A collection of 62 posts
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,
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
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
McLuhan’s phenomenal success stemmed from being in the right place at the right time.
The culture war and the fight over liberal media bias.
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
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.
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
The message, in short: Nothing is genuinely Scandinavian. Be it meatballs or paternity leave, everything comes from other countries.
Less local reporting means less transparency, less informed voters, and lower levels of civic engagement.
By simply letting experts see how they are about to be quoted, everyone will end up happier.
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.
The available scientific and statistical evidence (not to mention common sense) weighs strongly against belief in bodily resurrection from the dead.
Last year, Google engineer James Damore was fired after an internal memo he wrote was leaked to technology website Gizmodo, causing an uproar within the company.
That seems itself to be an example of divisiveness and a snub to one form of diversity: that of diverse opinion.