I have a piece out for the Daily Beast about Jordan Neely and why we need looser standards for involuntary commitment. It was read by very few and quickly disappeared from the front page, which is a perfect symbol for the position it advocates. n+1, the Vampire Weekend of political journals, has published
Thanks for the link to the Daily Beast piece, which is excellent. It is absolutely correct to say that there is an excellent chance that he'd still be alive were he cared for against his will. (I'd further add that this would also be the case were he simply incarcerated against his will for one of his many crimes, but I realize that's not the same as the argument you are making.)
It also had a lot of history I wasn't aware of; I was aware that "Reagan closed the asylums" but the Medicaid aspect and the Kennedy history was new to me. I'm grateful.
"The Face of Seung-Hui Cho" is one of the greatest polemics ever put to print. Never before had I seen such a raw, brutal take on the Asian American social position. It is indeed sad that perhaps no journal is willing to touch that sort of essay today, which is why platforms like Substack are so integral to free speech. I've written articles myself that I doubt would be published anywhere else due to their controversial nature, particularly regarding race.
Perhaps one day we'll see a lit mag like this. But the few explicitly anti-woke ones, like IM-1776, seem to go the opposite way in their own form of reaction. I just want a journal that truly allows for well-written controversial viewpoints of all stripes to be heard.
My running theory is that "anti-woke" is just too empty to build anything around, and any project that tries to center that is doomed to fail. Like, I look at all the good "anti-woke" commentators, and they're all built around something that puts being "anti-woke", and I use scare quotes deliberately, downstream from their core. Freddie deBoer has his particular old-school Marxism. Jesse Singal has his nebbish liberalism, while Katie Herzog has still kept that classical gay "don't tell me how to be" vibe. Thomas Chatterton Williams is clearly a guy who read Invisible Man and The Omni-Americans and understood them better than I ever could, and Jeff Maurer has refused to give up on Obama liberalism. If "wokeness" faded from the world tomorrow, all these people would have plenty to write about, and many would be glad they could spend more time on topics that truly interested them. (Though Maurer would definitely have a self-depricating piece about "oh no, I have to come up with better material now".)
I live that Substack provides a functional platform and landing page for self-publication, where you can cultivate yourself as a writer and hope to gain some reach with it.
It’s been the greatest motivating factor for me to start publishing work as someone outside of the media industry, its practical and streamlined for blogging and forum discussion.
Freddie you may have stewed over the comma for years but clearly not enough, as it is worse than you think. As written the sentence clearly implies that the high population is evidence of the city's poverty.
I share your pain about “the comma”. I wish old media, new new media, or the recently-passed “new” media, would (or would have) employed people who cared more about grammar. Not much turns me off a piece more than crap English. So I appreciate that pieces here are written well, regardless of what is being written about.
It will be interesting to see how the new economy for consumption of the written word continues to evolve. It appears that “traffic” has passed its heyday, at least for this iteration. Even NYT has leaned back towards the subscriber model. And substack is at the forefront of that as well. The balance of the good of supporting “quality” content, vs the bad of silofication, will be interesting to watch in this current/“new” era.
Freddie, as someone who works in the industry you may know more about what this really means than me. In my print edition of n+1 containing the same essay you are writing about, the acknowledgements page lists a veritable who’s who of institutional supporters: a bunch of major publishing house (including FSG, Hatchette and Simon & Schuster), Audible, Amazon Studios, as well as sponsorships from multiple state and federal programs including the NEA.
Simply being listed as a supporter I would guess doesn’t mean much about that group’s level of financial backing of course. But I would think that might have some effect both on its content and its place in the industry. Or am I wrong, and is having a bunch of institutional titans as sponsors basically necessary to fight the losing fight of being a lit mag nowadays?
I guess my question is these magazines can ever fulfill their stated purpose if they exist only due to the beneficence of institutionally embedded benefactors
Legacy media has a Trump problem full stop. That's both the disease and the symptom. When I open up The Atlantic I don't need three articles on Trump, two on DeSantis, and one on MTG. I want, like, actual news and thought. And when anything does get through it's so overly sensitive to not accidently, maybe, saying something that can possibly help the "bad guys" that I really do not trust them. They will bend the truth if it helps "The Narrative" and this has been obvious for a long time. I disagree with a lot of what Freddie says but at least I know he's not going to twist facts or play stupid semantics to score points.
That's why the weirdest thing is that Jamelle Bouie gets a lone name check from the n+1 crowd. He's a ChatGPT prompt that is basically "interpret this news story in the most inflammatory identarian way possible". The living embodiment of a left-wing where the bulk of their morality is defined as being anti-Republican. The number of Republicans he lets live rent free in his head could both swing New York and end the housing crisis. I don't read the news for the left's version of the Tea Party. And as long as this, more than anything, is the ideological tilt of legacy media, then alternative press is going to thrive. I think one reason the NYT has succeeded beyond all others, even employing Bouie, is that they simply cover too much to be monomaniacally Trump obsessed.
It actually isn't weird that Bouie gets a name check when you consider that the whole essay was building up to a critique of the Times for letting some deviations from woke orthodoxy creep in recently.
I mean, I agree with you, but it's still unclear whether legacy media has a Trump problem or a Trump solution. The NYT and WP were dying in 2015 and they appear to have completely rebounded based on just running various articles all day long about how centrist liberals are obviously right and Trump is a horrible horrible man. I don't think it's journalistically ethical or right, but it's not like the mainstream media plotted up this scheme and tricked the public into supporting it...this is the media the customers demanded.
They made $173MM last year, down from $220MM the prior year. Over the last 10 years, their revenues are up about 50% in nominal USD. I'm sure it compares favorably to a lot of media properties, but by the standards of, say, a cement company, it's pretty unremarkable. By the standards of, say, a grocery chain operator, it's below average.
The Times is publicly traded (ticker NYT), you can pull up their balance sheet at your stock quote service of choice. I didn't look into it too deeply but they're running a pretty healthy profit these days.
Thanks, and I'm not being snarky. I honestly thought the NYT was still private.
That said, 31x p/e at a share price of $30-something per share (net earnings of $47M) is not exactly going great guns, but they seem to be doing much much better than a year ago.
Their net income was $172MM last year, not $47MM. The biggest difference between their earnings today and their earnings ten years ago is inflation and the recapitalization they did to eliminate their debt and the $50MM annual interest expense (EBITDA went from $235 o $320). Adjusted for inflation, the business is modestly larger today than it was 10 years ago.
There's also the fact that the New York Times basically seized and improved the Fox News model. The Times has thrived precisely because the Professional Managerial Class in the Acela Corridor is a much, much more lucrative market for this model to milk than oldsters in the reddest red states, and the Acela Corridor PMC are even more eager than even Fox News viewers for constant reinforcement of their confirmation biases and grudges.
"n+1 was once a vehicle for getting sensitive-but-horny Harvard graduates some Manhattan pussy"
Ha. I met a few of the n+1 guys a long time ago at a party after they published "Diary of a Very Bad Year: Confessions of an Anonymous Hedge Fund Manager". Perfect description. I forget specifics, but one of them was secretly very rich and embarrassed about it. He was ranting about wall street while wearing a royal oak.
Perhaps you should read the piece, which you talk about so confidently, so that you can be disabused of your flatly incorrect assumptions.
That's definitely a string of words
Thanks for the link to the Daily Beast piece, which is excellent. It is absolutely correct to say that there is an excellent chance that he'd still be alive were he cared for against his will. (I'd further add that this would also be the case were he simply incarcerated against his will for one of his many crimes, but I realize that's not the same as the argument you are making.)
It also had a lot of history I wasn't aware of; I was aware that "Reagan closed the asylums" but the Medicaid aspect and the Kennedy history was new to me. I'm grateful.
I like writing that makes me think, in an unanticipated way.
Most journals, most writers are as predictable as yesterday's dinner.
"The Face of Seung-Hui Cho" is one of the greatest polemics ever put to print. Never before had I seen such a raw, brutal take on the Asian American social position. It is indeed sad that perhaps no journal is willing to touch that sort of essay today, which is why platforms like Substack are so integral to free speech. I've written articles myself that I doubt would be published anywhere else due to their controversial nature, particularly regarding race.
Perhaps one day we'll see a lit mag like this. But the few explicitly anti-woke ones, like IM-1776, seem to go the opposite way in their own form of reaction. I just want a journal that truly allows for well-written controversial viewpoints of all stripes to be heard.
Such an amazing piece, and Freddie's totally right. would be hard to find a prestige publication today that would publish it.
My running theory is that "anti-woke" is just too empty to build anything around, and any project that tries to center that is doomed to fail. Like, I look at all the good "anti-woke" commentators, and they're all built around something that puts being "anti-woke", and I use scare quotes deliberately, downstream from their core. Freddie deBoer has his particular old-school Marxism. Jesse Singal has his nebbish liberalism, while Katie Herzog has still kept that classical gay "don't tell me how to be" vibe. Thomas Chatterton Williams is clearly a guy who read Invisible Man and The Omni-Americans and understood them better than I ever could, and Jeff Maurer has refused to give up on Obama liberalism. If "wokeness" faded from the world tomorrow, all these people would have plenty to write about, and many would be glad they could spend more time on topics that truly interested them. (Though Maurer would definitely have a self-depricating piece about "oh no, I have to come up with better material now".)
At least Substack has the potential for low overhead.
Manhattan office space ain't cheap, yo.
I live that Substack provides a functional platform and landing page for self-publication, where you can cultivate yourself as a writer and hope to gain some reach with it.
It’s been the greatest motivating factor for me to start publishing work as someone outside of the media industry, its practical and streamlined for blogging and forum discussion.
I got a couple good chuckles out of this.
Freddie you may have stewed over the comma for years but clearly not enough, as it is worse than you think. As written the sentence clearly implies that the high population is evidence of the city's poverty.
I share your pain about “the comma”. I wish old media, new new media, or the recently-passed “new” media, would (or would have) employed people who cared more about grammar. Not much turns me off a piece more than crap English. So I appreciate that pieces here are written well, regardless of what is being written about.
It will be interesting to see how the new economy for consumption of the written word continues to evolve. It appears that “traffic” has passed its heyday, at least for this iteration. Even NYT has leaned back towards the subscriber model. And substack is at the forefront of that as well. The balance of the good of supporting “quality” content, vs the bad of silofication, will be interesting to watch in this current/“new” era.
Freddie, as someone who works in the industry you may know more about what this really means than me. In my print edition of n+1 containing the same essay you are writing about, the acknowledgements page lists a veritable who’s who of institutional supporters: a bunch of major publishing house (including FSG, Hatchette and Simon & Schuster), Audible, Amazon Studios, as well as sponsorships from multiple state and federal programs including the NEA.
Simply being listed as a supporter I would guess doesn’t mean much about that group’s level of financial backing of course. But I would think that might have some effect both on its content and its place in the industry. Or am I wrong, and is having a bunch of institutional titans as sponsors basically necessary to fight the losing fight of being a lit mag nowadays?
I guess my question is these magazines can ever fulfill their stated purpose if they exist only due to the beneficence of institutionally embedded benefactors
Legacy media has a Trump problem full stop. That's both the disease and the symptom. When I open up The Atlantic I don't need three articles on Trump, two on DeSantis, and one on MTG. I want, like, actual news and thought. And when anything does get through it's so overly sensitive to not accidently, maybe, saying something that can possibly help the "bad guys" that I really do not trust them. They will bend the truth if it helps "The Narrative" and this has been obvious for a long time. I disagree with a lot of what Freddie says but at least I know he's not going to twist facts or play stupid semantics to score points.
That's why the weirdest thing is that Jamelle Bouie gets a lone name check from the n+1 crowd. He's a ChatGPT prompt that is basically "interpret this news story in the most inflammatory identarian way possible". The living embodiment of a left-wing where the bulk of their morality is defined as being anti-Republican. The number of Republicans he lets live rent free in his head could both swing New York and end the housing crisis. I don't read the news for the left's version of the Tea Party. And as long as this, more than anything, is the ideological tilt of legacy media, then alternative press is going to thrive. I think one reason the NYT has succeeded beyond all others, even employing Bouie, is that they simply cover too much to be monomaniacally Trump obsessed.
It actually isn't weird that Bouie gets a name check when you consider that the whole essay was building up to a critique of the Times for letting some deviations from woke orthodoxy creep in recently.
I mean, I agree with you, but it's still unclear whether legacy media has a Trump problem or a Trump solution. The NYT and WP were dying in 2015 and they appear to have completely rebounded based on just running various articles all day long about how centrist liberals are obviously right and Trump is a horrible horrible man. I don't think it's journalistically ethical or right, but it's not like the mainstream media plotted up this scheme and tricked the public into supporting it...this is the media the customers demanded.
Definitely both
Question: do the NYT and WaPo actually make money now? Or do they simply lose less money?
Those are honest questions, and I realize that, as both the NYT and WaPo are privately held, the answers may not be readily available.
NYT has been making a mint since they moved to a subscription most
Model
They made $173MM last year, down from $220MM the prior year. Over the last 10 years, their revenues are up about 50% in nominal USD. I'm sure it compares favorably to a lot of media properties, but by the standards of, say, a cement company, it's pretty unremarkable. By the standards of, say, a grocery chain operator, it's below average.
The Times is publicly traded (ticker NYT), you can pull up their balance sheet at your stock quote service of choice. I didn't look into it too deeply but they're running a pretty healthy profit these days.
Thanks, and I'm not being snarky. I honestly thought the NYT was still private.
That said, 31x p/e at a share price of $30-something per share (net earnings of $47M) is not exactly going great guns, but they seem to be doing much much better than a year ago.
Their net income was $172MM last year, not $47MM. The biggest difference between their earnings today and their earnings ten years ago is inflation and the recapitalization they did to eliminate their debt and the $50MM annual interest expense (EBITDA went from $235 o $320). Adjusted for inflation, the business is modestly larger today than it was 10 years ago.
There's also the fact that the New York Times basically seized and improved the Fox News model. The Times has thrived precisely because the Professional Managerial Class in the Acela Corridor is a much, much more lucrative market for this model to milk than oldsters in the reddest red states, and the Acela Corridor PMC are even more eager than even Fox News viewers for constant reinforcement of their confirmation biases and grudges.
‘Anyway, I know n+1 must be a good journal, because they published me…’
Easily my favourite part of this piece.
A great bit, but immediately displaced by the actual greatest part of the piece, the parenthetical quibbling over the nine year old comma.
“Hey, remember when I listed you in 30 Under 35-38, Taylor?”
Okay, who else laughed?
That was the only reference I understood.
Does anyone have a link to the Yang essay that isn't behind a pay wall?
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1VvWoCheU0mqBZXU0lkcHK1xySNkPhqPx/view
"n+1 was once a vehicle for getting sensitive-but-horny Harvard graduates some Manhattan pussy"
Ha. I met a few of the n+1 guys a long time ago at a party after they published "Diary of a Very Bad Year: Confessions of an Anonymous Hedge Fund Manager". Perfect description. I forget specifics, but one of them was secretly very rich and embarrassed about it. He was ranting about wall street while wearing a royal oak.
Many such cases!
Your piece fell off the front page because you didn't believe hard enough in the Daily Beast's reputation for excellence.
“n+1 was once a vehicle for getting sensitive-but-horny Harvard graduates some Manhattan pussy”
I haven’t read n+1 in a long time but that quote perfectly encapsulates the n+1 I remember
"This will/might get me laid" has been behind...a significant portion of human endeavor.
Where do you reckon the New York Review of Books and Dissent fit into this?