On the one hand, people like Assange, Greenwald and Snowden need newspapers or similar media outlets. Without some such outlet, they are voices in the wilderness. On the other hand, exactly because newspapers play a crucial political role in validating knowledge, they have complicated relationships with governments and politicians. This leads them to actions which people like Assange and Greenwald are likely to see as compromises with power.
And this is why the new venture is so interesting. It will likely shape up as a serious journalistic enterprise. Capital of USD $250 million can hire some very good people. The venture has the potential to become the kind of news source that can turn information into knowledge. Yet it doesn’t sound as if it’ll be bound by the kinds of political relationships that most newspapers are embedded in...Today it was announced:
"...Dan Froomkin and Liliana Segura are joining a crew that consists of Greenwald, Jeremy Scahill and Laura Poitras. Froomkin is a veteran of The Post and, more recently, the Huffington Post. At The Post, Froomkin penned his daily White House Watch blog, which rounded up and commented upon the goings-on of the George W. Bush White House...
Segura has served as “associate editor of The Nation, and her writing has also been featured in AlterNet, ColorLines, and other publications,” notes Greenwald.
As Greenwald has maintained, this particular venture will feel different from mainstream media outlets, and his blog post on new hires suggests at least one way in which this is already true. The post notes that Segura is “on the board of the Campaign to End the Death Penalty and the Applied Research Center, a U.S. racial justice think tank.” Such a sentence would never appear in the hiring memo of a mainstream U.S. media outlet, in part because it would likely force Segura to resign from any such organizations prior to becoming an employee..."
15 comments:
As Greenwald has maintained, this particular venture will feel different from mainstream media outlets...
It will be even further to the left.
I'd be all for this venture if it would be truly independent, no-holds-barred reportage. But it'll be just another political advocacy organ for the left.
Wasn't Greenwald once considered a sock puppeteer extraordinaire? Maybe they'll fund leftwing sock puppets to flood social media with lefty ideas and talking points.
How come the idealistic cross dressers in China or Iran or Russia don't leak embarrassing info on their respective countries? Are we the only country in the world with idealistic cross dressers?
Palladian said...
It will be even further to the left.
Yep, and more openly cheerleading. Alternet, The Nation, and Greenwald but the Post doesn't make a single comment on the ideological nature of the venture.
If this venture would like to convince anyone that that it's going to be something other than a digital version of Radio Pacifica, doncha think it might want to start with hiring a broad spectrum of journalists, as opposed to just lefties?
In order to short-circuit the traditional alliance between governments and news outlets...
Oh fucking please! Because in the history of the Left, we all know how far left journalists never, ever, kissed ass for left-wing regimes. I guess their saving grace will be that there are so few far left regimes left to gainfully perform unnatural acts upon.
And by the way, what is it with the latest wave of Silicon Valley billionaires that there all such lefty whack jobs? I guess they want to make sure nobody ever makes a billion after they've got theirs.
I'm just grateful that Eric Schmidt of Google is out there spending his billions by buying up all the top-flight pussy he can find. At least, that's a hobby I can have some sympathy with...
Palladian - exactly.
I wish Greenwald was everything he imagined himself to be.
This leads them to actions which people like Assange and Greenwald are likely to see as compromises with power.
Hows does one have a relationship to political power where one is able to affect it, but it is not able to affect you, i.e. one never has to "compromise".
This strikes me as the epitome of the "my delicate little conscience" branch of modern Leftism, a branch that would have both Marx & Foucault howling in derisive laughter. Radical political change is not a business for those who fear dirty hands.
I lurv eBay. It's the only place I can find pants in 30x34 or even 31x34.
Say, for example you want red pants. And if not red then bright yellow will do. So you go to Amazon and look at their favorite pants place, Dockers and see the array of 32 colors available, thousands of pants in various sizes and colors, especially for people with the numbers of a box, 30x30, 31x31, 32x32, and so on, and shorter too 34x30 that sort of thing, and lots of pants for short fat people. 36x30 and 40x30, plenty of pants for those guys. All their color choices are brightly lit up.
And then select 30x34 and everything disappears to faded not available except 1. 32 color choices for people, but I have one. And you go, well, maybe I can do 31x34 and wear a t-shirt +regular shirt +sweater and tuck it all in, try 31x34, boom they all disappear to only 1 choice. Because they hate me personally, and want to see me dressed in a narrow range of colors.
And I'm not having it.
Then go to eBay and type [red pants 30x34] or green or yellow boom a whole list of red or green or yellow pants in that size. New ones too.
I just now bought two pair from there.
And you know what that means.
It means two old pair in the closet have got to go!
From the sound of it, he should be able to snap up Sully in short order :)
(Good one William.)
30x34?
Jesus Chip, eat a sandwich.
I like what Dorothy Rabinowitz calls Greenwald -- "that model of brooding self-righteousness"
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