I just got around to reading your review, Jim, and it persuaded me to buy and read Baron's book. Whatever its or his flaws or shortcomings, it surely is an essential chronicle of newspapering in our time, maybe not unlike - in a different way and covering different ground - Alan Rusbridger's fascinating Breaking News (which of course should not be confused with your own great Breaking the News, which preserves a now long-ago moment as in amber).
Baron might well have written a good book. But on the political side, his tenure at the POST didn't rise to the challenge. As he explained in VANITY FAIR, the POST under his editorship didn't tell its readership clearly and consistently the truth about Trump that he himself recognized, because it had to be "more diplomatic." That outlook drove coverage, including continued "both-sidesing" and intentional refusal to call Trump's falsehoods "lies," plainly and simply. It also seem to have been behind his general refusal to accept the advice so often provided by so many thoughtful journalism analysts such as Jay Rosen, Dan Froomkin, and of course James Fallows. The result, as Paul Farhi makes clear in today's POST, is a continuing inability to cover Trump adequately.
An important factor for Baron and other press leaders seems to be a continuing desire to find something, anything that will bring Trumpists to mainstream media. They appear to think that if they downplay the facts adequately, take the edges off their condemnations, and otherwise play to Trumpist sympathies, they can recover that readership. There's no evidence that such a thing is possible, and in the meantime Baron's dedication to that goal weakened the POST as a truth-teller. Democracy doesn't have to die in darkness; it can also perish in part in the light of an editor's office.
I think you explain the predicament well. All the factors you list in your second paragraph add up to the unending, amazingly powerful tidal pull we shorthand as "both-sides-ism."
Apart from this book (which, again, I think is "actually good," and more interesting than you would think from his press interviews), I have long given Baron credit because he seemed less afflicted by this syndrome than his counterpart at the Times, Dean Baquet. (And the Post's coverage therefore, in my view, overall less both-sides-y than the NYT's through the period between The Golden Escalator in 2015 and the Mob at the Capitol in 2021.)
I agree that Baron performed better than Baquet, although that achievement involves clearing a pretty low bar. He would have done much better, however, if he had paid more attention to the thoughtful advice about how to improve press performance provided through the years by so many experienced analysts.
I'm especially troubled by the persistence of the way, as Josh Marshall has put it, that D.C. is "hardwired for the GOP." This proclivity, which you have described as "deeply engrained in mainstream coverage," is a major cause of reality distortion in reporting. The idea behind it is essentially that only Democrats have agency and can be expected to behave responsibly. We have seen that concept in the absurd idea that Democrats are somehow responsible for the chaos in the House Republican caucus that led to Speaker McCarthy's fall. Baron must have been aware of that problem, and he could and should have done more to combat it.
I'd also put him far NPR, and also far above what either the Times or the Post is putting out today. Don't know if your heard it, bot on the part of All Things Considered I heard in the car, Ari Shapiro seemed surprised that British, Brazilian, and Arab reporters said that their readers knew who was responsible for thee House's collapse and knew who the players were. It's called responsible reporting, I muttered.
I thought the Post dropped off noticeably when Busbee took over.
Also Tomasky echoed Josh Marshall's complaint writing on the two medias working against Biden. However. TNR's home page coverage of Biden has been quite negative, too.
My favorite editorial name, Benjamin Crowninshield Bradlee, once was asked what it was like to work for the Grahams by saying he gave thanks every day. Jeff Bezos seems to be trying to maintain at least some of that tradition. Now if they would just zero out the people who cover politics so that we wouldn't see Fred Ryan's dreams come true ... and if only Marty Baron had seen that.
My most direct contact with The Washington Post was quite different than yours. I was asked, in the early 1980s, to be a reference for Katherine Graham by a candidate for the presidency of The Washington Post Company.
I prepared assiduously for her call. She was a delight with a wonderful laugh. That I had help facilitate Jesse Lewis’s study trip to the Middle East she found interesting, since Jesse later became the first (or one of the first) Black journalists at the Post.
For an hour we have a rollicking discussion. Finally I said “Anyone who can put up with a pain in the ass like me and make me highly productive seems perfect for the Post position.” Her laugh consumed fifteen seconds. Then she said ‘I don’t need to go further. Dick is my man.’
Deb and I had a chance to meet and spend time with Katherine Graham several times in the 1970s and 1980s. What a gracious person.
Deb wrote a book in the 1980s that was very controversial — 'A Mother's Work,' an early feminist case for being an all-in attentive mother. Katherine Graham went out of her way to reassure Deb — this at a time when there was absolutely nothing KG had to gain from that generosity.
I just got around to reading your review, Jim, and it persuaded me to buy and read Baron's book. Whatever its or his flaws or shortcomings, it surely is an essential chronicle of newspapering in our time, maybe not unlike - in a different way and covering different ground - Alan Rusbridger's fascinating Breaking News (which of course should not be confused with your own great Breaking the News, which preserves a now long-ago moment as in amber).
Baron might well have written a good book. But on the political side, his tenure at the POST didn't rise to the challenge. As he explained in VANITY FAIR, the POST under his editorship didn't tell its readership clearly and consistently the truth about Trump that he himself recognized, because it had to be "more diplomatic." That outlook drove coverage, including continued "both-sidesing" and intentional refusal to call Trump's falsehoods "lies," plainly and simply. It also seem to have been behind his general refusal to accept the advice so often provided by so many thoughtful journalism analysts such as Jay Rosen, Dan Froomkin, and of course James Fallows. The result, as Paul Farhi makes clear in today's POST, is a continuing inability to cover Trump adequately.
An important factor for Baron and other press leaders seems to be a continuing desire to find something, anything that will bring Trumpists to mainstream media. They appear to think that if they downplay the facts adequately, take the edges off their condemnations, and otherwise play to Trumpist sympathies, they can recover that readership. There's no evidence that such a thing is possible, and in the meantime Baron's dedication to that goal weakened the POST as a truth-teller. Democracy doesn't have to die in darkness; it can also perish in part in the light of an editor's office.
I think you explain the predicament well. All the factors you list in your second paragraph add up to the unending, amazingly powerful tidal pull we shorthand as "both-sides-ism."
Apart from this book (which, again, I think is "actually good," and more interesting than you would think from his press interviews), I have long given Baron credit because he seemed less afflicted by this syndrome than his counterpart at the Times, Dean Baquet. (And the Post's coverage therefore, in my view, overall less both-sides-y than the NYT's through the period between The Golden Escalator in 2015 and the Mob at the Capitol in 2021.)
I agree that Baron performed better than Baquet, although that achievement involves clearing a pretty low bar. He would have done much better, however, if he had paid more attention to the thoughtful advice about how to improve press performance provided through the years by so many experienced analysts.
I'm especially troubled by the persistence of the way, as Josh Marshall has put it, that D.C. is "hardwired for the GOP." This proclivity, which you have described as "deeply engrained in mainstream coverage," is a major cause of reality distortion in reporting. The idea behind it is essentially that only Democrats have agency and can be expected to behave responsibly. We have seen that concept in the absurd idea that Democrats are somehow responsible for the chaos in the House Republican caucus that led to Speaker McCarthy's fall. Baron must have been aware of that problem, and he could and should have done more to combat it.
I'd also put him far NPR, and also far above what either the Times or the Post is putting out today. Don't know if your heard it, bot on the part of All Things Considered I heard in the car, Ari Shapiro seemed surprised that British, Brazilian, and Arab reporters said that their readers knew who was responsible for thee House's collapse and knew who the players were. It's called responsible reporting, I muttered.
I thought the Post dropped off noticeably when Busbee took over.
Also Tomasky echoed Josh Marshall's complaint writing on the two medias working against Biden. However. TNR's home page coverage of Biden has been quite negative, too.
My favorite editorial name, Benjamin Crowninshield Bradlee, once was asked what it was like to work for the Grahams by saying he gave thanks every day. Jeff Bezos seems to be trying to maintain at least some of that tradition. Now if they would just zero out the people who cover politics so that we wouldn't see Fred Ryan's dreams come true ... and if only Marty Baron had seen that.
Yes. On all points.
My most direct contact with The Washington Post was quite different than yours. I was asked, in the early 1980s, to be a reference for Katherine Graham by a candidate for the presidency of The Washington Post Company.
I prepared assiduously for her call. She was a delight with a wonderful laugh. That I had help facilitate Jesse Lewis’s study trip to the Middle East she found interesting, since Jesse later became the first (or one of the first) Black journalists at the Post.
For an hour we have a rollicking discussion. Finally I said “Anyone who can put up with a pain in the ass like me and make me highly productive seems perfect for the Post position.” Her laugh consumed fifteen seconds. Then she said ‘I don’t need to go further. Dick is my man.’
Wonderful story, thank you.
Deb and I had a chance to meet and spend time with Katherine Graham several times in the 1970s and 1980s. What a gracious person.
Deb wrote a book in the 1980s that was very controversial — 'A Mother's Work,' an early feminist case for being an all-in attentive mother. Katherine Graham went out of her way to reassure Deb — this at a time when there was absolutely nothing KG had to gain from that generosity.