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Conservative Media Shakeout and Misguided Price Points
I generally read and follow most right-of-center media endeavors, except for those that consistently offer very little (e.g., Heritage Signal, etc.). I have long had a high regard for Jonah Goldberg, usually appreciating his former stance of self-deprecating good humor; I have all of his books, some even autographed. I would have voted for David French for president had he run.
But I do not see the purpose of The Dispatch, Jonah’s new venture with Steve Hayes (former Weekly Standard editor; his book on The Connection is criminally neglected by all of the isolationists out there), and a few others (including David French lured away from National Review). I am not speaking here only as one who believes that the Green Bay Packers are Evil (they are, and Aaron Rodgers is one of the biggest jerks in professional sports; if you know Steve Hayes, you understand why it was necessary for me to point that out about Rodgers and the Packers).
Jonah’s writings are obviously the hoped-for attraction and were, in the past very good, more recently usually OK, except that he seems to have great difficulty finding a column or G-File topic these days that isn’t yet another stale rehash of why Trump is the worst evah. Even for those of us who are not big Trump fans, the broken-record reiteration of the same story, especially when accompanied by shallow “analysis” or simple parroting of the Ben Wittes Lawfare line, gets very old. Very fast. And very tedious.
So, for me, the problem based on what I see so far from The Dispatch, is that I don’t see any compelling value proposition – no space in the market for them to occupy, no value-added that is not there already in multiple places doing the same thing (all too often, drearily repetitive pieces on Bad Trump; Charlie Sykes’ stuff is the worst out there these days) – usually for a lot less or no money. The Dispatch is basically The Bulwark, but at $10 a month. The two operations could be combined with no loss in editorial quality, except that each is run by a different group of otherwise like-minded people who each want to be in charge of her/his own publication.
Why, exactly, would anyone spend $100 a year to read yet another screed against “populism” (Trump) that you read at The Bulwark? If I want to get that steady diet, I can read a special talent like Kevin Williamson (who does roughly the same thing these days). And how is the value offered better than competitors for roughly the same amount of your money, such as the other conservative media organizations, or other non-political competitors for the same pot of money, such as Amazon Prime or Netflix? Ricochet is priced about right, NR Plus when you get the introductory digital subscription for about $59 is fine (incidentally the NR Plus auto-renew at $100 a year is not the prevailing substitution value correct price). Daily Wire is selling Ben Shapiro to his biggest fans at $100 a year; I do not subscribe, Ben is perfectly OK these days, but not to me at that price.
As the industry tries now to backfill a sellable paywall model in the internet media shakeout, conservative media – not just The Dispatch – is guilty of pricing to their perceived revenue need rather than to the market value filling an actual niche. It is like those who after the 2007 financial crisis found their home values underwater and their adjustable mortgage rates increased, so they needed to sell. Lots of people were trying to sell houses that they had unwisely bought at peak prices, and they put them up for sale at prices intended to get them “whole” out of bad mortgages. “I need $500,000, so price this $400,000 home at $525,000.” The market did not cooperate, and the actual prices reverted to pre-bubble vakues, not what would service the debt load.
And, when explaining the mission and positioning for the new media company, Steve Hayes said that the goal was not to be just another place for opinion writing, but to add the all-too-often missing reporting of stories, to add facts, not just viewpoints. So their first move was to add David French from National Review, whose metier is opinion writing, with added analytical pieces on Constitutional law. No shoe-leather reporting there. Then, early-hire Sarah Isgur was a guest on Area 45, the Hoover Institution podcast, and she explained that facts are all out there in this Twitter world of instant reporting, so her most important contribution would be to explain what the facts mean, presumably a la Vox Explainers. No shoe-leather reporting there, in fact, the description was roughly opposite Steve Hayes’ described mission.
Then Declan Garvey visited The Remnant just after the Horowitz Report was released, and a) he had not read it, so b) he and Jonah quoted David French, who seemed to have gotten his spin from reading the NYT – “There was no bias in the FBI, so there was a legitimate reason to run the investigation (and deceive the FISA court to get spy warrants looking anywhere possible for something to verify Steele).” Unlike Byron York, he apparently never got around to reading past the first paragraph of the report itself, nor has he, as far as I can see, acknowledged Horowitz’s Congressional testimony, which substantively contradicts virtually every statement or assumption that Schiff and French and Lawfare have relied on for the last two years.
David says roughly the same thing in every single column in a less entertaining style. His “legal analysis” of the Ukraine issue (published on 12/5/2019 in his newsletter) reads like Andrew Weissmann wrote it, not an allegedly fair-minded lawyer:
I’ve made my position on the House impeachment inquiry quite clear. It’s absolutely impeachable conduct for a president to distort international diplomacy in a strategically vital region of the world to attempt to coerce a desperate, dependent ally into investigating a crackpot conspiracy theory and a domestic political opponent. The president put his own interests above the country—and not in a minor matter. It’s important to set a precedent that such conduct is intolerable.
The statement above simply asserts a conclusion, without support for it, apparently based on the fact that Trump is such an unspeakably horrible person that he must be guilty. This is not reporting, nor is it analysis. It is a set of lazy, bald assertions made based on personal aesthetic distaste. It reflects as little intellectual content and insight as we get from most of Donald Trump’s tweets on policy matters.
Why pay the highest price in conservative media to subscribe to read this?
I think that the market will settle out eventually to the stage where people subscribe to one or two favorite, good value media purveyors at roughly $5 per month each, and use an excellent aggregator for supplemental information. The best of these is probably Real Clear Politics.
Then, after the shakeout is more mature, and the surviving startups have learned the value proposition lesson, someone will create a good value paywall aggregator, where you subscribe to the aggregator for $5 per month, and get a limited number of clicks per month (total for all month perhaps 100 articles including a very few at WSJ, etc.) over and above the two or three free reads now permitted. The administrative model is there already in the way music royalties are handled.
Of course, I could be dead wrong, and The Dispatch could sell a whole bunch of subscriptions at the rates they desire. If so, I will follow the CNN, NYT, and WaPo precedent and pretend that I did not spend the last three years peddling utter nonsense and spoon-fed propaganda, freeing me to be righteously opinionated about everything else.
Published in General
This is probably wrong to say out loud, but I couldn’t help but wonder when Jonah announced that he was beginning a new gig on the Glop podcast what the folks at both Ricochet and NR thought about that, and after looking over the dispatch, I especially wonder that. At least the Bulwark folks have pretty much worn only their new clothes while Jonah wears his pre-gig digs both here and at NR while also advertising his new clothes. NR has far better Trump critics because they make critical cases for their critical views rather than constantly present lofty umbrella phrases as argument and because they are willing to call out the coarse, brutish behavior of the Democratic elite and corporate media. I’m fine with sharp criticisms of the president, but I’m not okay with the penchant these new outlets have of acting as if the president is the total cause rather than a catalytic player in a major upheaval taking place across the globe. And I agree with what I think Duane was saying that a major issue for these folks is aesthetics about norms. I’ve never identified with any politician in this way, so maybe that’s why I do not look for morality in politics and so am not devastated when I don’t find it and why I’m bored by hearing only that.
He said “states” when he meant [some word for all the different units that send delegates to the convention].
But that doesn’t get him off the hook for “Corpsman”.
I think Jonah’s writing peak was Liberal Fascism and has stagnated for quite a few years.
I’m a regular listener to The Remnant podcast as well as GLOP and I generally like his sense of humor, though it can be a little forced at times.
He says, one reason he went into this venture was he looked at, for example, Kevin Williamson, who before he came to NR, was an editor of a small newspaper in the Philadelphia area and had also done time in India as either an editor or reporter. Jonah’s career hasn’t had that three dimensional quality to it.
So with his writing stagnating, and the most important NR management slot filled by Rich Lowry, who isn’t going anywhere any time soon, he takes this risk.
Why not? He hasn’t burned any bridges at NR, and I’m confident he’ll be welcomed back if he wants to come back.
I have a loyalty to Jonah, though I’m not an uncritical fan (I’m not an uncritical fan of anyone), but haven’t decided whether to pay for yet another conservative subscription.
I kind of agree with the OP. I’m not seeing anything original from The Dispatch in comparing other online publications out there.
Did you folks have the same reaction to the start of American
Smallness and MeannessGreatness?Didn’t care. Don’t care about the Dispatch, the Bulwark, or much else. I only have so much bandwidth. I’m getting my money’s worth here.
Oh, I get it now–Petty!
Morality is fairly important.. Trump’s now got a number of former associates in prison and an indicted ex-henchman is now ratting out his Ukraine scheme.
But, if caring about morality is just too prudish for you, then you’ll be happy to know that its Trump’s lying and his boorishness that actually gets the most attention on NT websites. For instance, on Bulwark’s latest podcast, Sykes and Murphy were discussing an incident revealed in a new book about Trump’s ignorant outburst at his top military brass, telling them “I wouldn’t go to war with you people”. Rex Tillerson then called Trump a “moron”. Thats the kind of story that conservatives should care about, even if they don’t care much about morality.
https://www.military.com/daily-news/2020/01/17/dopes-and-babies-fighting-loser-war-trump-reportedly-berated-military-top-brass.html
Why? I care about governance, not hearsay from tell-all books as recounted by the likes of Sykes and Murphy.
It’s really pretty easy. Do you like where the country stands at this point in time or don’t you? If you don’t, and can dig deeper than gossip and into specifics, more power to you.
Well, if all you care about is that your 401k is great…then yes, paying money to hear about Trump acting like an 8 yr old in top military meetings is just something not worth your money. But as a conservative, I actually care least about a chief exeutives ability to temporarily gin up an economy, especially if its only done with mountains of debt anyway. The lying and boorishness actually matter more to me.
I care about my 401(k) but not exclusively about it. I care equally, if not more, about the lying and boorishness in left-wing culture, which IMO, far exceeds what we’re subjected to from the White House and is far more dangerous. I care about not enabling that. I care that border crossings are now down. I care that the regulatory machine in DC has at least been slowed.
But I acknowledge that if I were predisposed to bash Trump, I’d probably go mostly with intangibles since it’s low hanging, if somewhat inconsequential, fruit. If I cared about actual substance, well there’s a very real problem with federal spending to focus on without having to put up with Sykes and Murphy.
Nixon and Johnson planted lies in the media to pressure others. Anti-Semitic venom was not uncommon from them in conversation. Clinton was a revolting hound dog. The Bushes, Reagan and Obama were better mannered. Trump’s outbursts (if true) are at a midpoint.
Conflating bad manners with “morality” as if it were akin to the sleazoid Clintons or high crime lawbreaking of Nixon is silly.
None of Trump’s “lies” ( misstatements more like PT Barnum’s than Obama’s) taken singly or together are as vile as the lies told about him by his enemies as we now know with certainty.
A willingness to believe any negative statement about Trump without the slightest care whether it’s true or whether it foments broad damage to the national discourse is not the disposition of someone I would look to for moral guidance. Get back to us when you have a better handle on “morality.”
Reading and/or listening to some of those at The Bulwark and other like-minded types, you can’t help but wonder how strong their commitment to conservatism was in the first place, if they’re willing to flip their supposed long-standing beliefs because they can’t deal with being on the same side of the issue as Trump (I was actually happily surprised last week when Tom Nichols didn’t go there, and did not join the chorus of people blaming Trump from Iran shooting down the Ukrainian airliner. He still hit Trump on 3-4 different things over the Soleimani wipe-out, but it was kind of like that Star Trek episode when Gary Mitchell’s eyes go back to normal after he gets shocked by the force field — for just a moment, Nichols went back to not being driven mad by Trump, before returning to the post-2016 status quo).
The Dispatch’s punditarians haven’t jettisoned their views simply due to Trump also sharing them. And while Jonah may think Trump doesn’t know why he shares them, because he’s not a real conservative, you could say the same thing about the #NeverTrumpers — why were they intellectually conservatives if one crude guy changes their minds?
Lest I come across as my own version of a Johnny OneNote, I will state again my belief that we’re into a political realignment. The right is getting more populist as a reaction to the establishment’s sense of “enlightened transnationalism” and the left is going more hardcore Communist at the end of the Marxist long march through the institutions. That leaves those who favor what was considered the center just 10-15 years ago grasping for what they consider “normalcy.”
The left have embraced their new status. Those on the right are fighting among themselves. The biggest problem for the Bush-era conservatives is that they have lost too much credibility. They can say, “This is what I have always believed” but cannot answer to the charge “But that is not how you governed when you had the chance.”
True.
I care a great deal about morality in terms of myself. It’s that involving others I don’t feel so obliged to condemn, especially in the coliseum of politics. The presidents theatrics are legion. Must we go on and on about what we already know? BTW, I’m likely one of the least prudish women/persons you’re likely to meet.
Could either of you elaborate on that? What has Trump accomplished that Rubio or Daniels or Walker would not have? Bush didn’t have Harry Reid getting rid of the filibuster for him, or he’d be every bit as accomplished as Trump in my opinion.
Getting elected.
Moving the embassy to Jerusalem is just one tiny thing. Could Bush have done it at any time? Of course. But he didn’t. And neither would have the three you mentioned. And just to set the record, Trump was my seventeenth of seventeen choices. My first choice was Walker. He bowed out. From there, I was for Cruz and voted for him/against Trump in the primary. In the general, I voted against Hillary. I was not one early to the Trump Train, but he has done a great job and done things that the Bushes didn’t do when they could. This despite everyone in the press getting their knickers in a twist over his every action’s engendering the end of the world. I don’t believe for a moment that any of the other candidates or non-candidates would have brought us as far as Trump has. It’s easy to claim they would have, but none of them were nearly obnoxious enough to get all of this done.
Alternative history is tough, I’m pretty sure I won’t change anyone’s mind, but I think any of the three would have moved the embassy. I think they all would have demanded Bibi promise to tear down the most egregious “outlaw” settlements in return, but that’s something the vast majority of Israelis want anyway. We’re no longer dependent on anyone’s oil, the Arabs have a tacit alliance with Israel against a greater enemy, and everyone’s tired of the Palestinian’s corruption and dysfunction. All those facts were not available to Bush. I don’t think obnoxiousness is required for performance – I think we’d have much more done by now with a capable, competent President.
True. I write the stuff.
Sure. But let me begin by saying that the following complaints about past GOP leadership is NOT a claim that Donald Trump is doing these things better, because he’s obviously not on many of these issues. But the lack of action on these issues created an opening for Trump in this regard: We had 17 candidates for president and 16 of them were guaranteed to run scared all the time and to bow to every demand of the Left in the most graceful way possible. When you ask, “What has Trump accomplished that Rubio or Daniels or Walker would not have?” I’d answer, “Not caving on Brett Kavanaugh, for one.” Any of those candidates not named Trump would have stuck their finger into the leftist media wind and folded like a cheap lawnchair.
But if you look at the long litany of GOP promises in the post-Reagan world, promises that they ran on again and again and again – and failed to deliver on again and again and again – despite taking our votes and our money, then you start looking elsewhere. For better or worse, Trump was that elsewhere.
We talked big on abortion and Title X funding has never decreased. We talked debt reduction and it always went up. We talked about securing the borders and awarded amnesty. We bragged how world trade was lifting everyone and their brother out of poverty while ignoring our own dying communities. We had our candidate for the presidency in 2000 say, “I don’t think our troops ought to be used for what’s called nation-building. I think our troops ought to be used to fight and win war.” And then we elected him, went to war, didn’t fight to win and engaged in nation-building.
Now all of the NeverTrumpers like to talk about “first principles,” but principles that are unacted upon are no principles at all. And you can’t say the American people didn’t give them the chance. For six years at the beginning of this century the GOP held all the cards – the House, the Senate and the White House. And what did they do with it? Everything but what they spent 30 years promising they’d do.
I wasn’t there ( and neither were you) but I first always wonder, were these his exact words? Could they have been something else? What was the context? It could have been a throwaway joke. BUT, let’s stipulate that it’s 100% accurate, which is actually my sincere hope:
How do we know these are truly competent men as warriors? I’m sorry I’ve seen too many Generals who are more politician than warrior. Can I name names? Wesley Clark. There are more going back to the Revolutionary War (Benedict Arnold, and no, I’m not calling any of these men traitors) Could the Generals (Westmoreland) of Vietnam have used a good dressing down? I think freakin’so.
Is it possible that after 18 years of limping failure in Afghanistan and endless promises and assurances by these Generals that this time it’s gonna be different and we can’t leave now speeches have gotten old while our boy’s legs are getting blown off?
Do I want a President who calls out Generals to their faces? Damn straight I do.
So the reaction of these people being so appalled at this automatically, shows me once again, that they are manifestly unfit to bring cogent analysis and are actually contributing to the problem.
Objection your honor. This may be true. Or it may be an exaggeration. I have no basis to evaluate it.
I am not denying there hasn’t been a cost to some. And, I respect people who choose honor over lucre.
From the outside, it appears as if all the prominent right wing Trump critics enjoy a comfortable upper middle class lifestyle. I have yet to see a “name” pundit standing on a street corner holding a hand scrawled sign reading “Will pontificate for food.”
As Hyman Roth said, “This is the business we’ve chosen.”
Excuse me, but aren’t you saying that Cruz, Rubio, or Jeb would have done the same things that Trump was able to do in large part because of achieving energy independence etc, which Trump accomplished but Cruz, Rubio, or Jeb likely would not have?
That seems like a pretty ridiculous claim.
Arnold was the opposite. He was a competent warrior, but not really a politician. Congress promoted other (political) men over him and gave them credit for his victories, which is part of what turned him away from the US. He could not convince Congress to reimburse his legitimate expenses where he pulled money out of his pocket to feed and clothe his men. He also detested the French from the last war, and was unhappy that Congress accepted their assistance against the English. He was not enough politician to set that old hatred aside and work with his people’s traditional enemies to achieve a goal. He felt it was inviting the French in to a family squabble. From his perspective, it was better that he rejoin his people (The English) than ally with the French. He was definitely more warrior than politician.
There hasn’t been a troop battle death in Afghanistan in 4 years, and barely any in Iraq. Trump is facing the fewest hard military decisions of any of the last 3 presidents by far. He also is the most ignorant and the most cowardly and the most dissrespectful of the 3. If he can’t even handle the fairly tame cleanup war effort we have right now without devolving into petulant tirades…its painfully clear he’d be a complete dumpster fire if he had to lead a major campaign involving far greater risks. He should stick to droning enemy generals. Thats about all he can handle.
Well, good for you! But it’s not just about 401k’s
It’s 7 million new jobs, rising wages for those whose wages have been stagnant for two decades, and a complete revival of America’s manufacturing base. Even if that’s somehow “temporary”, ( because we know your faction is so great at predicting the future) it still pretty good for the people who might like a decent job, like, now, instead of sometime in the future when the will really need it by your brilliant calculations.
As to debt. Please cite which Republicans have done one small thing about this issue. You can’t single-out Trump as your boogeyman until you can defend that.
More or less addressing the OP directly, I expect that as has been shown that MSNBC’s ratings went up after the Trump election while Fox News’s went down, The Dispatch MIGHT have a chance at eking out some degree of existence as long as they can get the “protest subscriptions,” i.e. during Trump’s presidency. But as soon as Trump is out of office – either next year, or in 2025 – The Dispatch is likely to fold, at least if it’s actually based on subscriptions. If it’s actually/mostly being supported by some other deep pockets, it might go for a while longer. But eventually even deep pockets might wonder “Trump is gone, so why am I paying for this, exactly?”
Seems to me that it’s pretty clear the big money is on the Left, especially those who really go after Trump. Maybe Jonah is saving that move for if Trump is re-elected? In a way he better hope that happens, because I don’t see his funding sources – either subscribers, or deep pockets – continuing if Trump doesn’t get re-elected. A Trump re-election could keep (the latest version of) Jonah “in clover” for another 4 years, anyway. If Trump isn’t re-elected, Jonah might have to… I dunno, “learn to code?”
More ignorant and cowardly and disrespectful than Obama? Or Clinton? Bush served in the National Guard. I might give him the possibility of being more knowledgeable about the military, and he was certainly more respectful, even when he shouldn’t have been. But Obama? You are either forgetting a hell of a lot of history or never paid enough attention in the first place.
Trump has stated goals, and he wants them met. The generals are either not accomplishing his goals, or are working against them in contravention of their oaths. The military is under civilian control, not the other way around.