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This might be promising

edited January 14 in Off-Topic
In todays Letter From an American Heather Cox Richardson wrote:

"And today journalist Jennifer Rubin joined her colleagues who have abandoned the Washington Post as it swung toward Trump. She resigned from the Washington Post with the announcement that she and former White House ethics lawyer Norm Eisen have started a new media outlet called The Contrarian. Joining them is a gold-star list of journalists and commentators who have stood against the rise of Trump and the MAGA Republicans, many of whom have left publications as those outlets moved rightward.

“Corporate and billionaire owners of major media outlets have betrayed their audiences’ loyalty and sabotaged journalism’s sacred mission—defending, protecting and advancing democracy,” Rubin wrote in her resignation announcement. In contrast, the new publication “will be a central hub for unvarnished, unbowed, and uncompromising reported opinion and analysis that exists in opposition to the authoritarian threat.”

“The urgency of the task before us cannot be overstated,” The Contrarian’s mission statement read. “We have already entered the era of oligarchy—rule by a narrow clique of powerful men (almost exclusively men). We have little doubt that billionaires will dominate the Trump regime, shape policy, engage in massive self-dealing, and seek to quash dissent and competition in government and the private sector. As believers in free markets subject to reasonable regulation and economic opportunity for all, we recognize this is a threat not only to our democracy but to our dynamic, vibrant economy that remains the envy of the world.”

In what appears to be a rebuke to media outlets that are cozying up to Trump, The Contrarian’s credo is “Not Owned by Anybody.”"

Edited to add:
If you're interested here is the Link to The Contrarian
You might have to go through the Substack signup procedure prior to reading further I don't know for sure.

Comments

  • edited January 14
    Excellent!!!! I couldn't see how JR could hang around very long after the WaPo lurch to the dark side. It's great to see she didn't, and the new venture looks, well like @Mark said, promising.

    Another JR quote about the mission of The Contrarian: “Our goal is to combat, with every fiber of our being, the authoritarian threat that we face.”

    More here: The Hits Keep Coming for the Washington Post.

    P.S. I signed up for the free version, and according to the welcome message, here's a list of "other voices" The Contrarian will host. Never heard of a lot of them, but I see a few others that look good.
    Those voices include Allegra Lawrence-Hardy, Andrew Weissmann, Andy Borowitz, Asha Rangappa, Barb McQuade, Bob Kagan, David Litt, Esosa Osa, George Conway, Harry Litman, Ilan Goldenberg, John Dean, Jonathan Alter, Joyce Vance, Katie Phang, Karen Agnifilo, Kim Lane Scheppele, Laurence Tribe, Lavora Barnes, Michael Podhorzer, Nancy Gertner, Olivia Julianna, Renato Mariotti, Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Stephen Richer, Tom Joscelyn, and many more to come.
  • Good stuff, thanks @Mark. Controlling the media is a big part of Orange's plan for his ....sigh....second term.

    In an ideal world, we wouldn't have to choose sides when selecting our media feeds.
  • @JD_co: We used to live more or less in that world. No more.
  • Thanks, Mark.
    I'm going to take The Contrarian for a trial run.
  • edited January 15
    My thanks also, @AndyJ. I am giving The Contrarian a shot. A strike against newspapers in NYC in 1962-3 brought talented journalists together and the result was The New York Review of Books. Let’s hope The Contrarian lasts as long and has equal prestige..
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