I'm getting twinges in my neck indicating that I've been spending too much time looking at the computer, and I've got some computer-heavy work coming up in the next couple of weeks, so expect reduced blogging in the next few days. I couldn't let this essay in the New Yorker (via Matt Yglesias) pass without comment, though. It's arguing for a model of endowment-supported nonprofit journalism, but along the way it takes a shot at my alma mater:
Not to pick on any one institution, but, from a constitutional perspective, how did we end up in a society where Williams College has (or had, before September) an endowment well in excess of one billion dollars, while the Washington Post, a fountainhead of Watergate and so much other skeptical and investigative reporting critical to the republic's health, is in jeopardy?
I just can't let this one slide. Sure, Washington Post broke the story about Watergate, but don't think Williams had no role: Jeb Stuart Magruder is a Williams alumnus.
Williams also produced former Education Secretary and noted gambler William Bennett, and Yankee owner and noted loudmouth George Steinbrenner, so Williams has done a lot for journalism. Steinbrenner alone probably accounts for at least 10% of the revenue of the New York Post over the past three decades...
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The author must be an Amherst guy.
I'm having a difficult time making sense of what this "constitutional perspective" is supposed to be. That whole quote seems kinda nonsensical to me, actually, and I even agree with the implicit idea that college endowments have gotten ridiculous these days. Do newspapers currently run on anything like an endowment model? I thought ad revenue was the major driver.
If Williams producing graduates can financially vastly outperform the Washington Post employing salesmen, then more's the pity. Perhaps Post hiring policies should target competence rather than drinking buddiness. The Founding Fathers were dope growers (Washington), slave humpers (Jefferson), libertines (Franklin)... all manner of petit-bourgeois crooks and louts. Mongrels win street fights, pedigrees win dog shows.
A key factor which Matt did not mention explicitly in his post (it may have been buried in one of the links) is that the Washington Post of the last decade resembles the Washington Post of the Watergate era in name only. They still have a few good journalists, but the important stuff often gets buried on the inside and the front page has often been a mouthpiece for the Bush administration. (See Bob Somerby or Glenn Greenwald for more.) Who is/are the modern equivalent of Woodward and Bernstein? The crew at Talking Points Memo are strong candidates--indeed, I would sooner turn to TPM than the WaPo for political news.
In answer to bcooper's question: Yes, the Guardian in the UK operates on this model. That's the only prominent example I know of.
The Irish Times (Ireland) also uses the model.