1. You know I've been arguing that we shouldn't take glee in the demise of The Weekly Standard but this complacent and blinkered David Brooks column is making me reconsider.https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/15/opinion/weekly-standard-closing-conservatism.html …
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12. While we're in a difficult media market, the fact is people do manage to put out smart good magazines & political journalism by mixing and matching different funding strategies (with things like digital subscriptions taking up slack of loss advertising).
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13. So rather than the large & gloomy Weberian problem of "corporate bureaucrats" what felled the Weekly Standard was a more narrow problem: a brittle business model depending on caprice of people who don't value their product (GOP billionaires).
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14. I can't believe I'm typing this but Baseball Crank (
@baseballcrank) makes a good point here that GOP billionaires seem narrowly utilitarian in wanting short term obvious benefits for their $$. (see discussion below)https://twitter.com/baseballcrank/status/1074145593616990208 …Show this thread -
15. I actually think there's a good argument that GOP big money guys are being myopic & stupid here. Something like The Weekly Standard is a good investment as a Plan B for if Trump crashes and burns.
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16. I mean it's not too difficult to imagine whole Trump thing collapsing (through scandals & Trump's own personality). If that happens, it would be useful for GOP to have a group of people who can credibly say they opposed this all along.
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17. In general, Brooks column would've been better if it acknowledged the problem was TWS's business model & not some grand trend of "corporate bureaucrats."
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18. On the right, I think American Conservative, Modern Age &
@ubookman are all substantive publications; on the left there's@thebafflermag. N+1,@jacobinmag,@curaffairs & many more. So no need to mourn just yet.Show this thread -
19. I was wondering why Brooks' column rubbed me the wrong way. I finally figured it out. Brooks wants GOP plutocrats to hand him & his buddies lots of dough to write whatever they want, no questions asked. That seems a bit entitled.
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