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kausfiles.com
Journolist--The Careerist Antidote to Neolib Contrarianism (July 30, 2010 10:55 AM)
An email from one of the 400 ex-Journolisters:
the careerism issue is this: it placed a very specific clique at the center of the washington journalistic ecology, created an echo chamber where it reified a worldview where matt yglesias and ezra were unqualified great successes and their methodology was above reproach. it solidified the ubiquity and centrality of ezra klein.
if it was mark schmitt or jon cohn or bob wright or tomasky behind the listserv it would have taken a different tone. But it emerged under ezra. For [name of older writer deleted] its just a band of lunatics. For a young editor or writer, it becomes a gateway, a common clique, the understood path. Its worth noting that most people, except for the prospect people, who posted didn't have real, full-time jobs.
Whenever I wrote to the list, did I slant my things to minimize offense to those on it? Probably. Did that create a dangerous feedback loop? Probably. Was it because of a specific social environment, with ezra as a good cop, and brad delong and eric alterman and spencer ackerman etc etc as bad cops, ready to "correct your fallacies" in the smuggest way possible? Yes. For older centrist types, that wasn't a big deal. For younger people? Well it wasn't a place to develop and hone your thinking if you had a slightest bit of doubt, and it posed as that.
I think, though, that's a problem replicated off the listserv, too. Maybe it accelerated the feedback loop... But I'm not sure.
What it did do is boost the career of ezra klein
Viewed this way, Journolist was an antidote to the old journalistic ecology in which young Democratic writers got noticed by saying something unorthodox. No more Kinsleyesque contrarianism (it being an essential whippersnapper conceit that much if not all neolib criticism of Democratic orthodoxy is simply reflexive contrarianism). Certainly Journolist wasn't an institution where you got career points for being contrarian. Quite the opposite, at least according to my emailer.
P.S.: Here's a crude test: In this group of 400 "center to left" writers, did even one agree with George McGovern about keeping the secret ballot in union elections? If they agreed, did they dare say they agreed? ... 1:21 P.M.
Comments
August 2, 2010 10:00 PM
From: derek
Subject: re: Journolist--The Careerist Antidote to Neolib Contrarianism
I can get two bit political hackery for free in abundance. Lots of suppliers.
What happened on this list resulted in paid journalism sounding like partisan blogs that I can get for free. The revelations break down any remaining reputation that journalistic enterprises could use to survive.
That is why I laugh when I read how this was careerist. Careers imply someone paying you.
Derek
August 1, 2010 6:00 AM
From: grandstand
Subject: re: Journolist--The Careerist Antidote to Neolib Contrarianism
I am appalled by the notion that a bunch of center-left media types would partake in a center-left listserv.
How did this happen, and where do we go from here?
I believe this is an important subject, and deserves more of an exegesis than has thus far been offered in the media.
July 31, 2010 6:00 PM
From: Richard Hutcheson (sonofhutch@yahoo.com)
Subject: re: Journolist--The Careerist Antidote to Neolib Contrarianism
The fundamental problem of all social networking is how to monetize the thing. In the case of JournoList, someone found out. Is there no curiosity about who this wizard is?
July 31, 2010 1:00 PM
From: David Rogers (darogers@aol.com)
Subject: re: Journolist--The Careerist Antidote to Neolib Contrarianism
Gee Matt: awfully touchy, aren't you?
Let's see: preening posturing? check
pretense of defense of downtrodden others? check
ostentatious green self-credentialing? check
ad hominem attack in place of argument? check
Boy, that JournoList sure featured the best and brightest, didn't it?
July 31, 2010 11:00 AM
From: Andrew Thomas (furious_a@yahoo.com)
Subject: Improper Influence/Two Minds
To the extent that this group shaped news
coverage of a presidential campaign, and colluded to bury (racist Rev. Wright) or concoct (Rove/Barnes=racist) stories that were detrimental to one side, and, furthermore, enlisted their employers' (Wapo, Time Magazine, Economist, Bloomberg, NPR) brand equity in doing so...
...yes, the collusion was improper and a betrayal of the public's trust. Where were the seasoned, trusted editors and journalistic elders while 22-year-old know-
nothings were running their franchises'
public trust into the ground? Upset, like Chuck Todd, but just not upset enough to do anything about it/
July 31, 2010 10:00 AM
From: Alvin Jones (essucht@yahoo.com)
Subject: re: Journolist--The Careerist Antidote to Neolib Contrarianism
Obviously the most vocal participants of Journolist were avowed leftwing opinion writers and activists. But we know that dozens to hundreds of members of the straight reporting sector of the media were members.
Why do they still have jobs? Can anyone be expected to believe that you can get straight news reporting out of a reporter who participated in this forum without making it public knowledge?
July 31, 2010 8:00 AM
From: Tim Jones (tkjones@cinci.rr.com)
Subject: re: Journolist--The Careerist Antidote to Neolib Contrarianism
"Walkable urbanism". Ye gods.
Speaking as a red-state suburbanite commuter, this whole lib/lefty obsession with "walkable" gets very tiresome. People live in the burbs because we/they don't want "urbanism". The last thing I'd want is to raise my kids in an urban environment. But for libs, it's always the dream of structuring society in a way that pleases THEM.
Trust me, there are millions of us out here who will resist the socialist/totalitarian dream of "walkable urbanism", kicking and screaming, to the bitter end.
But then, that's probably not the sort of thing you'd ever learn on, say, JournoList. You guys REALLY need to get out more.
July 31, 2010 8:00 AM
From: Roy (roymedvedev@gmail.com)
Subject: re: Journolist--The Careerist Antidote to Neolib Contrarianism
I'm sure that Imhoff's point, that bright young people often like to bloviate on subjects of which they're truly ignorant, applies to plenty of Journolisters other than you Mr. Yglesias.
You're not THAT special.
July 31, 2010 7:00 AM
From: anon (johnston@msn.com)
Subject: re: Yglesias
I hope to Yahweh, God of Hosts, that that is actually you with the pathetic comment.
All I can say is OWNED, WE OWN YOU
July 31, 2010 7:00 AM
From: Mondo Frazier (mondoreb@gmail.com)
Subject: re: Journolist--The Careerist Antidote to Neolib Contrarianism
Sunlight seems to make the JournoListers a bit touchy.
Or, maybe they've always been sensitive?
To their own ends and needs.
July 31, 2010 7:00 AM
From: bflat879 (bflat879@bellsouth.net)
Subject: re: Journolist--The Careerist Antidote to Neolib Contrarianism
I'm not a journalist, and I don't play one on television so let me tell you what Journolist really did, it showed conservatives that their fears of the MSM did have some foundation.
A journalist has only one thing, in the end, he can lean on and that's his integrity. These people sacrificed that to get a President elected. They were willing to smear people, in order to get that done. They were willing to sacrifice freedom of the press for anyone that they didn't agree with.
It wasn't just journalist, it was professors of journalism also willing to sacrifice any integrity within the system, to further a political belief.
How much faith does the American public have in their news media? You don't want to take a poll right now, you've sacrificed the trust people had, once upon a time.
July 30, 2010 3:00 PM
From: Matthew Yglesias (myglesias@gmail.com)
Subject: re: Journolist--The Careerist Antidote to Neolib Contrarianism
Gary: How come you're writing about what "they" would do on JournoList when your description of "their" behavior is clearly a criticism directed at me personally? If you want to say that you don't like my work or my methods, that's fine. Then maybe later we can debate the merits of walkable urbanism versus your car-centric views. But leave the rest of the gang out of it.
July 30, 2010 1:00 PM
From: Gary Imhoff (gary@dcwatch.com)
Subject: re: Journolist--The Careerist Antidote to Neolib Contrarianism
Journolist also provided its inner circle with a dangerous crutch. A columnist who writes once or twice a week, or a blogger who writes up to several times a day, runs two dangers. The first is to write only about the short list of things he actually knows something about or has a well-grounded opinion on, thus becoming repetitive and tiresome; the second is to toss off ill-considered opinions about a long list of subjects about which he has no expertise and is actually ignorant.
The lunch-box libs at the center of Journolist are too young, their experiences too limited, and their viewpoints too blindered, for them to have developed much expertise about anything. But they wanted to be able to write as generalists about whatever the topics of the day were. Journalist gave them ready-made, crowd-sourced and approved liberal opinions, sometimes even from real experts or insiders, that they could restate as their own.
Instead of having to write that they had taken a ten-day grand tour of both Sweden and China, and could now write as experts on those countries, they could write in the morning that they were privy to the inside workings of the Federal Reserve and knew what expert (liberal) economists were saying about the administration's economic plans; and write in the afternoon that their deep knowledge of political science, or international relations, or sociology, qualified them to pontificate on whatever people were talking about with regard to those subjects.
July 30, 2010 12:07 PM
From: Richard Riley (rriley@foley.com)
Subject: Journolist chin-pulling
I'm still of two minds on Journolist. On one hand there's some force to the positon of Kaus and his allies that the list created a kind of liberal orthodoxy or cocooning among people whose job was to be opinionated and whom readers expected to be independent thinkers. On the other hand, talk about something that was totally private sector and had no force of law behind it. It really is hard to see how you impute some kind of "improper" influence to something that consisted entirely of a bunch of people sharing ideas, even if rigid or stupid ones, under no compulsion at all but just because they liked being, or wanted to be for whatever reason, part of a group.
July 30, 2010 12:07 PM
From: David Thomson (davidthomsonone@gmail.com)
Subject: re: Journolist--The Careerist Antidote to Neolib Contrarianism
These clowns are mostly the spoiled sons and daughters of the "elites". They are intellectually lazy and narcissistic. We should hold them in utter contempt. It's time to revisit the student rebellion era of the 1960s. A lot of damage has occurred over the four decade because those brats got away with their nonsense.
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