How the News Industry Lost Its Swagger and Found Its Soy

by Jeff Childers

Politico ran a deeply introspective, long-form, magazine-style story yesterday headlined, “The Collapse of the News Industry Is Taking Its Soul Down With It.” It got so close to the truth. But fortunately it avoided an unhappy accident with accuracy and vomited up a gigantic, self-pitying missive instead.

Weirdly framing the news industry’s controlled demolition as a loss of “swagger,” whatever that is, the article correctly observed the exodus of good reporters from corporate media to Substack. But instead of correctly identifying the real reason for the various departures — mostly they were facing cancellation for refusing to constantly agree with false government narratives — Politico instead diagnosed the problem as veteran reporters, used to wielding their toxic masculinity whenever they wanted, now being unable to “swagger” around soy-drenched, emasculated corporate newsrooms.

I am not making that up.

Here’s the closest the article got to explaining what in the devil it was talking about:

The psychological approach journalists bring to their jobs has shifted. At one time, big city newspaper editors typified by the Washington Post’s Ben Bradlee strode their properties like colossuses, barking orders and winning deference from all corners. Today’s newspaper editor comes clothed in the drab and accommodating aura of a bureaucrat, often indistinguishable from the publishers for whom they work. These top editors, who once ruled their staffs with tyrannical confidence, now flinch and cringe at the prospect of newsroom uprisings like the ones we’ve seen at NBC News, the New York Times, CNN and elsewhere. You could call these uprisings markers of swagger, but you’d be wrong. True swagger is found in works of journalism, not protests over hirings or the publication of a controversial piece.

The only direct, non-psychological problem cited in the article was an alleged increasing fear of civil lawsuits filed by the targets of media’s hard-hitting investigative journalism. But — fake news alert — the story only cited a single problematic case: Hulk Hogan’s successful defamation case against tabloid Gawker for running a private sex tape. How Hogan’s case suppressed the rest of corporate media remains anybody’s guess; the article didn’t clearly say. Nor did it quote any of the veteran reporters, now self-employed, as themselves claiming fear of lawsuits was the reason they fled their newsrooms for more lucrative Substack gigs.

The article often exhibited tiny flashes of inspiration. In one brief nod to what is really going on, Politico quietly observed that “the public appears to hate them too, according to polls that claim they’re not trustworthy.” But, how did that loss of trust happen? Politico doesn’t say, except to wail about the trend, and to blame that all-powerful bogeyman, Trump:

Thanks, in part, to a fall in status, as well as ever-irrational attacks from politicians like Donald Trump, today’s journalists routinely experience ridicule and harassment at public events like rallies and demonstrations. They’re not precisely pariahs in the new environment, but they’re no longer considered heroes in many places. For journalists, the fall has been spectacular and seems never-ending.

Some people think corporate media journalists deserve to experience ridicule. Some people who are writing this commentary and ridiculing Politico right now, as one example.

Other times the political magazine showed an astonishing lack of self awareness. According to Politico, other unintentionally hilarious supposed causes of media decline included its fear of offending people:

“Millennials and Gen Z have been bred like human veal by their Boomer and Gen X parents who made sure their kids were constantly being surveilled and optimized for success in SATs, sports and entry into the Establishment pipeline,” Reason magazine’s Nick Gillespie says. “Can we be surprised that such a system has produced generations of journalists who endlessly describe anything they disagree with as misinformation and want to control and regulate everything like the room temperature in an after-school enrichment program?”

This attitude has permeated the press, as editors recoil from publishing anything that might cause anyone offense.

Fear of causing anyone offense? How about, see, e.g., the Times’ Kennedy brain-worm headline, at the top of today’s post. Please.

Nor would Politico have had to expend any effort to check in on the democrat journalists who ran away from their corporate media gigs and are now working on Substack and X. For instance, award-winning journalist Michael Shellenberger is currently under investigation and facing potential criminal charges for posting true emails from Brazil’s Supreme Court that he got from a whistleblower. As recently as yesterday, Shellenberger posted this on Twitter/X:

 
That’s one. Or Politico could have asked the subject of the very first example that started the whole trend, New York Times’ liberal, Pulitzer-prize winning reporter and author Alex Berenson, who escaped to Substack after being blacklisted for questioning the covid narrative. Politico might also have asked Seymour Hersh for a comment. But no.

Of course, I’m not a media expert. I’m only a lawyer. Maybe there’s a good reason for why not ask the very people you are using as examples. After all, who cares what they think?

Maybe — and I’m just spitballing here — maybe these top journalists have not so much fled their corporate media jobs for “more lucrative” independent work. Maybe the truth is closer to their having been pushed out of their corporate media jobs for doing real journalism. Maybe the news industry is collapsing, taking its soul down with it, because of its slavish devotion to its deep state narrative masters.

Lie down with spooks, get up with soulless collapse.

Politico, you are so close. Keep working on it. You’ll get there.

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