You probably missed it in the hustle and bustle of prepping for your family’s Thanksgiving feast, but last week, the New York Times published a jaw-dropping article so embarrassing for those involved that I shudder to think it will live on the internet forever.
The article is headlined, “Chaos on Twitter Leads a Group of Journalists to Start an Alternative.”
Don’t laugh. This is serious.
You see, when Elon Musk bought Twitter and then bungled the initial rollout of a blue-check verification program open to anyone inclined to pay eight bucks per month, journalist Adam Davidson, formerly of Planet Money and the Times, heroically worked to set up a new social network — called “journa.host” — to save the world of journalism. After all, Elon’s purchase of the third- or fourth-most popular American social-media network is, to Davidson, “a crisis for journalists.”
“It felt scary to imagine a world where false verification would reign,” Davidson told the Times in what I hope was exaggeration for effect even though we all know it wasn’t.
Of course, since journa.host is open only to card-carrying members of the ink-stained wretch guild, whose membership is determined by — you guessed it — the ink-stained wretches themselves, it’s going about as well as you’d expect.
On Nov. 18, the journalist Mike Pesca, who hosts the popular news podcast “The Gist,” posted a link to a Times story about health concerns associated with the puberty-blocking drugs sometimes prescribed to transgender youths, writing, “This seemed like careful, thorough reporting.”
In response, Parker Molloy, a journalist who writes the Substack newsletter “The Present Age,” accused Mr. Pesca of anti-trans bigotry, and then posted angrily at Mr. Davidson for not removing the post. . . .
Zach Everson, one of the journa.host administrators, responded that he agreed with Ms. Molloy, then added, “Banning someone for posting a link to an NYT article sets a precedent that we really need to work through.”
On Saturday, journa.host suspended Mr. Pesca, who was informed via a text message from Mr. Davidson, a longtime friend. (The two are currently writing an exchange of letters hosted on Substack, about the nature of cancel culture.)
Don’t laugh! Again, this is serious — a “crisis” even.
But yes, you’d need a heart of stone not to laugh.
Here at National Review, we’ll make you a promise: We’ll never, ever take ourselves so seriously that we can’t laugh at the absurd cliques and moral panics of the mainstream press. If you find yourself laughing at CNN or the New York Times or, heaven help us, the denizens of the Columbia Journalism School, don’t worry — you’re in good company, and we’re laughing at them too.
But at NR, we do more than laugh at their absurdities: We also cover the stories they won’t.
For more than a year, anyone who questioned the party-line natural-origin theory of COVID was deemed crazy or worse. That didn’t stop NR’s Jim Geraghty from soberly investigating the lab-leak theory. He should have won a Pulitzer Prize for his work, though I won’t hold my breath.
Ever since his victory in the Democratic primary became assured, any discussion of Joe Biden’s self-evident mental decline has been entirely taboo in the mainstream press. That didn’t stop Michael Brendan Dougherty from asking the tough questions in the pages of National Review.
And while anyone who questioned the efficacy of genital surgery or hormone therapies for transgender kids is dismissed as a crazy-eyed bigot, NR staff writer Madeleine Kearns has taken the slings and arrows and refused to stay silent, reporting fearlessly about the radical vanguard.
At NR, we’re proud of this work. We see it as a vital corrective for what you’ll get in the big papers, the cable networks, or even your local news. But we couldn’t do any of it without you.
If you see value in our work, if you think the real crisis is the state of American journalism at large, please consider supporting our work.
There’s much to be done if we’re to turn America back towards a foundation centered on the citizen, the family, and the local community — as well as the basic sanity that you couldn’t find with a microscope on a social network like journa.host. Please join us.
