The Washington press corps failed to identify President Biden’s cognitive decline for many reasons. Sure, one reason was reporters and editors’ ideological bias, but it wasn’t the only and may not have been the most important reason. Read more
Peoples Temple leader Jim Jones should never have gotten as far as he did. He was like the abusers in the Catholic Church, universities, and Boy Scouts who for decades got away with their crimes partly because officials were clueless or incompetent. Is it asking too much of documentarians and filmmakers to set the historical record straight about Jonestown? Read more
Generative AI has a dirty little secret: Its content is often shallow, little or no better than data you can find on Google, Bing, or traditional search engines. Read more
I used to work with David Grann, author of Killers of the Flower Moon, among other smash-hit nonfiction books. When he was a staff writer, his office was around the corner from me and the other interns at The New Republic. Even for a newbie like me, it was difficult to avoid the conclusion David worked differently in the office than the rest of us on staff.
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Journalists are an aging species. Yet one journalistic type may be said to be endangered: the one who courts controversy like the late Christopher Hitchens, Molly Ivins, and William F. Buckley, Jr. In a democracy, this is a shame. Read more
Last Saturday night, at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner President Biden urged reporters to follow his lead by covering what he wants them to cover. The problem with his plea was not that he made it. The problem would be if reporters heeded his advice. Read more
In Washingtonian magazine this month, New York Times book critic Carlos Lozada discussed how he turns the straw of reading political memoirs into the gold of an art form. Read more
Calling out your political or ideological opponent or opposite has long been easy intellectually. If attacked, you can appeal to like-minded supporters. Calling out someone on your own political “team” or tribe—well, that’s a dicey proposition. Read more
How author David Fryxell, former editor of Writer’s Digest, organizes and structures his writing. Read more
Is American journalism facing, as a recent Atlantic story said, an “existential moment”? The news about the news might not be as unrelievedly bad as described. Read more
