Broken Incentives
The media’s incentives may be broken, but we as individuals do not have to be.
Claire Lehmann
· 12 min read
media
A collection of 34 posts
Cacophonocracy
This is what happens when the possibility of consensus among the governed deteriorates to unmanageable extremes.
George Case
· 9 min read
A Media-Fueled Social Panic Over Unmarked Graves
Not a single body has been unearthed. But Canadians wouldn’t know it from the false information reported in The New York Times.
Jonathan Kay
· 16 min read
Curtis Yarvin: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
At the center of neoreactionary thinking is a cluster of unworkable ideas.
Max Borders
· 15 min read
Point of Compact
The late literary critic and social democrat Irving Howe once quipped that when radicals fail to build a movement, they start a magazine. Howe knew what he was talking about—his own magazine, Dissent, was one of them. The latest example of this truism is a new webzine called Compact,
Ronald Radosh
· 12 min read
Anatomy of a Murder
On New Year’s Eve 2021 news of my killing began to circulate on Twitter. holy shit this is a murder https://t.co/CwsF0sZ9sZ — Julia Carrie Wong (@juliacarriew) January 1, 2022 I scrolled through scores of posts before I could stop myself, pausing to read replies and retweets. Some
Jonathan Gottschall
· 10 min read
Washington Post and NPR Ignore the Rural Backlash Against Renewables
During my three decades as a reporter, I’ve seen plenty of hype and poor news coverage about renewable energy. But two recent pieces—in the Washington Post and National Public Radio, respectively—are particularly egregious. These reports demonstrate, yet again, that some of the biggest media entities in the
Robert Bryce
· 12 min read
Bitter Fruit: Marshall McLuhan and the Rise of Fake News
McLuhan’s phenomenal success stemmed from being in the right place at the right time.
Graham Majin
· 16 min read
Scapegoating the Private School Boy
The Private School Boy is an object of endless horror and fascination. Every few years, the media outrage cycle will crest towards another scandal—a leaked video of a sexist chant, allegations of sexual misconduct or orgiastic excess—and the discourse machine will dissect the sexual mores of elite teenagers
Kasumi Borczyk
· 7 min read
The Vox Formula: Telling Privileged People What They Already Believe
The confusion of having an elite, educated status with having information, facts, and knowledge should by now be familiar—it is a move that journalists have made repeatedly to capture a high-end market and then clothe that market-driven decision as a journalistic value.
Batya Ungar-Sargon
· 8 min read
Bad News—A Review
A review of Bad News: How Woke Media Is Undermining Democracy by Batya Ungar-Sargon. Encounter, 312 pages. (October 2021) In Bad News: How Woke Media Is Undermining Democracy, Batya Ungar-Sargon, the deputy opinion editor of Newsweek (where, full disclosure, she has published two of my essays), argues that elite left-wing
Kevin Mims
· 20 min read
Scandinavian Airlines: Get Woke, Cry Wolf
The message, in short: Nothing is genuinely Scandinavian. Be it meatballs or paternity leave, everything comes from other countries.
Paulina Neuding
· 5 min read
As Newspapers Fade, Journalists Are Finding New Ways to Cover Local News
Less local reporting means less transparency, less informed voters, and lower levels of civic engagement.
Alexandra Hudson
· 7 min read
Journalists Need to Do a Better Job Matching 'Experts' to Their Actual Expertise
By simply letting experts see how they are about to be quoted, everyone will end up happier.
Brian Kalt
· 7 min read
Inside the Woke Actors Studio: How I Trained Future Doctors to Police Their Pronouns
But pulling off the kind of manipulative narcissism that privileges ideological dogma over real community health needs—that’s the mark of a true pro.
Anna Slatz
· 6 min read