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You are here: Home / Politics / Media / That was the sin that did Jezebel in

That was the sin that did Jezebel in

by | 65 Comments

This post is in: 

It’s longer than the Constitution, and Conor Friedersdorf is already arguing with Matt Yglesias about Megan McArdle’s take on it, but, nevertheless, this report from the belly of the media beast (Philadelphia Daily News, Wall Street Journal, Jezebel) is a must read:

So I wrote what I know, or rather what I’ve learned, which could be summed up this way: when the Internet forced journalism to compete economically after years of monopoly, journalism panicked and adopted some of the worst examples of the nothing-based economy, in which success depends on the continued infantilization of both supply and demand. At the same time, journalism clung to its myths of objectivity and detachment, using them to dismiss the emerging blogger threat as something unserious and fundamentally parasitic, even as it produced a steady stream of obsessive but sneering trend stories on the blogosphere.

It’s not an anti-media screed, it treats not only the arrogance of established media and silliness of some new media, but also the genuine bad-assedness of being a real reporter.

Rolling Stone should hire Maureen Tkacik, she’d be a great complement to Matt Taibbi.

Reader Interactions

65Comments

  1. 1.

    Zifnab

    It’s longer than the Constitution…

    You know, given how many Tea Baggers have actually read the Constitution, maybe the problem isn’t with other laws being longer than our founding document, but that the Constitution itself was just too long.

    Perhaps if we could fit the Constitution on a bumper sticker…

  4. 4.

    comrade scott's agenda of rage

    The one problem with the piece is that it refers to Ana Marie Cox as a “journalist”. Even by craptacular, contemporary Villager journalism standards, calling her one is an insult to the profession.

  5. 5.

    Adrienne

    DougJ:

    You are on a roll w/ your hip hop references in post titles — First Biggie, now Lauryn Hill? What has gotten into you? Are you secretly dating a black chick? Not that there’s anything wrong w/ that…

    (said as a black girl who has definitely dated a few white boys :-)

  7. 7.

    williamc

    @Zifnab:

    I think that bumper sticker would say. “I, the people of the United States, is all that matters”

    or “Honk if you love Jesus, Whitey, and Money”

  8. 8.

    Ailuridae

    Rolling Stone should hire Maureen Tkacik, she’d be a great complement to Matt Taibbi

    At least one of those jobs should go to a WASP. Think of the country club

  11. 11.

    Syndicalist

    Tkacik does some good stuff, but good Lord is she prolix. She makes Thomas Wolfe look like Basho (and that’s Wolfe before Maxwell Perkins got a hold of him).

    She wrote a review of Malcolm Gladwell a couple of years ago.
    I couldn’t put it down, but I’m STILL reading it.

  13. 13.

    someguy

    At the same time, journalism clung to its myths of objectivity and detachment, using them to dismiss the emerging blogger threat as something unserious and fundamentally parasitic, even as it produced a steady stream of obsessive but sneering trend stories on the blogosphere.

    Thing is, they’re dead nuts on when it comes to anybody on the right and in fact they take people like DoutFat and Erick Erickson wayyy more seriously than they should; a little more sneering would be in order.

  14. 14.

    Corner Stone

    @Adrienne:

    Are you secretly dating a black chick? Not that there’s anything wrong w/ that…

    DougJ (if he exists at all) is an old black male. Obviously.

  18. 18.

    Cat Lady

    It’s a pretty depressing state of affairs when journalism in ths country can only be practiced on Comedy Central and in a music magazine. The best stories are being spiked due to advertisers and editors’ agendas, and the cable news shows are all a joke, but not funny. I didn’t know about Abercrombie & Fitch either. Jeebus, that is some weapons grade suxx0r there. Who knew that the invisible hand of the free market was so busy being used to fap away.

  19. 19.

    Corner Stone

    @El Cid: I have two questions:
    1. How can one quartet be bigger than another quartet?
    2. How the hell do you even know this existed?

    That was some rockin’ bizness.

  20. 20.

    El Cid

    @Cat Lady: What’s even more depressing is that every single day I read the foreign press and am bowled over by how good a work they’re doing.

    For example, an entire structure of (U.S.-facilitated) state spying in Colombia, including the funneling of electronic surveillance on opposition politicians, journalists, human rights groups and even Supreme Court justices to narco-paramilitary death squad assassins (the President of the Colombian Supreme Court justice had to publicly appeal to international authorities to please let him not be killed given the death threats against him) has entirely been exposed and is now being prosecuted because of the work of two newspapers and even more so by a weekly magazine.

    These aren’t gigantic, super-wealthy publications we’re talking about here, and journalists there face actual assassination. Nevertheless, they do their jobs.

    And here establishmentarian journalists complain that the administration doesn’t properly invite them to dinner parties.

  22. 22.

    El Cid

    @Corner Stone: The quartet members were all over 20 feet tall. It was quite impressive.

    No, I meant ‘biggest’ in the sense of ‘most famous and best selling’, like ‘you’ll see me, I’m gonna be a big star someday,’ which probably implies popularity and fame rather than weighing more than a truck.

    I heard this on a KPFA (Pacifica radio station in Berkeley) once on one of their streams, it was a historical African American music show (years back, I don’t remember), and it would have remained obscure and in memory shared by no one I had ever known until the magic of the Intertubes and the YouTron.

  23. 23.

    gwangung

    I didn’t know about Abercrombie & Fitch either.

    Heh. If you were an ethnic minority, you knew all about this. At first, I thought this was ANOTHER A&F lawsuit, which wouldn’t have surprised me….

  24. 24.

    Felanius Kootea (formerly Salt and freshly ground black people)

    Ooh I miss the old Lauryn Hill. Great title.

  26. 26.

    Corner Stone

    @Felanius Kootea (formerly Salt and freshly ground black people):

    Ooh I miss the old Lauryn Hill.

    Co-sign. Man I miss some of her work. You’re probably going deeper than this but:
    “No one loves you more than me and no one ever will”

    ETA – “Where were you when I needed you,
    when I needed you, when I needed you
    Where were you when I needed you, when I needed you, when I needed you”

  27. 27.

    El Cid

    This was kind of a surprise. In the bill agreed to by House and Senate leaders, not only will unemployment benefits be extended, tax cuts continued, and Medicare payment cuts be delayed, but some taxes will be raised on Wall Streeters:

    The biggest revenue raiser would be the tax increase on investment managers. Investment managers typically get a fee to manage funds or assets. They also get a share of the profits earned for investors above a certain level.
    __
    Under current law, the profit-sharing fees, called carried interest, are taxed as capital gains, with a top rate of 15 percent. The bill would tax the fees as regular income, with a top tax rate of 35 percent, scheduled to rise to 39.6 percent in 2011.
    __
    Estimates were incomplete Thursday, but the tax was expected to raise about $20 billion over the next decade. The bill would also raise taxes on multinational companies by $14.5 billion.

    I think it’s kind of neat that some people remember the *revenue* side of that whole spending-deficit-debt issue.

  31. 31.

    Derek

    @Cat Lady:

    It’s a pretty depressing state of affairs when journalism in ths country can only be practiced on Comedy Central and in a music magazine.

    I agree.

    Can’t believe you’d never heard about the Abercrombie & Fitch story, though.

    Speaking of the state of journalism, anyone seen that movie State of Play? My girlfriend and I caught it on Cinemax a couple weeks ago, and it was a good movie, except for two things that made the whole thing ring false by the end of the movie (spoilers):

    1. Real journalism was being conducted.
    2. In the end, the evil corporation turned out not to be the ultimate bad guy of the film.

    Preposterous! Good flick, though.

  32. 32.

    Lurking Canadian

    Wait. The tax on capital gains in the US is 15%? F-I-F-T-E-E-N? I knew it was lower than income taxes, but that’s…holy shit, that’s a rich man raising his middle finger to the world is what that is.

  34. 34.

    maus

    journalism panicked and adopted some of the worst examples of the nothing-based economy

    Obviously you know nothing of all the very important twitter scoops going on, guh.

  35. 35.

    Derek

    @Lurking Canadian:

    Yeah, it’s a nice slap in the face when every rich investor fuck is paying less taxes (proportionally) than my 22% (I make $38,000 a year). So fucked.

  36. 36.

    burnspbesq

    If by “complement,” you mean “someone who would expose Taibbi’s inadequacies as a researcher and a writer to the cold, clear light of day on a regular basis,” then I agree with you that Tkacic would be a great complement to Taibbi.

  38. 38.

    LT

    Off topic….

    Have you seen the Ben Nelson “holograms” thing? Too funny. He was being asked about caps on ATM fees:

    “I’ve never used an ATM, so I don’t know what the fees are,” Nelson said, adding that he gets his cash from bank tellers, just not automatic ones. “It’s true, I don’t know how to use one.” “But I could learn how to do it just like I’ve…I swipe to get my own gas, buy groceries. I know about the holograms.”
    ––
    By “holograms,” Nelson clarified that he meant … bar codes.

    I think that’s so funny it deserves entry into the Balloon Juice Lexicon, although I know something entered there should probably actually be in use. I wrote up a definition for it anyway:

    “I Know About the Holograms” – A derisive phrase used to mock people bizarrely out of touch with what 99.99% of us would call “the real world,” including the man who actually said it, Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb). In a discussion about ATM fees, Nelson had just disclosed that he wasn’t familiar with them—because he had never used an ATM before. As a way of defending himself for being so out of touch, Nelson said, “I know about the holograms.” He meant “bar codes,” which made his being out of touch even farther—and more hilariously—out of touch.

  39. 39.

    Corner Stone

    It sucks Taibbi uses foul language, hyperbole and hurts some peeps delicate constitutions.

  40. 40.

    Paul in KY

    @burnspbesq: Mr. Tiabbi may have some inadequacies as a researcher, but his writing style is fine, IMO. I wish I could paint word pictures as colorful as he does.

    Is ‘Burnspbesq’ one of the pet trolls on this site?

  42. 42.

    burnspbesq

    Having to like the fact that our libel laws allow Taibbi to do what he does is the downside of being a First Amendment near-absolutist.

  45. 45.

    Eric S.

    @LT: My father, 67 years old, refuses to use ATMs. He doesn’t trust them to count his money correctly. He thinks the bank teller will do better and he can double check the teller while standing there.

    Keep in mind my father also bought his first cell phone 3 years ago and has never owned a computer.

  46. 46.

    Corner Stone

    @Paul in KY:

    Is ‘Burnspbesq’ one of the pet trolls on this site?

    I wouldn’t say “pet” necessarily, but I would make the successful case that he is pro-corporatist. As in, they can do no wrong and should not be criticized.

  48. 48.

    LT

    @Eric S.:

    @LT: My father, 67 years old, refuses to use ATMs. He doesn’t trust them to count his money correctly. He thinks the bank teller will do better and he can double check the teller while standing there. Keep in mind my father also bought his first cell phone 3 years ago and has never owned a computer.

    Like I said at my place, it doesn’t bother me at all that someone might not have used an ATM before. I think it’s a bit odd that a senator hasn’t though – he even says he has a credit card. Has he never been on the road and needed cash? But whatever.

  49. 49.

    slag

    Hard to judge that article. It was a good read. But also jives a little too closely with the standard critique of the Masters of the Universe to make it an illuminating read. Still, worth the time.

  52. 52.

    fantabulizer

    @LT: Adding to the lexicon was the first thing I thought of too! Good god, that’s a dumb quote. The arrogance and sheer idiocy of it. “I know about the holograms.” Just sort of liquefies my mind thinking about it. What hope do we have if these are the people making our laws?

  54. 54.

    Paul in KY

    @gwangung: I love reading his pieces. Most Tiabbi-quibblers (and I’m not saying you’re one) seem to think his writing is too shrill & uncouth. I like some good ole hyperbole, especially when turned on the ‘Investment Class’.

    I agree he’s no Wolcott when it comes to stringing together beautiful sentences.

  56. 56.

    Turbulence

    The hologram thing doesn’t really bother me. I suspect that most people have no clue about the difference between a mag stripe, hologram, CVV code, and a bar code because most people don’t know how most things work. Now, the fact that he has no idea that banks charge obscene amounts of money for a necessary service that really should be free, that’s a different story.

  59. 59.

    Derek

    The piece really wasn’t that long. Frankly, I’d have preferred something that would waste the entire rest of the workday. It was entertaining as hell, and I would have read more of it.

    ETA: But then, my idea of fun is to read a 42,000 word Neal Stephenson article about the laying of intercontinental, undersea broadband cable.

  61. 61.

    Corner Stone

    @DougJ:

    It may help if you have a drink first

    It “may help”? May help??
    Have I taught you nothing DougJ?

  62. 62.

    Adrienne

    @DougJ: It’s a great song. The lyrics are deep, but it has a catchy enough beat that it had people guilty of the very things she was talking about (myself included when it comes to hair/nails) singing and bopping along to it on the radio. She was truth telling and it was hit. The only other recent hip hop song that comes close to that in that regard is “Jesus Walks” by Kanye.

  63. 63.

    Mmonides

    “Infantilization of supply and demand”? What the zargon?

    Yeah, I guess this article would go well with a taibbi screed.

  64. 64.

    burnspbesq

    @Corner Stone:

    Corporatist? You wound me, sir.

    I would have thought I at least qualified for “corporatist whore.” in fact, given my hourly billing rate, I believe I make it all the way to “corporatist uber-whore.”

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