I'm going to disagree with you on this. The problem isn't that present day journalists are too elitist, it's that they're not elitist enough. Very few of them have any understanding of basic statistics, and this is the language of the social sciences. There is no way to understand the evidence around any key social issue today (racism, sexism, the state of the economy, inequality) without a firm knowledge of statistics. It's a little like trying to write a book review without knowing how to read. Of course they substitute this gap with dogma. What else do they have?
A true understanding of statistics would entail much more intellectual humility, because anybody who has done research in social sciences knows that it is really really hard to prove anything. Most results do not replicate and many fancy statistical techniques turn out to be flawed. What we're left with is a vanishingly small amount of things in which we have confidence, and then a massive sea of uncertainty.
It was not that long ago that a journalist would stumble over a disconcerting truth, investigate in depth and then write about the adventure. Now, however, journalists who stumble over a disconcerting truth get up, dust themselves off and proceed as if nothing had happened.
The Seattle Times is a great example of the problems you mention. Everyday, the narratives determine the content. One of the recurring narratives - cops are racist or ACAB - is on display when they wonder perplexedly over the idea that African Americans are disproportionately represented with crimes committed. The narrative is always cops are racist. The cops must be arresting them more because they're racist. Never would they dare step out of the narrative to find out why they're disproportionately represented. Never would they consider the possibility that perhaps African Americans commit more crimes. News articles read like opinion pieces. Thomas Sowell's book "Discrimination and Disparities" is a great read to counter all that.
It sure would be nice if journalists were neither glib anti-intellectuals (let's not romanticize this shtick too much) nor glib pseudo-intellectuals. There is surely a middle ground.
I was with you until you mentioned Cokie Roberts, stenographer to the establishment and David Broder's only real competition for biggest stooge in Washington.
Thank you!!! This is a wonderfully useful perspective. I have been framing things lately as honor vs dignity culture characteristics. (Hierarchical v. emergent; trusting v controlling; agency v. Obedience; logic mind vs. emotion mind, etc.) One thread is the notion that honor culture develops under scarcity and lawlessness and so is about keeping oneself and one’s loved ones safe whereas dignity culture is more likely in a society with abundance. The trick there is that honor culture is about physical resources where real scarcity is life or death while dignity culture is about artificial scarcity once basic needs are met and so people see threats to their framing as existential threats (I will die if I don’t get the status associated with that promotion.) So yeah, it really resonated when you said that conservative folks have a bias for real experience with “stuff” not just intellectual arguments. As a result, we see conservatives as the party of safety and liberals as the party of shame. In pursuing those tropes, politicians end up with caricatures of both, I think. Polarization seems to continue to be inevitable until the other team’s frameworks make sense to each of us.
Also ties in to the MRI studies that liberals use their prefrontal cortex to grapple with policy while conservatives use their amygdala. I have seen both teams explain why that means the other team is stupid. I think we need to recognize that both rational conclusions and mental pattern matching are valid ways of knowing, but who would hire a CEO who only ran the numbers or only listened to his gut when a changing environment always calls for both.
A friend of mine in Amsterdam “Rex”, the only living gay artist from the 70’s and 80’s discussed this very topic last year. He lamented the disappearance of working class professions which were the foundation male icons he used in his art. We came to the conclusion that they didn’t disappear per se, their status changed to artificial credentialing which forced them to “clean up” to function. Gone were truck drivers and longshoremen, boxers and roughnecks, most of what Whitman celebrated in “Leaves of Grass”. [Rex of course didn’t write about such men so much as portray them in situations appropriate to gay art from the 70’s along with Tom of Finland and Drummer magazine, I leave it to the reader to imagine what that means.]
Superb article confirming other conversations about blue-collar work.
I have “trigger words” - you called out one, “narrative” vs “story”; others trigger words for me include “interrogate”, “epistemic”, “dichotomy”, “hegemonic”, “ubiquity”, “theory”, “systemic”, “gender”. Words used not to convey information, but status. “Epistemic closure”.
A friend who worked with J.K. Rowling in her films told me the most effective magic words were one which were half Greek / half Latin.
These people are, in that spirit, “dyscommunicators”.
I was actually with you in the first part where you covered the working class roots of journalism vs today. Then ... you accused modern journalist of not being to think their way out of a framework or to challenge the meme monster and mention only liberal tropes that you don't like because you are a conservative. This writeup suffers from precisely the same issues that you accuse 'elite journalists' of having. You describe with broad brushstrokes liberal minded journalists while ignoring that precisely the same behavior exists on the right. Neither right or left has a monopoly on not being to escape their starting position.
I just switched to a paid subscription today because this was a great piece of writing. Also, because Persuasion failed to note in the bottom author section that William Deresiewicz is the author of the charming A Jane Austen Education, which I think you should buy now and read because it’s fun (yes, I just paid $10 to give the man with the impossible last name a plug). The only gripe I have with today’s article is that it is not hard enough on contemporary journalism and journalists. The rot has reached even the non-editorial part of the Wall Street Journal (the editorial section retains its honor.) In fact, I am thinking of foregoing my $500/year WSJ subscription to spread that subscription money around Substack creators like this. Lastly, I think Substack should start marketing itself as an alternative route to daily journalism: “Yo-yos are for children. Substack Journalism is for you.”
I'm going to disagree with you on this. The problem isn't that present day journalists are too elitist, it's that they're not elitist enough. Very few of them have any understanding of basic statistics, and this is the language of the social sciences. There is no way to understand the evidence around any key social issue today (racism, sexism, the state of the economy, inequality) without a firm knowledge of statistics. It's a little like trying to write a book review without knowing how to read. Of course they substitute this gap with dogma. What else do they have?
A true understanding of statistics would entail much more intellectual humility, because anybody who has done research in social sciences knows that it is really really hard to prove anything. Most results do not replicate and many fancy statistical techniques turn out to be flawed. What we're left with is a vanishingly small amount of things in which we have confidence, and then a massive sea of uncertainty.
It was not that long ago that a journalist would stumble over a disconcerting truth, investigate in depth and then write about the adventure. Now, however, journalists who stumble over a disconcerting truth get up, dust themselves off and proceed as if nothing had happened.
The Seattle Times is a great example of the problems you mention. Everyday, the narratives determine the content. One of the recurring narratives - cops are racist or ACAB - is on display when they wonder perplexedly over the idea that African Americans are disproportionately represented with crimes committed. The narrative is always cops are racist. The cops must be arresting them more because they're racist. Never would they dare step out of the narrative to find out why they're disproportionately represented. Never would they consider the possibility that perhaps African Americans commit more crimes. News articles read like opinion pieces. Thomas Sowell's book "Discrimination and Disparities" is a great read to counter all that.
It sure would be nice if journalists were neither glib anti-intellectuals (let's not romanticize this shtick too much) nor glib pseudo-intellectuals. There is surely a middle ground.
I was with you until you mentioned Cokie Roberts, stenographer to the establishment and David Broder's only real competition for biggest stooge in Washington.
Thank you!!! This is a wonderfully useful perspective. I have been framing things lately as honor vs dignity culture characteristics. (Hierarchical v. emergent; trusting v controlling; agency v. Obedience; logic mind vs. emotion mind, etc.) One thread is the notion that honor culture develops under scarcity and lawlessness and so is about keeping oneself and one’s loved ones safe whereas dignity culture is more likely in a society with abundance. The trick there is that honor culture is about physical resources where real scarcity is life or death while dignity culture is about artificial scarcity once basic needs are met and so people see threats to their framing as existential threats (I will die if I don’t get the status associated with that promotion.) So yeah, it really resonated when you said that conservative folks have a bias for real experience with “stuff” not just intellectual arguments. As a result, we see conservatives as the party of safety and liberals as the party of shame. In pursuing those tropes, politicians end up with caricatures of both, I think. Polarization seems to continue to be inevitable until the other team’s frameworks make sense to each of us.
Also ties in to the MRI studies that liberals use their prefrontal cortex to grapple with policy while conservatives use their amygdala. I have seen both teams explain why that means the other team is stupid. I think we need to recognize that both rational conclusions and mental pattern matching are valid ways of knowing, but who would hire a CEO who only ran the numbers or only listened to his gut when a changing environment always calls for both.
A friend of mine in Amsterdam “Rex”, the only living gay artist from the 70’s and 80’s discussed this very topic last year. He lamented the disappearance of working class professions which were the foundation male icons he used in his art. We came to the conclusion that they didn’t disappear per se, their status changed to artificial credentialing which forced them to “clean up” to function. Gone were truck drivers and longshoremen, boxers and roughnecks, most of what Whitman celebrated in “Leaves of Grass”. [Rex of course didn’t write about such men so much as portray them in situations appropriate to gay art from the 70’s along with Tom of Finland and Drummer magazine, I leave it to the reader to imagine what that means.]
Superb article confirming other conversations about blue-collar work.
I have “trigger words” - you called out one, “narrative” vs “story”; others trigger words for me include “interrogate”, “epistemic”, “dichotomy”, “hegemonic”, “ubiquity”, “theory”, “systemic”, “gender”. Words used not to convey information, but status. “Epistemic closure”.
A friend who worked with J.K. Rowling in her films told me the most effective magic words were one which were half Greek / half Latin.
These people are, in that spirit, “dyscommunicators”.
Or, in plain British English, wankers.
I was actually with you in the first part where you covered the working class roots of journalism vs today. Then ... you accused modern journalist of not being to think their way out of a framework or to challenge the meme monster and mention only liberal tropes that you don't like because you are a conservative. This writeup suffers from precisely the same issues that you accuse 'elite journalists' of having. You describe with broad brushstrokes liberal minded journalists while ignoring that precisely the same behavior exists on the right. Neither right or left has a monopoly on not being to escape their starting position.
I just switched to a paid subscription today because this was a great piece of writing. Also, because Persuasion failed to note in the bottom author section that William Deresiewicz is the author of the charming A Jane Austen Education, which I think you should buy now and read because it’s fun (yes, I just paid $10 to give the man with the impossible last name a plug). The only gripe I have with today’s article is that it is not hard enough on contemporary journalism and journalists. The rot has reached even the non-editorial part of the Wall Street Journal (the editorial section retains its honor.) In fact, I am thinking of foregoing my $500/year WSJ subscription to spread that subscription money around Substack creators like this. Lastly, I think Substack should start marketing itself as an alternative route to daily journalism: “Yo-yos are for children. Substack Journalism is for you.”
Mr. Kahn. Lately, I have ruminated on how much Persuasion is rivaling The Atlantic. This excellent essay convinces me that I am not wrong. Marvelous.
I enjoyed this article. It made me think. Thankyou 🐈⬛