Happy Hols, everyone. This is my last essay of the year; I will be back the week of the 6th.
In early December, I wrote about the “giving” economy on the left, and while I’m extremely critical of it, I also recommended places to support. This may seem like a contradiction, but it’s really not: until we build a world where organisations and people don’t have to keep asking for money to survive, we have to find ways to make sure they can keep doing their necessary work.
Among them were Current Affairs, where I am an (unpaid, honorary) Editor at Large, and my own website, where you’re reading this. You’re probably thinking that at least part of what you’re about to read is an appeal for support for us and, yes, you’re right.
You should support my work because, as several people have said to me in very kind emails and in person: I make you think, even when you don’t agree with me (and perhaps especially when you disagree), and I take the time to go far beyond hot takes. I’m also not afraid to express a viewpoint—and argue for it—even when it seems the least popular one to hold. In August, the day after Kamala Harris accepted the candidacy that she was handed on a golden platter, I wrote, “Kamala Harris Will Lose.” At the time, even some of my friends were doubtful. Others were contemptuous and even angry, especially the usual rabid liberals, but, well, here we are, and now everyone from Ezra Klein to Nate Silver and a number of podcasters in between (of which there are a million) is trying to pretend that they knew this all along. (For more of my work, on any number of topics, use the search function here or check out the “Categories” section.)
But even before the disastrous Biden administration, when everyone heaved a sigh of relief at having beaten Trump back from a second consecutive term, Nathan J. Robinson warned in Current Affairs that Trump would return, in his prescient “He’ll Be Back.”
It’s no coincidence that while mainstream media (MSM) outlets have consistently only tried to keep eyeballs glued to their screens, by any means necessary, smaller entities have been unafraid to report, analyse, and dissect issues and news. If it weren’t for places like Electronic Intifada, we’d only see news about Gaza in a one-sided way; if not for places like the The Polis Project, we’d learn little or nothing about radical politics in India, a country where a Trumpian figure like Narendra Modi has been creating a culture of fear; if not for work like this rare article in Truth Out, we wouldn’t have a clear-eyed view of how the the U.S government has abandoned us to endless COVID.
There are several silver linings to the Harris loss: one of them is that this may well be the opportunity we need to strengthen a real, radical left media sphere. Liberal and progressive politics, embodied in the belief that the status quo and existing structures are what will save us, have proven to be a cumulative failure. But the combined coverage of the MSM, in the form of behemoths like CNN, MSNBC, the New York Times, the New Yorker, and nearly every other liberal outlet you can think of, contributed to the return of Trump. Over and over again, they pretended that everything was fine, fine, really fine and that voters everywhere were willing to vote for a candidate who showed nothing but contempt for them.
In new work over the next year, I’ll have essays on these individual media entities and show how their work often sought to erase the reality of what was happening in the country and resulted in the return of Trump. Over and over, the MSM has proven that it’s more concerned with paying the massive salaries of its key celebrity journalists than with any real journalism. Rachel Maddow makes $30 million a year: what did she ever say that wasn’t just some version of “Oh, no, Trump is a very, very bad man, and you won’t believe what we found”? Is she ever likely to say more than that over the next four years?
All signs are that MSNBC and the others are seeing a real backlash from their audiences: the network is down to about half of its former viewership. Those numbers may come back up: MSNBC, CNN, and their ilk draw liberal viewers and liberal viewers are easy to please: throw around a few phrases like “crisis of democracy,” be sure to blame Trump for the last fifty years of American history, and they are bound to return to the shrines they’ve erected to Maddow and her cohort.
We on the left might also seize this opportunity to think of ways to embolden and support left media in sustainable ways. But, to be frank with you, dear readers: that effort includes you. You have to support the media you want to read. Otherwise, independent, leftist media—the kind that was unafraid to point to the reality behind this past election—will keep floundering and have to depend on constant calls for support (which takes up a lot of time and staff energy). And you, dear readers, need to start thinking differently about how you consume media.
It is an unfortunate fact that a lot of readers have come to think about the media the way they think of the fare at a commercial buffet restaurant: unlimited servings of shrimp, beef, and chicken, alongside six kinds of dessert, all for $25. There’s very little sense, among too many readers, of the kinds of labour that go into producing actual, real writing, and even less of an understanding of how different genres work. I once spent over an hour online trying to explain to a disgruntled COVID influencer why an actual magazine like Current Affairs couldn’t just serve as a “platform” for their views on the pandemic. The idea that serious writing—whether reporting, analysis, or reviews—can’t just be hurled online like an experimental art project is a strange one to many who’ve been raised in the era of so-called “citizen journalism.” But the truth is that behind every essay or report is a team of people, including editors who spend hours reading to make sure all the facts are correct and that the work is well written. All of that is labour, and in smaller independent places, it’s labour that’s more scarce than at, say the New York Times or The Guardian (which is little more than a graveyard of op-eds, these days).
If you think that all of the MSM failed you during this past election, you’re right. Right now, all the major outlets like The New York Times, CNN, and MSNBC are trying to backpedal their shoddy coverage of the campaigns and trying to retroactively explain why they were so wrong. The question for you will be: what can you do to support media that operates with more honesty and integrity?
To understand how to do that, you have to approach media not as a buffet from which you load up your plate, but in more conscious and intentional ways. That means you pay for it or support it any way you can. I can’t afford every single subscription, but I can and do repost articles as often as possible. Very often, I see someone online gleefully “stealing” articles from behind paywalls, acting like Robin Hood redistributing resources to others. But journalists and writers have to be paid, and their work involves a lot more than sitting at a keyboard and putting links together for readers. You’re not “liberating” that work when you steal and post it outside the paywall: you’re making it less likely that people will get paid. Publications like Current Affairs and Truth Out make all their material free, but that’s because of their commitment to the public: it doesn’t mean that they survive on unpaid labour. You won’t agree with everything you read, and that is healthy: if the opposite is true, you’re not reading an actual publication but something more akin to an anodyne family newsletter. Commit to a publication for six months to a year, and don’t just fly into a hissy fit because someone wrote one piece you didn’t agree with.
Understand that the media, big or small, can’t survive on free, volunteer labour. And understand that no one outlet will give you everything you need. I’m fortunate to live in Chicago, with local newspapers and independent press like The Chicago Reader. We even have a neighbourhood paper in Hyde Park, the Hyde Park Herald, which helps me keep track of changes in an area dominated by the institution where neoliberalism was invented: the University of Chicago. Not every place will have this many options (and they may not all be great), sure, and not everyone can afford to have multiple subscriptions. Not every publication will give me what I need: a local newspaper will cover news that more niche magazines can’t, but the paper, unlike the Reader, is also not going to cover that new, odd poet whose work might otherwise go unnoticed.
Which is all the more reason to be judicious and particular about your support. Instead of assuming that you are somehow owed everything that’s ever published, consider what your priorities are. No one is required to dine only on serious news (my subscription to Vogue confirms that), but writing, of any kind, is labour. Consider the fact that every independent media outlet (and individual!) has to make pleas for support at this time of year, while people like Maddow keep saying the same thing every election cycle, and only see their giant salaries increase. To what end?
Support the media you want to see survive or watch it all die.
Here is how to support my work.
For more on independent media, see this conversation between Nathan J. Robinson and Krystal Ball.
Don’t plagiarise any of this, in any way. I have used legal resources to punish and prevent plagiarism, and I am ruthless and persistent. I make a point of citing people and publications all the time: it’s not that hard to mention me in your work, and to refuse to do so and simply assimilate my work is plagiarism. You don’t have to agree with me to cite me properly; be an ethical grownup, and don’t make excuses for your plagiarism. Read and memorise “On Plagiarism.” There’s more forthcoming, as I point out in “The Plagiarism Papers.” If you’d like to support me, please donate and/or subscribe, or get me something from my wish list. Thank you.
