It really is a great model for local journalism, which is perhaps even more in need of e revival than national newspapers. I haven't lived in Chicago for better than 20 years, but I still support them because they help me keep in touch with my home.
BCC is the apex predator of Chicago journalism. I don't read the Sun-Times (having been fired from it several decades ago) and the Tribune is 90% is Associated Press pickups.
Thank you for your clear and sweeping analysis of the latest failures of our press! I worked for investigative reporter Jack Anderson in my first job out of college (50 years ago) and the Post was a different newspaper back then. He was very clear-eyed too about the wealthy trying to influence politics. Lacking a paper like the Guardian in the US, I’m grateful for columnists like you and Heather Cox Richardson.
I don’t think the order to the Times and Post not to endorse is cowardice. Cowardice would be knowing you should endorse and being afraid to do so. The owners forbid the endorsement because they have the power to do so and they wanted to exercise their power. Their power derives from their monopoly positions. Harris is the threat to them, not Trump.
I think there's a reasonable supposition that this is not fearing Harris so much as preemptive currying of favor with Trump should he get back into office. Bezos has massive government contracts and his Blue Origin people met with Trump after a recent Trump event. Bezos's investment in the WaPost is minuscule compared to the business he has with the government. He knows that a Harris administration isn't going to cancel that business out of a fit of pique, but Trump on the other hand...
Yes, it could be analogous to Pascal’s wager. If Harris wins, the choice to endorse her or not will not have any consequence to the owners. If Trump wins, there may be a payoff to no endorsement. Therefore, the logical thing to do is not endorse. Of course, it may be simpler. They may want, for whatever reason, Trump to be President and they veto the Harris endorsement because they have the power to do so. I keep seeing posts that call the lack of endorsement cowardice and cowardice is not a necessary condition for the decision or even a good explanation.
(Note: I'd acknowledge Noah badly misinterprets the Obama quote he references; a bunch of commenters, including me, provide the correct context in the comments. But that's tangential to the main thrust of the piece which is on target and definitely worth reading).
Re: Barro, I believe I said myself that endorsements don't matter all that much, if at all, but there is a difference between newspapers deciding not to endorse on principle as as part of a practice and the billionaire owners of two newspapers apparently squashing planned endorsements at the 11th hour because they fear what Trump might do if he becomes president again. There is now reporting (not yet confirmed by multiple publications) that Trump's meeting with Bezos's space people was an explicit quid pro quo for squashing that endorsement. There is a difference between an abstract argument over whether or not newspapers should endorse - and on balance, I'd say they should stay out of that game - and understanding what is happening here.
I also note that this passage from Barro is offered without evidence: "After Trump was elected in 2016, much of the press started behaving very badly — positioning itself in explicit opposition to the president and reconceiving itself not just as a chronicler and investigator of important facts but as a voice of “moral clarity” telling the audience how they should feel."
This is not really true, certainly not beyond something like MSNBC, which isn't really the "press" per se.
Re: That Noah Smith piece to my reading is goofy as hell. Lots of reporting on Musk talks about how hard the engineers at his company have to work to keep him from fucking things up. The product that is most closely tied to his personal vision - the Cybertruck - is a non-functioning mess. He has a distorted view of the world - woke mind virus, give me a break - quite possibly exacerbated by an addiction to ketamine. He routinely either falls for online conspiracy theories or is reckless about spreading them. Yes, he's amassed enormous wealth and power, to the point the U.S. government is dependent on his satellite network, but the fact that this has been allowed to happen is a byproduct of generations of outsourcing of what we used to see as core government functions to corporations. Musk has definitely seized that opportunity by becoming a leading government contractor when it comes to space travel, but this does not make him Tony Stark, a fictional character.
If Smith is right and this is where we find ourselves as a country, we really are screwed.
Thanks for this article. As a Canadian, I know little about the state of journalism in the US though I do read the New York Times but less regularly since the start of the 2020 war in Ukraine; I find NYT's coverage of that conflict at times dubious. All this, to agree The Guardian is the best English language journal available.
Check out Block Club Chicago as an example of what good political journalism can be.
It really is a great model for local journalism, which is perhaps even more in need of e revival than national newspapers. I haven't lived in Chicago for better than 20 years, but I still support them because they help me keep in touch with my home.
BCC is the apex predator of Chicago journalism. I don't read the Sun-Times (having been fired from it several decades ago) and the Tribune is 90% is Associated Press pickups.
Thank you for your clear and sweeping analysis of the latest failures of our press! I worked for investigative reporter Jack Anderson in my first job out of college (50 years ago) and the Post was a different newspaper back then. He was very clear-eyed too about the wealthy trying to influence politics. Lacking a paper like the Guardian in the US, I’m grateful for columnists like you and Heather Cox Richardson.
I don’t think the order to the Times and Post not to endorse is cowardice. Cowardice would be knowing you should endorse and being afraid to do so. The owners forbid the endorsement because they have the power to do so and they wanted to exercise their power. Their power derives from their monopoly positions. Harris is the threat to them, not Trump.
I think there's a reasonable supposition that this is not fearing Harris so much as preemptive currying of favor with Trump should he get back into office. Bezos has massive government contracts and his Blue Origin people met with Trump after a recent Trump event. Bezos's investment in the WaPost is minuscule compared to the business he has with the government. He knows that a Harris administration isn't going to cancel that business out of a fit of pique, but Trump on the other hand...
Yes, it could be analogous to Pascal’s wager. If Harris wins, the choice to endorse her or not will not have any consequence to the owners. If Trump wins, there may be a payoff to no endorsement. Therefore, the logical thing to do is not endorse. Of course, it may be simpler. They may want, for whatever reason, Trump to be President and they veto the Harris endorsement because they have the power to do so. I keep seeing posts that call the lack of endorsement cowardice and cowardice is not a necessary condition for the decision or even a good explanation.
I always tell my son that one day he’ll brag to his children that Alexandra Petri spoke at his HS graduation.
RIP WaPo. Kay Graham is spinning in her grave.
Josh Barro with a different, and I think better, take on newspaper endorsements for presidential campaigns
https://www.joshbarro.com/p/newspapers-should-not-endorse-presidential
As for billionaires, or at least one billionaire, here is Noah Smith with the best take on Elon Musk I have ever read:
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/why-americas-future-could-hinge-on
(Note: I'd acknowledge Noah badly misinterprets the Obama quote he references; a bunch of commenters, including me, provide the correct context in the comments. But that's tangential to the main thrust of the piece which is on target and definitely worth reading).
Re: Barro, I believe I said myself that endorsements don't matter all that much, if at all, but there is a difference between newspapers deciding not to endorse on principle as as part of a practice and the billionaire owners of two newspapers apparently squashing planned endorsements at the 11th hour because they fear what Trump might do if he becomes president again. There is now reporting (not yet confirmed by multiple publications) that Trump's meeting with Bezos's space people was an explicit quid pro quo for squashing that endorsement. There is a difference between an abstract argument over whether or not newspapers should endorse - and on balance, I'd say they should stay out of that game - and understanding what is happening here.
I also note that this passage from Barro is offered without evidence: "After Trump was elected in 2016, much of the press started behaving very badly — positioning itself in explicit opposition to the president and reconceiving itself not just as a chronicler and investigator of important facts but as a voice of “moral clarity” telling the audience how they should feel."
This is not really true, certainly not beyond something like MSNBC, which isn't really the "press" per se.
Re: That Noah Smith piece to my reading is goofy as hell. Lots of reporting on Musk talks about how hard the engineers at his company have to work to keep him from fucking things up. The product that is most closely tied to his personal vision - the Cybertruck - is a non-functioning mess. He has a distorted view of the world - woke mind virus, give me a break - quite possibly exacerbated by an addiction to ketamine. He routinely either falls for online conspiracy theories or is reckless about spreading them. Yes, he's amassed enormous wealth and power, to the point the U.S. government is dependent on his satellite network, but the fact that this has been allowed to happen is a byproduct of generations of outsourcing of what we used to see as core government functions to corporations. Musk has definitely seized that opportunity by becoming a leading government contractor when it comes to space travel, but this does not make him Tony Stark, a fictional character.
If Smith is right and this is where we find ourselves as a country, we really are screwed.
Thanks for this article. As a Canadian, I know little about the state of journalism in the US though I do read the New York Times but less regularly since the start of the 2020 war in Ukraine; I find NYT's coverage of that conflict at times dubious. All this, to agree The Guardian is the best English language journal available.
On your advice, of sorts, just subscribed to The Guardian.
The Guardian also has better international coverage than the US sources I see (Chicago Trib, WaPo, AP).
:-D