Journalism AMA on Clubhouse Today!

And speaking of journalism...

Reason staff editor Liz Wolfe is fighting the blustery tundras of Austin, and I’m in drifts halfway up the doorframes in upstate New York. But will a little snow stop us from bringing the people what they want? It will not!

Today, 5pm EST, over on Clubhouse. Ask us any journalism or otherwise questions. NB: Liz and I are both crack bakers so, bring it on!

Speaking of bringing it on, I was texted the new Ben Smith article, “Letter from Peru: Why the Morality Plays Inside the New York Times Won’t Stop” last night, with a one-character comment: “!” To which I respond, “!” A clip:

I assure you, there are interesting personnel dramas playing out at The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post, but somehow they don’t explode as public morality plays, with emotional Twitter debates, social media cheering sections and dueling public letters.

But The Times’s singular status has left its leaders, in a period of high-profile firings and departures, vainly insisting that the exits reflect the normal, confidential and complex workings of human resources. Times leaders will still, for instance, tell you that they didn’t fire the opinion editor James Bennet because of the content of an Op-Ed calling for a military response to the summer’s unrest over racial justice. But they’ve found nobody wants to hear the more complex explanation.

I think it’s a sign that The Times’s unique position in American news may not be tenable. This intense attention, combined with a thriving digital subscription business that makes the company more beholden to the views of left-leaning subscribers, may yet push it into a narrower and more left-wing political lane as a kind of American version of The Guardian — the opposite of its stated, broader strategy.

Read the whole thing here.

With love and hot pie and see you at 5!