Rhymes With 'Skews,' More to Choose, May Need Booze

As we await the adventures of the upcoming Presidential administration, groups of reporters and media types decided that there are better models for delivering news and information. Traditional media, they say, isn’t up to the task of covering present society, particularly a past and future president whose m.o. essentially is to ravage the buffet table and belch into a megaphone. Newspapers and news organizations have been strip-mined of resources and staff. Many of those who are still at it chase profits and clicks at the expense of reporting. Corporate overlords, and investors, value their bottom line over an informed citizenry. 

Niche media efforts have sprung up in response. Among the latest is an outlet called “The Contrarian,” which will be helmed by attorney and former U.S. diplomat and government official Norm Eisen and Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin, who walked away from her gig after sixteen years. “Our goal,” she told CNN, “is to combat, with every fiber of our being, the authoritarian threat that we face.” 

On her way out the door, she also delivered this bouquet: “The Post, along with most mainstream news outlets, has failed spectacularly at a moment that we most need a robust, aggressive free press.” 

The Post has impressively managed to irritate people both inside and outside the building for months. Gazillionaire owner Jeff Bezos nixed publication of an endorsement of VP Kamala Harris shortly before the election, reasoning that such political support presents the appearance of bias and that it likely doesn’t sway voters anyway. There was much in-house grumbling, and the Post lost a reported 250,000 digital subscribers in the aftermath of the decision. 

Part of the spiked Ann Telnaes cartoon

Since then, Amazon, Bezos’s cash cow and primary source of his staggering wealth, contributed $1 million to Donald Trump’s inauguration fund (show of hands: who thinks the caterers and musicians see a dime of that money?). Amid the surge of plutocratic fawning over the next Prez, Post editors recently scuttled an editorial cartoon by Pulitzer winner Ann Telnaes showing Bezos and other business leaders supplicating themselves before the Orange Guy. The Post’s opinion editor called it a “sound editorial decision,” as recent columns and pieces had called out Bezos and others, and that the cartoon was “overkill.” Telnaes walked, as well. 

The departure of a cartoonist and op-ed writer isn’t quite the United Mine Workers strike of the 1940s, or even the Amazon delivery hub drivers walkout last year. Nor does it begin to fix what ails journalism. Journalists can be tediously thin-skinned for folks whose job is to hold others to account. And they love some self-righteous posturing, particularly as it relates to their own work. That said, concerns within the profession about the tone of coverage and accountability are valid, starting with the guy at the top and those around him. 

We live in anxious times, when an increasing number of people seek confirmation rather than information, and any unpleasant or inconvenient reporting is labeled “fake” or dismissed as biased. The Contrarian joins a handful of other outlets trying to gain traction in this fractured media landscape, such as The Bulwark and Zeteo. 

The Bulwark is a conservative-leaning, anti-Trump outlet founded in 2019 by political strategist Sarah Longwell and longtime opinionators Bill Kristol and Charlie Sykes, who has since departed. Its website says it was founded “to provide analysis and reporting in defense of America’s liberal democracy. That’s it. That’s the mission.” 

Zeteo, which comes from the Greek word meaning to seek or search, was launched last February by left-leaning rouser of rabble Mehdi Hasan, a British-American journalist and author with stints at Al Jazeera, MSNBC and The Guardian. It promises independent and unfiltered journalism. Both sites feature veteran, respected heavy hitters as correspondents and contributors. Both have some free content but are subscription sites, and they hope folks will spring for the full menu. 

One problem with the harrumphing and torch waving among the niche sites and start-ups is that they’re planting flags as much as committed to providing relevant information. They report and gasbag through their own filters and are unlikely to appeal to anyone who isn’t already in their camp. It's increasingly difficult to find unbiased news and opinion sites, though I’d argue that some degree of bias is inherent in the process. The Nation, MSNBC, the New York Times and Washington Post skew left. Fox News, the National Review, Wall Street Journal, Newsmax skew right. Closest to centrist or middle-of-the-road might be outlets such as the old, reliable Associated Press, Christian Science Monitor, the BBC, Reuters and Forbes. 

One interesting addition is 1440, a news site that pulls from numerous sources and bills itself as “curated by humans, not algorithms.” It’s focused on fact-based pieces, not opinions. Its name is a nod to Gutenberg’s first mechanical printing press, which he built in the year (approximately) 1440, and the fact that there are 1,440 minutes in a day; the site’s honchos pledge not to waste people’s time with filler and opinions. A noble aim, for sure, though I think the next four years will require some distractions from whatever fresh guano crosses our paths. Vigilance and goofballery in equal measures. Buckle up.