Joel Mathis

Matt Yglesias is leaving Vox to start his own Substack blog. There is part of me that really likes this -- my preference would be to get off social media and return to the blog glory days of the late aughts. I've tried doing it a couple of times, but I always fail to stick with it -- partly because people are on social media instead of blogs, and it gets to feeling very lonely around here. I'll subscribe to Yglesias' free tier. But I won't spend money on him, or Andrew Sullivan, or Matt Taibbi or any of the other, um, independent thinkers who have abandoned big publications in the last year or so to strike out on their own for Substack and its subscription model. My subscription dollars are finite. So I have to make them work efficiently. Which means they'll go to publications where I can get news and multiplicity of voices. I simply can't afford to support every writer I want to read who decides to strike out on their own. I can't imagine I am the only pe

Seems like a better way to put this would be: Large majorities of U.S. adults -- in both parties -- believe that social media is a distraction. Emphasizing that one party believes it slightly more than the other, when lots of people in both parties believe it, does more to emphasize our differences than our commonalities.

In Tablet , Zach Goldberg documents that major media outlets are using terms "racist" more often. Some initial thoughts about his article. He writes: One possible way of explaining these statistics, is that America experienced an explosion of racism over the past decade and white liberals are uniquely reflective of that change. But another possibility, perhaps more likely, is that ascendant progressive notions about race reflected in a steady drumbeat of reporting and editorializing on the subject from leading national media outlets, encouraged white liberals to label a larger number of behaviors and people as racist. In other words, while the world may have stayed more or less the same, elite liberal media and its readership—especially its white liberal readership—underwent a profound change. Let me offer a third possibility: That there is probably not that much more racism in America than there was 10 years ago, but that racists -- who empowered President Trump and were al

By now, you've probably seen this video:     Deadspin explains: Earlier this month, CNN’s Brian Stelter broke the news that Sinclair Broadcast Group, owner or operator of nearly 200 television stations in the U.S., would be forcing its news anchors to record a promo about “the troubling trend of irresponsible, one sided news stories plaguing our country.” The script, which parrots Donald Trump’s oft-declarations of developments negative to his presidency as “fake news,” brought upheaval to newsrooms already dismayed with Sinclair’s consistent interference to bring right-wing propaganda to local television broadcasts. The problem, though, isn't Sinclair-owned stations. The problem is this: TV news, for the most part, isn't news. I spent part of my career in a combine TV-print newsroom, so I've produced my share of packages and short readers. The station I worked for was an exception to this rule — which,  I suspect, is part of why that station no longer has a

I understand that late night talk shows are more overtly political — liberal, really — than they were two or three years ago. Still, I find it kind of odd that there seems to be a real push for both "balance" and comprehensiveness of coverage, mostly from the right. This is becoming a regular thing: Discussions of balance and story choice make sense where the news media — especially media that presents itself as attempting objectivity —are concerned. But these are comedy shows, and most comedy has a point of view. Do they owe the audience (or a portion of the audience) to address certain topics? This isn't a defense of Harvey Weinstein. I just think this "make jokes about Harvey" push from the right is based on expectations that folks on the right don't get to have. Fair and balanced is for news — maybe — but it's a silly, unrealistic expectation for a comedy routine.

Ari Fleischer makes the case that Trump is justified in treating the White House press corps like an unruly child: The press hasn’t been kind to Donald Trump—and that isn’t its job. That job is to cover the news in a fair manner. But as the Columbia Journalism Review reported in October, campaign-finance disclosures show that those who work in journalism gave $396,000 to the presidential campaigns of Hillary Clinton and Mr. Trump, with more than 96% going to Mrs. Clinton. I hated the CJR report when it came out and still do. First, $396,000 is barely a drop in the campaign finance bucket. On its own, it sounds like a big number. Relative to the actual number of journalists, it's microscopic. So CJR's headline on the original piece — "Journalists shower Hillary Clinton with campaign cash" — is the kind of clickbaity sensationalism CJR might well criticize in other circumstances. But let's take a closer look at the report itself. NEW YORKER TELEVISION CRIT

A friend posts a protest against CNN, which she thinks has done a lousy job of covering the North Dakota oil pipeline protests . In response,  I suggested that she's part of the solution — and so are you, if you have a Facebook or Twitter or Snapchat account. (This is slightly edited.) One last thing to consider that I don't think most people have: You're part of the media ecosystem now. Scratch that: You're part of the media distribution system now.  Which means: You don't think people are hearing enough about the pipeline protests in North Dakota? Well, you've heard about it. And you have a Facebook page! Post an article about the protests from a source you consider reliable — and there are plenty of reliable sources that have reported on it — and post your link, perhaps a few links, and add your own perspective. If your friends agree to its importance, they can and will amplify it further.  We increasingly see examples where social media amplification

The Media Research Center seems to think the media is proving its liberal bias by covering the Herman Cain scandal so closely, whereas it strained to ignore the Clinton sex scandals of the 1990s. Which is weird, because my memory of the late 1990s is that political coverage was dominated, for a time, by news of Clinton's sex scandals. There was even an impeachment or something. Nonetheless, MRC concludes: When one contrasts the sexual harassment scandals of Democrat Bill Clinton, which included on the record accusers, with the hazy allegations against Republican Herman Cain, it becomes clear that the networks have enthusiasm for one and ignored the other. That's interesting framing, because the "hazy allegations" against Cain are actually confirmed cases that were settled with monetary payouts a decade ago . That makes them somewhat more tangible than the MRC suggests, it seems to me.

At right is today's front page of the Philadelphia Inquirer. It's a demonstration of why -- much as I'd like to support local journalism -- I can't bring myself to subscribe to this paper in print. The big main story ? The one that occupies the two-thirds of the space above the "fold" and is thus the main selling point to buy the paper off the rack? It's a two-day-old story. And it was written by the Los Angeles Times. The first issue is one that print newspapers will always deal with. They simply can't hit the news with the same speed as the web. (The story broke late enough Sunday that the Inky, apparently, couldn't or didn't get it on Monday's front page.) And the Inky's editors, in all fairness, went with a story that analyzes the fallout from the WikiLeaks document dump instead of reporting it as "new" news. The second issue, though, goes to the heart of the Inky's problems. It used to be one of the newspape

As expected, my first issue of the Philadelphia Daily News landed with a startle-me-out-of-my-sleep SMACK on the front steps this morning. After checking my e-mail on my iPhone, I decided to forgo electronic stimulation for a little while and spend some time with my new newspaper. And time I spent. It takes me five-to-10 minutes most mornings to blaze through Philly headlines on my Google Reader. But that's only the "local news" headlines. There's a lot more stuff in the paper, obviously, but there's something about the physical medium of paper that slows. you. down. Or maybe that's just me. In any case, I spent about an hour with the Daily News this morning -- probably aided by the fact that the Friday edition is a little fatter with weekend "things to do around town" news than its sister issues the rest of the week. Here's what I found: * CRIME: Actually, I was always getting the crime news on my RSS feed from Philly.com, but I usua

We moved to Philadelphia nearly two years ago, and for the first time in my adult life I've gone without a subscription to a local daily newspaper. Why? Easy: It's the 21st century! Why spend money on getting a printed product when you can just go to Philly.com and select the RSS feeds you want to follow? Today, however, that changed. Money's still tight in the Mathis household -- full-time employment sure would be nice! -- but it seemed like a declaration of values is needed. I subscribed to the Philadelphia Daily News. Our first issue should arrive on Friday or Saturday. Again, why? Again: Easy. The Daily News has new owners . And I want them to know how important Philadelphia journalism is to me. To be clear, this isn't passive-aggressive gotcha with Brian Tierney, the would-be media mogul who lost control of the Daily News -- and the Inquirer , and Philly.com -- today. I've been critical of Tierney's seeming cynicism and hucksterism -- but if Tier

I've long hated Deborah Solomon's Q&A interviews in The New York Times Magazine. They've always come across -- to me, anyway -- as a weird combination of needlessly combative and unilluminating: confrontational for the sake of confrontation in a lot of cases, without any real payoff that helps the reader understand a subject or interviewee any better. In today's magazine, she gets down to the essence of her style in an interview with Craig Robinson, a basketball coach and the brother of Michelle Obama. He has a new book out, which leads to the following exchange : Are you aware that in your new book you erroneously describe Princeton, N.J., as “the first capital of the United States”? Oh. I was thinking that it was the first capital because that’s what I thought when I got to Princeton on the first day. I was awed by it. It was the second capital under the Articles of Confederation. I wonder why your editors failed to catch that. I wrote it, so I don’t w

Seriously, it's hard to top this : A month after setting new standards for whiteness, the region is setting new ones for wetness. I mean: Ewwwwwww .