Jesse Singal

The difference between what I call accuracy and right-side norms within newsrooms is simple. Accuracy norms require journalists to get to the truth. Right-side norms require journalists to prove they’re on the “right” side of controversies. If this includes obscuring or spinning certain facts, so be it. For reasons ranging from politicization to the gutting of smaller and traditional outlets, most American journalism now adheres to right-side norms. Consider the Dave Chappelle controversy. If you don’t yet have an opinion about the jokes Chappelle makes about transgender people in his Netflix special, The Closer, watch it to get them in full context. There’s been enough bloviating about the jokes themselves.

'It’s a little thing, but a big little thing.’ I’ve been using this not-exactly-eloquent phrase lately to describe a category of observation that could be written off as nitpicking, but which isn’t, really. If you notice enough big little things, you might just be able to explain how the world works. One big little thing I’ve been thinking a lot about lately comes from ‘Another Crisis at the Border’, the September 27 edition of The Daily, the blockbuster New York Times podcast. The episode was hosted by Astead Herndon and was mostly a conversation between him and his fellow Times reporter Michael Shear. They discussed the growing crisis at the US/Mexico border, and the large group of mostly Haitian migrants fleeing political and natural disaster.

When a tech guy named Hamish McKenzie first reached out to me in early 2018 to see if I would try out his new newsletter platform Substack, because he thought I could make some money from it, I was skeptical. When I finally wrote him back, in May that year, I said, ‘I’m slightly leery of devoting much time to anything that won’t guarantee pay — I know that sounds somehow crude, but it’s just the reality of being a freelance writer. My book has forced me to do less freelancing than I would have otherwise, and while I’m fine for now, I do need to make sure to budget my time in a responsible way.’ A few years later, I’m exceptionally grateful that I took the plunge. I’m also a bit worried about where it’s nudging me as a writer and a thinker.

It’s very unlikely that I’d be a reasonably successful journalist today if I hadn’t come from an upper-middle-class family. Fresh out of college, I got a series of non- or low-paying internships. It wasn’t until spring of the following year that I found a staff position with benefits (and a salary of $33,000, which at the time seemed like plenty to live on). Because my parents provided financial support and because I had no debt, I was able to gain the experience and connections that helped launch my career. Somewhere, surely, there is a 37-year-old who is very similar to me and who wanted to be a journalist, but who is now doing something else because it just wasn’t feasible, financially.

It’s 2021, and as your new Spectator media columnist I’m here to tell you that the American media is a disaster. It’s not that there aren’t still many exceptionally talented reporters and editors doing good work, against all odds — there are. It’s that the overall scene is being destroyed. Newspapers are on the verge of extinction. Newer, supposedly more agile online-only outlets are shedding staff or shuttering as well. No one has come close to developing a replacement for the funding model that kept journalism humming along nicely until the internet came along and broke everything. Of course, the destruction has birthed creation. Journalistic startups pop up frequently, though few do anything that seems worthwhile and sustainable.