Article in The Nation by Chris Lehmann, 10/24/24

Headline:  “Media Elites Are the Last People to Ask About the Future of Journalism”

Subhead:  “And New York magazine’s latest cover package does just that.”

“It’s an admittedly minor wrinkle in the mass derangement building up to the 2024 election, but future historians will be at a loss to explain why New York magazine chose this moment to roll out a cover package that ballyhoos the deep thoughts of media industry executives. The quote-extravaganza  . . .is a bit like canvassing the designer of the Hindenburg on the future of air travel.”

Then there’s the question of timing: the lords of the press are holding forth on how their prestige outlets will survive t the precise moment they’re fucking up coverage of the 2024 election on an epic scale. Any intelligible understanding of the press’s role has to start with the mandate the country’s founders formalized in the First Amendment—the pivotal need to cultivate and sustain an informed citizenry.”

“. . .  battery of 57 pop-up news managers have [not] word one to say about this function of the press. That’s likely because a significant number of them are deeply enmeshed in normalizing the demented, fascistic candidacy of Donald Trump, and generally treating a critical election cycle as a glorified reality TV spectacle. Indeed, in an awkward karmic coincidence, New York unleashed its future-of-the-media package just as it officially severed ties with its star politics reporter, Olivia Nuzzi, for carrying out digital intimacies with Robert F. Kennedy. . . ”

“. . . Reporters and commentators should seek a higher calling, or our ailing democracy is at risk of going the way of the pivot to video. If the bosses won’t stand for it, it’s the bosses who need to go.”

https://www.thenation.com/article/society/new-york-media-elites/