As my regular readers know, I’ve been working on a longform essay on Meghan Markle. This is a shorter work on the subject, inspired by a recent Times piece. It was also an opportunity for me to continue the kind of media criticism and critique I’ve been interested in for a while. For more of my work on media, follow this link.
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In early April, the New York Times, always in thrall of the rich and famous, published “Inside Meghan’s Real Kitchen, Away From the Cameras,” on Meghan Markle, wife of Harry Windsor and chief entrepreneur behind several mostly failed projects. Written by Julia Moskin, it offered a supposedly intimate view of Markle’s home, after the airing of her Netflix show, With Love, Meghan. By then, the show, a boring and tedious eight-parter that is mostly about Markle hanging out with friends who act like hostages around her, had already aired in its entirety and been panned widely on the internet. Moskin’s piece arrived in the shape of a fawning profile.
And then, a few weeks later, the paper went meta and published an article about the first article. This one, “Even in Her Home Kitchen, Meghan Stirs Reactions,” also by Moskin, was about the (many hostile) responses to the original work and was part of the “Times Insider” series, which claims to show “who we are and what we do and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together.” In the case of Meghan Markle, the Times engaged in a pointless exercise meant to explain a prior pointless exercise, the swoony coverage of an ex-royal’s pointless lifestyle and entertainment series. “Even in Her Home Kitchen” could, and should be, dismissed as simply part of the Times’s enduring love affair with itself. But the entire exercise is also emblematic of the hollowness of so much contemporary journalism: that a newspaper with the resources and talent that the storied Times possesses should compel its reporters to engage in so much navel-gazing says a lot about an industry that is bloated at one end and starving for resources on the other. Most cities and towns in the U.S are lucky to have one functioning paper, and nearly every one of the survivors scrambles to do its best in difficult times. The Times, meanwhile, attaches itself to a faux-royal whose most enduring feature is her ability to draw attention, with a piece that is fluffier than the Chantilly cream she whips up for Moskin.
Markle and Windsor are among the world’s most famous grifters, with careers that span the entire spectrum between “self-exiled prince” and “wife of self-exiled prince.” Their constant pursuit of media attention has, to an extent, served them well. They left the UK in 2020, ostensibly to escape all the negative press attention. They claimed to have no place to go until the world’s richest actor, Tyler Perry, stepped up and lent them a house and a security detail. Today, they’re settled in a $21 million mansion in Montecito, a “nearly 19,000-square-foot Mediterranean-style home [that] boasts nine bedrooms, [and] 16 bathrooms,” according to Architectural Digest. It includes a tea house and a two-bedroom guest house, as such abodes must.
At first, their departure from the Royal Family and their willingness to spill details about that institution seemed to guarantee a perpetual living for both as Oprah and nearly every publishing and media outlet on the planet swarmed to interview them and sign deals. Windsor got a $20 million contract for his tell-all memoir Spare, and the two signed a $100 million partnership with Netflix for an unspecified number of projects (it ends this year, and may be renewed). The book has done very well, but the Netflix collaboration, which includes With Love, Meghan and her new line of edible products, has been much less successful. A polo documentary has barely made a dent, another on the Invictus games has similarly faded from view, and while Netflix keeps insisting that With Love is among its top-ranked shows, the streamer is notorious for never providing any hard proof of its numbers. Markle, however, does have a unique ability to generate massive amounts of interest in anything she does, although much of it is tinged with hatred for her. The British press in particular seems to harbour a colossal amount of spite towards the American, and it’s not hard to see that a good deal of it is uncomfortably racist. But Netflix feeds off the attention economy, and Markle is nothing if not a magnet for mountains of it.
As Moskin points out, gently, in her April 2 article, With love, Meghan had to be made because the couple needs the money (nine bedrooms and sixteen bathrooms and a tea house and a guest house require staff around the clock, and Windsor’s inheritances from his mother and grandmother are not likely to last forever, even with the best money managers). “Inside Meghan’s Real Kitchen,” is fine, just fine. Like too many contemporary media profiles, it’s bland and toothless, and sometimes reads more like a press release. Moskin is clearly enamoured of Markle, whom she refers to as the “Duchess of Sussex,” a title no American, politically and culturally beholden to the expulsion of a long-ago king, should ever use within the geographic confines of this country. Over whom, exactly, does Markle hold sway with her title? Over whom does she lord or, rather, duchess over? It doesn’t occur to Moskin to question why someone who made a big fuss about stepping down as a working royal should now cling to her title, other than for the most cynical, profit-making reasons.
Some parts of the article seem almost farcical, as when Moskin notes that Markle is “clearly bothered by accusations that she is unrelatable and out of touch. She may be living a fairy tale, but not all that long ago, she was a not-very-famous actress on a medium-popular TV series.” I long to read sarcasm into that sentence—who among us has been even a minor actress on an unpopular show?—but given the larger context in which it appears, I suspect that the writer was not making a subtle comment about how cluelessly out of touch Markle really is. (In contrast, an earlier NYT piece announcing Markle’s renaming of her products line seemed gloriously and genuinely sarcastic.)
Moskin’s deference to her subject, and the fact that the article is a promotional puff piece is especially evident in the way she conceals Tina Brown’s scathing criticism of Markle as a public figure. In her March 10 Substack, Brown is an unrelenting critic of Markle, calling out her repeated failures: “Masquerading as an influencer, she’s the ultimate follower, which inevitably means she is behind the curve.” She points to the only moment when Markle scored a public relations coup: the time she cooked with migrant women affected by the horrific Grenfell Tower fire, and helped to publish a book of recipes gathered with them (Together: Our Community Cookbook, which raised £500,000 for the victims). Moskin notes what seems like Brown’s praise but not the fact that every other word in the blog is a deeply critical one: “In a Substack newsletter last month, the royal chronicler and Meghan skeptic Tina Brown described the book as a moment ‘when her culinary and lifestyle interests fused with an authentic charitable initiative’ and ‘a PR slam dunk.’” Decontextualising what Brown actually wrote makes it seem like even such a harsh critic was impressed by Markle. It’s a tad disingenuous to not have framed it more honestly with words like, perhaps, “the royal chronicler and Meghan skeptic Tina Brown notes Markle’s only success…” which would have been more truthful. An average reader—unlikely to click on the link—might assume that Brown is full of praise.
The second article was published recently, on April 26. I first read it on my phone, curious if it might yield fresh insights and analysis. I am, as my readers know, working on my own longform essay on the Markle show and enterprise(s). I found nothing of note. Moskin simply writes about how she went about getting the interview (with standard methods like emailing Markle’s team), that the Times kept the comments closed from the start because it knew there would be too many to deal with, and clarifies that, contrary to what some have said on the internet, she was not paid by Markle and did not agree to any pre-conditions, except that it would not post photos of the mansion in order to protect the family’s privacy. I will reserve my cynicism about the Markle-Windsor desire for privacy for my own essay, only noting that these are people who literally posted his (quite possibly rehearsed) proposal of marriage to the entire world on Instagram, as it was happening. I switched to my laptop, wondering if I had perhaps missed some critical middle and conclusion of the essay, but, no, it ended as tamely and reverentially as it had on my phone: “Some of the accusations stung, but dealing with that — along with tasting the occasional fresh strawberry from a duchess’s garden — is sometimes part of the job.” Moskin concludes with bended knee, bowing out backwards.
The Times has now performed the onerous task of writing nothing about nothing, and this piece is symptomatic of contemporary media: it’s all a bit of nothing about nothing. The paper could have simply appended a couple of explanations and clarifications at the end of the original profile, if it felt that the accusations warranted them. It could simply have stated that, no, it did not make concessions in its reporting and, no, it was not paid by the couple. Instead, it compelled a hard-working journalist to spend more time than needed to write about the writing of her work.
Jack Shafer, writing critically of the “Insider” series in Politico, reminds us that the Times no longer has an ombudsperson (the paper, with its usual pompous flourish, called this the “public editor” position, and the excellent Maureen Sullivan, whom Shafer does not mention, was the last to fill it, until 2017.) He is correct that, rather than hold itself accountable to journalistic ethics and practices, the Times feels it alone can judge itself. I will add that this explains why the paper is so notorious for its plagiarism (I have written about that here, as have others). A better way to write these “Insider” essays would be to discuss, with transparency and without giving away confidential details, the actual labour, cost and emotional and physical stress of putting together the kind of journalism that, increasingly, only a few newspapers can afford. The Times could use the opportunity to report upon a decaying media landscape and, imagine this, encourage readers to support their local newspapers everywhere. The Times could be a leader in creating a sustainable media landscape, instead of poaching the hard work of reporters with fewer resources and much less time to bloviate about their efforts. It could become a hub of information about journalism, a field understood by few but vilified by many. Readers tend to be clueless about the differences between an analysis, an op-ed, and on-the-road reporting, and they demand that every publication they read give them everything all at once: reporting, op-eds, lots of videos, podcasts and, while they’re at it, perhaps a few personal bits about writers. In one of the “Insider” columns, Tyler Pager, who covers Trump, is asked how he relaxes. Honestly, really, I don’t need to know and don’t care, and neither should anyone else.
I don’t blame Moskin or other writers anywhere for such work, because I know the pressure comes from their employers (and an increasingly creepy parasociality amongst readers). It’s no longer enough to be able to turn out several excellent reports a week on deadline, or to craft a truly thoughtful longform essay and investigation that might take months of research and interviewing. A journalist must now spend precious hours writing about the writing, or talking about it for a mini-vlog. Visiting the Times website these days is like being trapped inside a movie about dystopia, with ads popping up everywhere alongside reporters speaking earnestly about the stories they covered—earnestly, but with nothing new to say beyond whatever they’ve already written in their pieces. Given that even papers like the Times, with its ample resources of time and money, now compel their writers to produce insubstantial work like Moskin’s essays, is it any wonder that the media landscape today is simultaneously bloated with airy nothings and sparse, in terms of actual, useful writing?
Fluff in itself is not a problem: we all need the occasional bits of social gossip and trend-watching alongside hard news (some of us might not readily admit that we read them). But fluff and move on. Just write the fluff without additional sides of fluff. And stop genuflecting to Duchesses of Nothing.
If you like this, please support my work.
Once upon a time, the Times used to produce excellent profiles. One of the best is Alex Halberstadt’s essay on Christopher Kimball.
On supporting journalism, see my “Support Your Media, or Watch It Die.”
For more on royals, see:
“Son, You Lie: Harry Windsor Is Exploiting His Mother’s Death.”
“Kate Middleton or, Abolish the Monarchy“
“Her Royal Hymen: Kate Middleton Drops Top, Finds Modesty, Helps Brand Britain.”
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.
