Journalism Thread

Let's talk Aguachile Alley

Postby reversemigraine » Sun Jan 05, 2020 1:31 pm

TNR under Andrew Sullivan's editorship was the main venue for promoting The Bell Curve and Clinton-era welfare demonization.
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Postby joe » Sun Jan 05, 2020 1:32 pm

Former owner and editor marty perez is an insane person who is probably jerking off to the thought of Iranians dying right now
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Postby Feech La Manna » Sun Jan 05, 2020 1:36 pm

Michael Kelly had such a boner for the Iraq war that he went and got himself blown into a ditch.
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Postby Durham » Sun Jan 05, 2020 2:48 pm

Why is everything so bad

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Postby KALM » Sun Jan 05, 2020 3:13 pm

shattered glass is good but it entirely sidesteps the politics of the publication at the time, and it's not like that was irrelevant to the story they were trying to tell about glass

ta nehesi coates linked to this stephen glass piece a few years back, which was both apparently fabricated and just so happened to support the message peretz et al were pushing at the time

https://newrepublic.com/article/120888/stephen-glass-taxis

(warning: this is super racist)

In the last two decades the taxi business has changed radically, from a respected profession to one so scorned that the dispatcher lingo for "driver" is "dog." Twenty years ago, Washington D.C.'s cabbies were primarily American blacks. Today, the local United Taxicab Operators Association estimates, less than 10 percent of the city's cab drivers are U.S.-born blacks, and almost all of them are middle-aged or older. Instead, as any standup comedian will tell you, it is immigrants-largely from south and central Asia and Africa-who pilot America's taxis.

Only thirteen years ago, a Hollywood sitcom could still depict cabbies as overwhelmingly American-born. In James L. Brooks's "Taxi," Judd Hirsch was the philosopher of the road, earning a blue-collar income and forging family-like ties with his coworkers. Many of Hirsch's fellow hacks at the Sunshine Cab Company were boynext-door types: one moonlit at an art gallery, another was a washed-up but charming boxer, a third was a struggling actor. The only buffoonish character was the garage's sole immigrant, Andy Kaufman's Latka Gravas, a mechanic who became famous for speaking in unintelligible English. But today, the all-American image is gone and the Latkas-and the Rajas, Rafiks and Mohammeds-have taken over the business.

Edward Murdock has an explanation for this. Today's poor African American youth, the largest underemployed working-age population in big cities like Washington, don't make the calculation that Murdock and his equally disadvantaged contemporaries made: that grueling work, like cab-driving, is better than no work; that even if the short-term benefits of such toil are meager, the long-term gains are worth waiting for. "If they took up driving," Murdock says of poor black youths today, "they could get out of the ghetto. It's a confusion of respect and the dignity in working hard."

Lately, the meaning of work has become central to what politicians and pundits like to call "the national conversation": in the debates over welfare, worker retraining, the rejuvenation of the AFL-cIo under a new leadership, or the threats of downsizing and immigration. It would appear that work-any work, since all work brings dignity and economic reward-has become an overwhelming priority throughout American society. Or almost any work. When it comes to hard work, physical work or dirty work, the attractions are no longer quite so obvious. In 1978, at the American Enterprise Institute, Jesse Jackson explained that dirty work was better than no work, since it paid in long-term benefits. But his advice has not been universally accepted, not least in his own community. Take household jobs, like maids and gardeners. It used to be that these jobs were the first rung to financial security and social acceptance. People toiled at them so they, or their children, could gain full membership in the larger community. Among poor Americans, however, this is no longer the general rule.

It is immigrants from India, Pakistan and Ethiopia-who have filled the void. Jobs such as cab driving, they say, are the wav to become American. The Washington licensing commission doesn't keep demographic information on hacks, but the Operators Association estimates more than 85 percent of all Washington drivers are foreign-born-up more than 60 percent in the past twenty-five years.

In pursuing their American dream, immigrant taxi drivers endure grueling and dangerous work-the most dangerous work in America, according to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. Hacks often drive seventeen hours a day, six days a week, in cramped cars. Those who get stiffed by a passenger are thankful they weren't mugged; those who get mugged feel lucky they weren't killed. For decades, native-born blacks also accepted such risks in pursuit of upward mobility. Why don't they anymore?


Jim, on the other hand-a dashing African American in his mid-30s from Anacostia-drove a cab five years ago but has since changed jobs. "I was sick of smelling all those curry people," he sneers. "It is low class." His neighbors, he says, would point and laugh when he parked his taxi outside his home. Now he drives for one of Washington's largest limousine companies, where he chauffeurs senators and diplomats, the capital's upper crust. "Now," he says of his peers, "they respect me.... If I pull up in this baby," he adds, caressing the hood with one hand and pointing at a beautiful woman with the other, "I can get that babe. Wanna see me try?"Jim shuffles up to the slinky blonde. He speaks to her. She responds. They talk some more. She nods. She walks over to the car and examines the limo's luxurious interior and wet bar. I interrupt. Would she be equally attracted to a taxi driver? I ask. "What am I on? Some TV show?" she asks, startled, and clomps away. Jim, annoyed, cuts off our interview. While Jim's alleged successes may be little more than locker-room boasting, his rationale for shunning taxis for limos is nonetheless telling. His professional calculus is external and immediate. It is what a 62-year-old black driver called the "woo quotient: How fast can you get in someone's pants?"

Another reason many young black men disdain cabdriving, according to Slippy-a 28-year-old black highschool dropout who has been a hack for one yearis the "Driving Miss Daisy mentality." In the hit offBroadway show and movie, a black chauffeur and his elderly white employer form a friendship unalterably limited by the barriers of privilege and race. "Most of my peers want to know why they should drive a lot of rich white people everywhere they want to go," Slippy says. "For generations this is the only job blacks could get, now they don't want to do it." While this resentment keeps blacks out of the drivers' seats of cabs, he says the trappings of limo driving-particularly the car and access to power-compensate.

When I press Slippy for details about this resentment, he says that other inner-city options are far more esteemed than taxi-driving. "Haven't you reporters taken economics? If you can sell something," he says slyly, "and make much, much more money and probably not get caught, and not be dissed, who wouldn't? Well, a lot of people do that equation every day. And cab driving is lot more dangerous." On a ten-hour day, Slippy grosses between $40 and $80; he says no friends respect his job. Respect for the drug dealer, however, comes not from the work itself but from what it produces: a bulging wallet, an expensive car, nice clothes and women. For Edward Murdock and the entrepreneurial immigrants in Fred Turner's class, the goal is to own their own business, to be their own boss, to find an inherent dignity in the possibilities their work affords, not in the admiration of others.


I was riding with Imran that night, and he was about to drop me off at home when a black man in his early to mid-20s hailed the taxi. It was late. The man on the corner was listening to a walkman. The cab's headlights illuminated his bright white high-tops. This is the type of fare Imran would normally refuse. But there was a pair of police cars on the neighboring corner, and Imran said he didn't want to risk getting a ticket for passing up a rider based on his race. As in many other cities, to insure against discrimination, Washington has deemed it illegal for a cabbie to pass up any customer. Imran pulled up. From the front passenger seat, I could hear the music banging through the passenger's headphones. Unable to judge the volume of his voice, the rider screamed, "Martin Luther King and V," located in one of Washington's poorest neighborhoods, as his destination.

Over the next ten minutes, Imran and I became engrossed in a conversation about his children, ignoring our backseat companion. We passed the White House. Imran's son is in the third grade. Georgetown Law was on our right. The boy has a knack for math. Union Station was coming up on our left. But Imran was worried about his older daughter. Now heading toward Eastern Market. I began to ask, "What grade.... "

"Pull over, cocksucker!" " . is she in?"

"Shut the fuck up, you motherfucker." That sentence was directed at me. I didn't notice, at first, the knife our passenger was now holding up to Imran's neck. Imran was cool and mechanical. He pulled the car over to the right and reached into his breast pocket, handing over the neatly folded bills. The mugger made Imran stop the car and throw the keys out the window..He ran off. A few minutes later Imran recovered the keys.

"These things happen," Imran said coldly on the drive back downtown. "I give them whatever they want. I just want my life." For the next hour or so, Imran and a couple of friends drink beer. This crime, like the others, would never be reported. "If I tell the cops, it'll take all day, and they'll do nothing. Then he'll have stolen two days of my pay." Crimes such as these could be financially crippling, but Imran's friends lend him money so he won't have to tell his wife. He doesn't want her to know how dangerous his job is.

The conversation among Imran and his friends turns to the legend of Kae Bang, a Korean cabdriver-turned-vigilante who is to the D.C. cab community what Stagger Lee was to the Mississippi Delta. As Kae Bang's story goes, the cab driver was, one sticky summer night, bludgeoned`on the head by three brick-wielding black teenagers. Bang quickly recovered and, using his martial arts expertise, struck back at the would-be thieves, hurting them badly. Everyone knows Bang's story, or at least a version of it-in some, he is a Chinese immigrant, in others he's hit with a pipe-but no one knows how to find him. Everyone knows someone who claims to have once met him, but those leads typically turn up just more names of other people who have supposedly met Bang. Bang is not registered to drive with any taxi company. While he is listed in the Maryland suburban phonebook, messages are never returned. Eventually I found him, due mostly to luck. After hours of watching for him in a diner that he's rumored to frequent, I decided to head home. The cab I hailed was his.

Bang is Washington's most respected taxi driver. A loner, he is largely unaware of the legendary status of his fight. Years later, he still wears the beige zip-up jacket he wore that day. A stitched rip near the right shoulder is the only remaining evidence of where the brick struck him. Bang's speech sounds as if it has been dubbed. Each syllable is painfully sounded out. "There is no respect for nobody in this country. What did I do wrong to them, the robbers?"

Many drivers can't understand why muggers would be compelled to take their money. "Don't they understand I worked hard for it?" one cabbie asked me, touchingly bewildered. Among drivers, mugging isn't seen as a way for a desperate poor person to get a quick buck; it's an attack on the system. The criminals show no respect for what is theirs.
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Postby joe » Sun Jan 05, 2020 3:26 pm

was looking for this. here is jeet heer talking in the tnr about its racism:

https://newrepublic.com/article/120884/new-republics-legacy-race
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Postby joe » Sun Jan 05, 2020 3:41 pm

just subscribed to current affairs
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Postby joe » Mon Jan 06, 2020 6:18 pm

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Postby Honk For Dracula » Wed Jan 08, 2020 1:16 pm

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Postby powderfinger » Wed Jan 08, 2020 1:55 pm

I would like to read an oral history of the halcyon days of The Daily Dish where the staffers talk about how hard they had to work to suppress Andrew Sullivan's racism. You know they had to be covertly screening all kinds of stuff and counseling against recurring posts about Big Dick Obama.
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Postby reversemigraine » Wed Jan 08, 2020 2:01 pm

"We need an emergency beagle post ASAP."
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Postby auspice » Wed Jan 08, 2020 2:52 pm



NYT people are the gifts that keep on giving.
We can't stop here -- this is Night Country!
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Postby Feech La Manna » Wed Jan 08, 2020 3:25 pm

powderfinger wrote:I would like to read an oral history of the halcyon days of The Daily Dish where the staffers talk about how hard they had to work to suppress Andrew Sullivan's racism. You know they had to be covertly screening all kinds of stuff and counseling against recurring posts about Big Dick Obama.


badhat wrote:bike solve all problems
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Postby Big Oil » Fri Jan 10, 2020 1:02 pm

if you ever wondered what it would be like for smooth-brained j-school centrism to be confronted by an actual left critique, WONDER NO MORE



each of their questions could properly be the subject of an entire essay. The chapo boys should do an entire show just reviewing the tape.
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Postby saranclaps ultra mode 9000 » Fri Jan 10, 2020 1:18 pm

can't imagine anything i'd like to listen to less.
delgriffith wrote:Quick Google search reveals that I have no idea what I'm talking about.
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Postby saranclaps ultra mode 9000 » Fri Jan 10, 2020 1:18 pm

no one involved in that podcast should have a podcast
delgriffith wrote:Quick Google search reveals that I have no idea what I'm talking about.
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Postby Feech La Manna » Fri Jan 10, 2020 1:19 pm

holy shit I can't wait to listen to that
badhat wrote:bike solve all problems
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Postby mcwop23 » Fri Jan 10, 2020 1:47 pm

Feech La Manna wrote:holy shit I can't wait to listen to that


yup
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colin meloy doesn't need to die
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Postby Big Oil » Sat Jan 11, 2020 6:57 pm

diseased publication

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Postby struttin' evil mushroom » Sat Jan 11, 2020 7:02 pm

Herman and Chomsky argue that “the large bureaucracies of the powerful subsidize the mass media, and gain special access [to the news], by their contribution to reducing the media’s costs of acquiring [...] and producing, news. The large entities that provide this subsidy become 'routine' news sources and have privileged access to the gates. Non-routine sources must struggle for access, and may be ignored by the arbitrary decision of the gatekeepers.” Editorial distortion is aggravated by the news media's dependence upon private and governmental news sources. If a given newspaper, television station, magazine, etc., incurs disfavor from the sources, it is subtly excluded from access to information. Consequently, it loses readers or viewers, and ultimately, advertisers. To minimize such financial danger, news media businesses editorially distort their reporting to favor government and corporate policies in order to stay in business.
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Postby struttin' evil mushroom » Sat Jan 11, 2020 7:02 pm

it rules that you can 100% understand that times article by reading the manufacturing consent wiki lmao

diseased fucking profession. surly quit coward
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Postby surly » Sat Jan 11, 2020 7:06 pm

eat my ass
lordofdiapers wrote:damn it Greedo will forever fuck that word for me
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Postby struttin' evil mushroom » Sat Jan 11, 2020 7:20 pm

too busy eating the rich ... creamy ass of nathan, of course
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Postby Big Oil » Thu Jan 16, 2020 11:31 pm

Does the Times not have an internet connection or something?

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Postby Big Oil » Mon Jan 27, 2020 1:30 am

dEMocRaCy DIeS iN DArKneEs



also this Matthew Keys guy seems like a weird vindictive prick! Diseased profession full of hollow people!
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Postby Marx & Engels » Mon Jan 27, 2020 2:15 am

God that's so fucking stupid and shitty. Also I am familiar with that guy as someone who got very mad about a stupid Brad Evans/Nick Ciarelli video because it was Pretending To Be Real News

edit: A follow-up post suggests the suspension was just about her posting screencaps of her email inbox with people's names visible, but the Daily Mail has a direct quote from a WaPo editor slamming her tweets more generally, so I'm going to go ahead and stand by my original "stupid and shitty" reaction

Tracy Grant, managing editor of The Washington Post, told DailyMail.com on Sunday: 'National political reporter Felicia Sonmez was placed on administrative leave while The Post reviews whether tweets about the death of Kobe Bryant violated The Post newsroom’s social media policy.

'The tweets displayed poor judgment that undermined the work of her colleagues.'
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Postby bachwards » Tue Jan 28, 2020 12:54 am

I thought this was well done.
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Postby bold man » Tue Jan 28, 2020 1:05 am

its fucked up what the mob has done (per usual) to felica
in the international space station having a three-way with hillary clinton and sarah palin
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Postby funkfunkfunk » Tue Jan 28, 2020 1:26 am

bachwards wrote: I thought this was well done.


As an admitted Hitchens Stan I don't really agree with the author's characterizations of his writing, but appreciate the documentation of how his legacy has been twisted into something that doesn't represent much if anything of what I feel made him great
jockesh or jakesh in farsi means pimp and unlike american in farsi pimp is a big insult and commonly applied to scoundrels and bad people like bush jr and i dont know of a word for actual jocks i dont think its a thing in iran but also anyway i wanted to say i believe in nothing
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Postby blurst of times » Mon Feb 03, 2020 10:37 am

Big Oil wrote:dEMocRaCy DIeS iN DArKneEs



also this Matthew Keys guy seems like a weird vindictive prick! Diseased profession full of hollow people!


democracy continues to die in darkness...


Multiple sources familiar with the events told The Daily Beast that last year, Post Executive Editor Marty Baron privately clashed with Lowery, a national correspondent who was part of the paper’s team that won a Pulitzer Prize for its coverage of police shootings. The subject in question: Lowery’s tweets.

Last year, Lowery posted a series of tweets questioning why a New York Times retrospective about the Tea Party movement failed to note how the early-2010s conservative was “essentially a hysterical grassroots tantrum about the fact that a black guy was president?” (The Times eventually added the racial context to its piece.)

The tweets were apparently enough to set off Baron, who along with Managing Editor Tracy Grant told Lowery that his tweets violated the Post’s social-media rules and threatened the newspaper’s credibility. In a subsequent meeting, explained to The Daily Beast by two Post insiders, the top editor at the paper told Lowery that he had made overtly political statements about the Tea Party, and had maligned the Times in the process.

The recourse, Barron suggested, would be for Lowery to become an opinion writer, or work for an advocacy organization. The top editor also threatened to fire Lowery if he violated the social-media policy again. The Washington Post declined to comment.
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