A Little Help Here! … A kind of-sort of Stupid Friday question
One of the difficulties in being the site’s self-declared news/media whiner is that there’s just too much out there to criticize.
Everyday I come across laughably absurd examples of how far off the rails we’ve gotten in this era of “democratized” journalism. I almost always choose not to write about them because they are so bad that even simply pointing out that they actually exist almost feels like making a straw man argument. And to be clear, I’m not talking about some guy no one’s ever heard of at World News Daily. I’m talking about people who are household names and have lucrative contracts with major news networks in one or multiple mediums.
The question, then, is what to do with these folks?
Pointing out every idiotic (or dangerous) thing they say whenever they say it runs the risk of making this site some kind of Buzzfeed Jr., a thought that makes me throw up a little in my mouth. But pretending they don’t exist doesn’t feel right either, because more and more these are the people who are driving not only public opinion, but also the way news is presented to us for our consumption.
So I’m toying with the idea of creating a Rogues Gallery — a monthly (or thereabouts) feature that highlights someone who really does deserve to be singled out for scorn. But if I’m going to do that, I want to offer readers an alternative to whatever highly paid troll I’m shining a spotlight on — a kind of anti-troll, if you will, that we should promote.
So, for example, if I were going to do a piece on a Dr. Oz, I might want a Dr. Russell Saunders to steer readers toward. (Only not Russell Saunders, because I want to point people toward non-OTers.)
The problem is I seem to be blinded by trolls these days, and I just can’t think of that many well-known people in this world of new journalism that are any good at doing anything but generating ratings and/or page hits. And thus I turn to you, dear reader:
Who do you recommend as a quality source of news and/or commentary that you recommend I check out and perhaps promote here at OT?
Keep in mind that I’m me, so I’m looking for people who do good and thorough reporting, not people who simply agree with you. A lot of people agree with Sean Hannity; that deosn’t make what he does “quality journalism.”
Thanks in advance.
Dahlia Lithwick on Slate does a great job with legal and SCOTUS reporting. She is thoughtful and smart. Yeah its Slate with all its Slateness but it does have a few bright spots.Report
It’s been awhile since I read something by her, but she is pretty consistently on point in a way that is extraordinarily rare in the realm of legal reporting.Report
Jonathan Bernstein of political process (he’s at bloomberg now.)
Amanda Hess for women’s issues, she’s at slate.
Smitten Kitchen and 101 cookbooks for food and cooking;
Jaun Cole on the middle-east.
Scotus blog.Report
And I forgot Andrew Sprung, particularly on ACA: http://xpostfactoid.blogspot.com/Report
@zic Smitten Kitchen is great, and a favorite of both mine and knittingniki’s. Her pizza dough recipe made home-made pizza go from a thing we made maybe one a year to a weekly staple.Report
This is the second (and third) random person I’ve seen mention Smitten Kitchen today. I thought I was the only one. Huzzah!Report
Andrew Bacevich is excellent on military and security matters. He is also a conservative but is not in line with Republicans.Report
Radley Balko, who I just realized today is now at WaPo?Report
David Roberts, at Grist, is really quite smart on environmental topics, with a particular focus on climate change. He’s going to return from a long hiatus in September, and I highly recommend his stuff.Report
First, a note about approach. Anyone who writes enough will say something stupid and regrettable. So no one will be completely an anti-troll. At the very least, that’s my starting assumption.
Second, one nominee is Megan McCardle. She sometimes strays, but in my view is consistently thoughtful, at least considering the posts I’ve read, and I don’t read her regularly. (Also, I probably disagree with her about 50% +1 of the time, if not more. But I find her quite thoughtful.)Report
Well, that’s one way to get the pagehit numbers up.
(I personally don’t think she deserves a lot of the guff that gets lobbed her way, and she has a dry sense of humor that I quite like, at least when I used to read her semi-regularly. But she is very, very controversial around here, in my experience).Report
” But she is very, very controversial around here, in my experience”
True.Report
Thoughtful, thoughtful.
That word, I do not think it means what you think it means.Report
Yeah, exactly. I guess I’m not understanding the argument suggesting that because she’s right (or at least can be agreed with) 50% of the time, she not only continues to be worth reading but doesn’t deserve ridicule. How many times does a Professional Pundit have to be wrong before you write them off as unserious?Report
Whenever I hear people say McArdle is wrong, it seems to turn out to mean “I disagree with her views.” So I think you’re violating the rule that Tod laid down.Report
Well, you and I have gone rounds about this already, so there’s little point doing it again. I’ll just say that she’s cemented in the “unserious” category for me. And I used to read her blog and engage the commentariat (including her, on a few occasions) regularly.Report
I think you’re wrong. I won’t argue it pointlessly.Report
@stillwater
To be clear, I’m quite on board with others agreeing with her more than 50% of the time. I just don’t. Which is kind of what Tod asked us to do, not simply choose people because we agree with them.
Also, and going to the first point in my comment, I’ll repeat that if anyone writes enough, they’ll end up saying something stupid. And if someone says something stupid, then they do deserve ridicule, at least at those times. She has in the past said some stupid things, so in those cases she deserves ridicule. I think there’s a point about glass houses or something in there, but I better not rely too much on it, because then my own house will have some shattered windows.Report
Lawyers Guns and Money, on the This Day in Labor History.
Paul Krugman on economics.
The Reality-Based Community (Mark AR Kleiman et al) on Drugs
The Incidental Economist on health care
Ta-Nehisi Coates on race
Open Mind (Tamino) on climate change statistics
And Then There’s Physics on climate change analysis and communicationReport
Both TNC and Fallows at the Atlantic are first-rate.
Joe Posnanski is so good that he makes me forget how much I disrespect sportswriters.Report
If you’re going to go with Krugman on economics, it’d be good to get some balance by also pointing to, say, Scott Sumner.Report
Ha! I was this close to mentioning him below. The Money Illusion is a regular read.Report
I’d also mention John Cochrane, although I’m a bit worried that I’ll cause some liberal heads to explode.
Basically, I’d just say reference an actual macro-economist about macroeconomics rather than a trade theorist who plays a macroeconomist in the popular press. 😉Report
@francis
As much as I really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really dislike Mr. Loomis, when I did read LGM, I did find his “This Day in Labor History” posts and his book reviews to be very well done. I’ve never read his monograph or anything non-LGM related he’s written, but based on those posts, he’s probably quite a competent historian. Too bad he’s such an uncivil —–.Report
To clarify…I’ve never met Mr. Loomis in person, and I am referring only to his behavior at LGM. Also, I haven’t read that blog for quite a while, so maybe he’s toned it down a bit.Report
The Incidental Economist is a really good heath care blog. Substantial pro-PPACA and liberal bias, but they’re upfront about it. All of the authors (or at least the main ones) have backgrounds relevant to the field.
I really want to recommend Stephen J Smith who writes a lot about urban development policy, but unfortunately he doesn’t really have a single blog I can cite or a long-term home. But if you see his name, or MarketUrbanism, read on.Report
Weigel for the nuts and bolts – and nuance & history – of what the GOP & tea party political machines are doing on any given day.
Calculated Risk for economic reports particularly on housing and employmentReport
The Duck of Minerva for anything to do with IR theory and how Game of Thrones fits into current matters of academic theory on IR. http://www.whiteoliphaunt.com/duckofminerva/Report
As a matter of my two cents, I’d suggest just doing the promotion thing as a regular installment and just keeping with fisking bad posts and articles as needed, which is basically our practice as is. A regular feature on how others suck I think kind of raises the question of whether we really are as great as we then are pretty much claiming to be. And maybe we are? Maybe we’re not, though. Plus, the truly bad stuff is pretty much self-fisking, while the just normally bad stuff IMO generally at least raises a question using an argument that’s really easy to use against the position of the arguer to illustrate why the point of the piece is wrong in an important way. That’s not entirely without value, so IMO doesn’t really deserve mockery or scorn, just focussed rebuttal. That process, IMO, is what makes this place great, niot then going to to press the point of why those shortcomings make whatever writer it is, like, such a total zero. Where the scorn is warranted, my fear is that it will come off as piling on or shooting fish in a fishbowl, and where not that it’ll come off as facile and self-flattering.
In terms of suggestions for promotion, since legal debates seem to be both current (it’s the end of June) and not yet addressed in the thread, I’ll suggest my three favorite legal blogs: Dorf on Law, Balkinization, Volokh Conspiracy.
These suggestions, though, like ones like Krugman or Sumner, do I think raise a bit of an issue in terms of whom we’re really looking to promote. These are all legal academics writing about areas of expertise for them. In some senses, this is the democratization of journalism in terms of access to the press (which was much more limited even for professors before the internet), not necessarily in terms of the amplification of non-elite voices. I’d have to think about whom I’d recommend for that latter category. OT-alum Freddie DeBoer comes to mind, though I think he’s slowly becoming somewhat elite himself as he progresses through academia. Conor Friedersdorf, Josh Barro, and Amanda Marcotte are all important voices IMO as well, though they’re all at established publications.Report
…I would add that, IMO, Vikram provides the model for how to approach the task I think we should focus on when it comes to addressing with wit and incision arguments he takes to be misguided or unsupported, and functionally already has a series doing just that up and running. (Not that I always agree with which arguments he thinks those are… ;)) Maybe we could give it a name and invite our writers to contribute installments whenever the need arises?Report
I want to second everything @michael-drew says here.Report
Done.Report
TNC, who I think was mentioned.
I’m also a big fan of Keith Law. He does baseball scouting work for ESPN, but also keeps a personal blog where he discusses literature, board games, food, and other nerdy pursuits. Find him at meadowparty.com/blog.
The folks at Racialicious do great, if often obscure, work.
My former college roommate Rich Lawson writes for Vanity Fair and both the Doc and I seem to enjoy him. He does mostly film/TV reviews and other pop culturey stuff.Report
…And *I* want to add – and stress – how much I appreciate how much thought, effort, and creativity (not to mention blood, sweat, and tears) Tod puts into trying to maintain and grow the greatness of this place, with an eye to the familiar dictum that if you’re not improving you’re declining. (Is that actually a familiar dictum? I’m going to say probably not.)
I hope my comment is taken as much as an endorsement of the idea of endorsement (which is, after all, the major thrust of this bleg!) as it is a rejection of the idea of a Rogue’s Gallery. I like the idea of trying to work on identifying people in the information ecosystem who are doing it well. Though, to be fair, that’s more or less the model, or about 75% of his model, on which Andrew Sullivan has made his name since shifting to blogging as a primary medium.
I like the idea of having more Sullivan-like links to good pieces, but with a bit more commentary than he usually provides, and with more of an eye to stuff that resonates with one or more of our (or an individual writer’s) ongoing points of interest. For that matter, as I said, I also like the idea of continuing to be fair but substantively ruthless with bad arguments, which is basically our core competency. But a renewed focus on endorsements I think would be really, well, positive for us.Report
Whoops, that was meant to be a response to Will’s response to me above. But in particular I want @tod-kelly to not end up not reading this comment, so maybe that’s okay.Report
Other suggestions:
Noah Berlatsky at the Atlantic…..although he doesn’t really do a lot of politics.
Noah Millman and Daniel Larison at the American Conservative.Report
Unsurprisingly I often disagree with Bertlasky.
I do have a one degree of separation with him because of a writer friend from undergrad who knows a lot of other internet writers.Report
I only read him occasionally, because pop culture commentary isn’t really my thing. It’s not so much that I disagree with him as that I’m often not interested in what he’s talking about. But I do appreciate his interrogation of gender norms and his willingness to question a lot of male privilege. (And I suspect you don’t necessarily disagree with that part of what he writes.) Every once and a while, he comes up with something really insightful. I don’t have the link now, but several months ago he wrote a really good (in my opinion) piece about how we look at bullying. And that earned my respect.Report
Conor Friedersdorf at The Atlantic does good work on civil liberties, in my opinion; he doesn’t do on-the-ground reporting, but he does describe, analyze, and deconstruct government policies in significant detail.
TNC is good, but now he seems to be focusing on in-depth examination of issues which strongly interest him (previously, his readings on communism in the Soviet bloc; currently, the case for reparations) rather than on current-day events, or on a broad set of political issues.Report