr ago
I think you are correct to a large extent, but as someone who still subscribes to print media, much that focuses on politics, the economy and current events is very negative in tone. This is natural as these publications place focus on trying to warn readers about negative developments and things that need to be changed and improved. It is funny that when comparing the op-ed sections of the NYT to WSJ, the Spectator World to the Atlantic, or the New Criterion to Jacobin, the other side — whatever it is — is usually winning, as “things are going well for us” is less persuasive as a call to action.
HouseShoes
1yr ago
So you don’t think there was a noticeable shift left that at a minimum overlaps the digital age, whatever the press’s aggregate position before it?
HouseShoes
1yr ago
Right, I wasn’t taking any stance on the slogan. I’m pointing out the historical fact much of the country reacted strongly against it coming so soon after JFK’s assassination.
HouseShoes
1yr ago
Thank you and best of luck.
HouseShoes
1yr ago
Yes, but folks in cooler states aren’t going to consent to having their water diverted to the Southwest and southern California.
HouseShoes
1yr ago
This is true for the major outlets but not the industry as a whole. And my point was not that journalism will fully cease to be. But that consolidating up to the biggest publications caused small-to-midsized ones, and all the jobs they provided, to shrink, and that contraction’s impact, in combination with other factors, helped push the industry left.
This, too, also has a feedback loop. With the rise of cable TV and social media, politics are increasingly national, so easy enough for papers around the country to just syndicate stories from the AP, Reuters, WaPo, the NYT and WSJ, as readers who live outside New York and D.C. are less interested in a localized view of politics.
Ben Schreckinger’s book, The Bidens, builds a pretty strong case that both Hunter and Joe’s brother, Jim, have tried to cash in on Joe’s name with varying degrees of success and failure over the years, and when people close to Joe have raised the issue, Biden has repeatedly chosen to plug his ears, out of familial loyalty, and the belief that if he doesn’t know about it, he is in the clear. But also, that links actually connecting Biden to any corruption have not been uncovered.
Yes, Biden has ignored conflicts of interest and in a better world he would have been disqualified from holding office. But in terms of Washington, he’s sadly rather benign.
The darkly funny thing is the Bidens are so small-time when it comes to money, and a savvier man than Joe could have cashed in far more than Biden did, at least in his senate years when representing a state with only a million people and two-thirds of America’s Fortune 500 companies registered, there. But Joe was always far more interested in holding office, with a personal dream of becoming president. In one sense, hats off to the senile old mick — privately, Obama was never bullish on his prospects — but he did it.
Impeachment when?
This is a culture war section, so one joke of an impeachment needs to be met with one that also appears to be built on flimsy ground, because the other tribe did it? I’d rather wait until some substantial proof is uncovered. Let’s say a benchmark of something worse than Jared Kushner getting $2,000,000,000 from the Saudis six months after his father-in-law left office.
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