6 ms·

Why Matthew Yglesias Left Vox

49 points by undefined1 6y ago

rayiner 6y ago
I love Matt Yglesias and listen to Weeds regularly. Folks like him, Ezra Klein, Glenn Greenwald, and Matt Taibbi made their names attacking mainstream journalism from the left in the early 2000s. Now, they’ve decamped for platforms like Substack because they can’t speak their minds at liberal media organizations which in some cases they founded! There is a great episode of Megyn Kelly’s new podcast where she and Taibbi commiserate about the direction of mainstream media: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-megyn-kelly-show/id1532976305?i=1000498129323 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-megyn-kelly-show/i.... It’s cats and dogs lying together.
- steve_adams_86 6y ago
  I’ve been finding Glenn’s content hard to follow despite wanting more critical, independent journalism very badly. It feels contrarian and insubstantial since his exit from The Intercept, though. I haven’t read anything insightful or informative from him. I don’t mean to rain on things. I would like to be more excited about independent journalism (and I was until I read it - I subscribed to his content immediately) but I’m really struggling to find much more value in the content than anywhere else. What do you like about it? That’s a sincere question. Maybe I’m out of line here, not reading closely, being grumpy, something.
  - rayiner 6y ago
    I didn’t read Greenwald before, and I don’t read him now. I included him in the list because he did attract a large following during the Bush era. I wasn’t a huge fan of Taibbi either, but his interview with Megyn Kelly really made me give him a second look. He’s has kids now (three, ages 2-6) and seems much mellower and down to earth. I’ve consistently liked Klein and Yglesias. Both very detail oriented. By the way, Jane Coaston who does Weeds with them is a superstar. She’s on The Argument now too. (Both the NYT and Vox are vastly better and more nuanced in their Podcasts than their print media.)
- tptacek 6y ago
  Yglesias, Greenwald, and Taibbi are on Substack because they are minor celebrities, and Substack is lucrative if you're a celebrity. I object to the idea that Yglesias & Klein share a bucket with Greenwald and Taibbi; the former are serious policy pundits, the latter are trolls. People talk about how Yglesias is unable to speak his mind, but David Shor is _ubiquitous_ in the mainstream media right now; nobody ever did anything better for that guy's career than the Civvis Analytics people who fired him. Not that you should let any of those people off the hook, the moral dimension of what they did is unchanged, but it's a strong bit of evidence against the idea that Yglesias was somehow being suppressed at Vox or anywhere else. Yglesias will do better on Substack than as a cog at a media company, and that's fine. (I like him too.)
  - throwawaysea 6y ago
    > I object to the idea that Yglesias & Klein share a bucket with Greenwald and Taibbi; the former are serious policy pundits, the latter are trolls. This seems like a gross mischaracterization. I don’t see them as trolls at all. Do you just disagree with their values/ideas? What makes you use the word “trolls” specifically?
    - harryh 6y ago
      I don't know much about Greenwald, but Taibbi routinely distorts the truth to fit his narrative. I'm not sure if that makes him a troll, but it definitely means he's not a journalist (or at least a good one).
      - newen 6y ago
        Lol, I was about to say, I also object to the idea that Yglesias & Klein share a bucket with Greenwald and Taibbi; the former are so so characters I don't particularly care about, the latter are great journalists. You hang out too much in lefty Twitter.
        harryh 6y ago
        Most of my aversion to Taibbi is from his writing on Wall Street where my views are substantially to the right of his.
- taxicab 6y ago
  > they can’t speak their minds at liberal media In Glenn Greenwald's case at least, it turns out that if you actually assemble a team of excellent editors then they will do their job and prevent you from putting out profoundly bad content. His "unfiltered" phase is just pure contrarianism with no substance.
  - newen 6y ago
    > contrarianism Translation: I can't criticize him on anything subtantive, so I'll just use this word cus it sounds bad or something.
casefields 6y ago
>Earlier this year, for instance, after Yglesias signed a group letter published in Harper’s magazine objecting to cancel culture, one of his colleagues, Emily VanDerWerff, told Vox editors that his signature made her feel “less safe at Vox.” That's truly pathetic. Here's the letter: https://harpers.org/a-letter-on-justice-and-open-debate/ https://harpers.org/a-letter-on-justice-and-open-debate/
- voldacar 6y ago
  Even more pathetic is not the fact that she feels that way, but that she exists within an inter-institutional matrix of power that rewards and incentivizes her for feeling that way
  - civilized 6y ago
    Fire the firers
    - voldacar 6y ago
      Quis accendet ipsos accenditores?
      - ampdepolymerase 6y ago
        The free market. Cancel culture will.
- anshumankmr 6y ago
  If that letter is transphobic, then what isn't transphobic? Does the bar have to be set so low?
anshumankmr 6y ago
>He said he believes that certain voguish positions are substantively wrong—for instance, abolishing or defunding police—and that such arguments, as well as rhetorical fights over terms like Latinx, alienate many people from progressive politics and the Democratic Party. “There’s been endless talk since the election about House Democrats being mad at the ‘Squad,’ and others saying, ‘What do you want, for activists to just not exist? For there to be no left-wing members of Congress?’” Yglesias told me. “But there’s a dynamic where there’s media people who really elevated the profile of [Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez] and a couple of other members way above their actual numerical standing.” Many outlets, he argued, are missing something important. “The people making the media are young college graduates in big cities, and that kind of politics makes a lot of sense to them,” he said. “And we keep seeing that older people, and working-class people of all races and ethnicities, just don’t share that entire worldview. This just hits the nail right on the head.
- hindsightbias 6y ago
  Ironic to see contrarian Matt to be defunded by the new Kundera contrarians. No doubt the perfect gruel for Conor, whose raison d’etre has been the libertarian concern troll who would vote for the Democrat if it just weren’t for that one thing...
xxpor 6y ago
What I have a problem with is trying to equivocate between the Tom Cotton op-ed, which was authoritarian unamerican garbage and Matt saying "hey you know only 3% of Latinx people use the term Latinx, maybe we should chill a bit". These are not the same. The real reason he left is because he can make a lot more money writing on Substack! He's still going to host Vox's flagship podcast! https://twitter.com/jbouie/status/1327294634377289728 https://twitter.com/jbouie/status/1327294634377289728
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

49 points by undefined1 6y ago

I love Matt Yglesias and listen to Weeds regularly. Folks like him, Ezra Klein, Glenn Greenwald, and Matt Taibbi made their names attacking mainstream journalism from the left in the early 2000s. Now, they’ve decamped for platforms like Substack because they can’t speak their minds at liberal media organizations which in some cases they founded! There is a great episode of Megyn Kelly’s new podcast where she and Taibbi commiserate about the direction of mainstream media: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-megyn-kelly-show/id1532976305?i=1000498129323 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-megyn-kelly-show/i.... It’s cats and dogs lying together.

steve_adams_86 6y ago
I’ve been finding Glenn’s content hard to follow despite wanting more critical, independent journalism very badly. It feels contrarian and insubstantial since his exit from The Intercept, though. I haven’t read anything insightful or informative from him. I don’t mean to rain on things. I would like to be more excited about independent journalism (and I was until I read it - I subscribed to his content immediately) but I’m really struggling to find much more value in the content than anywhere else. What do you like about it? That’s a sincere question. Maybe I’m out of line here, not reading closely, being grumpy, something.
- rayiner 6y ago
  I didn’t read Greenwald before, and I don’t read him now. I included him in the list because he did attract a large following during the Bush era. I wasn’t a huge fan of Taibbi either, but his interview with Megyn Kelly really made me give him a second look. He’s has kids now (three, ages 2-6) and seems much mellower and down to earth. I’ve consistently liked Klein and Yglesias. Both very detail oriented. By the way, Jane Coaston who does Weeds with them is a superstar. She’s on The Argument now too. (Both the NYT and Vox are vastly better and more nuanced in their Podcasts than their print media.)
tptacek 6y ago
Yglesias, Greenwald, and Taibbi are on Substack because they are minor celebrities, and Substack is lucrative if you're a celebrity. I object to the idea that Yglesias & Klein share a bucket with Greenwald and Taibbi; the former are serious policy pundits, the latter are trolls. People talk about how Yglesias is unable to speak his mind, but David Shor is _ubiquitous_ in the mainstream media right now; nobody ever did anything better for that guy's career than the Civvis Analytics people who fired him. Not that you should let any of those people off the hook, the moral dimension of what they did is unchanged, but it's a strong bit of evidence against the idea that Yglesias was somehow being suppressed at Vox or anywhere else. Yglesias will do better on Substack than as a cog at a media company, and that's fine. (I like him too.)
- throwawaysea 6y ago
  > I object to the idea that Yglesias & Klein share a bucket with Greenwald and Taibbi; the former are serious policy pundits, the latter are trolls. This seems like a gross mischaracterization. I don’t see them as trolls at all. Do you just disagree with their values/ideas? What makes you use the word “trolls” specifically?
  - harryh 6y ago
    I don't know much about Greenwald, but Taibbi routinely distorts the truth to fit his narrative. I'm not sure if that makes him a troll, but it definitely means he's not a journalist (or at least a good one).
    - newen 6y ago
      Lol, I was about to say, I also object to the idea that Yglesias & Klein share a bucket with Greenwald and Taibbi; the former are so so characters I don't particularly care about, the latter are great journalists. You hang out too much in lefty Twitter.
      - harryh 6y ago
        Most of my aversion to Taibbi is from his writing on Wall Street where my views are substantially to the right of his.
taxicab 6y ago
> they can’t speak their minds at liberal media In Glenn Greenwald's case at least, it turns out that if you actually assemble a team of excellent editors then they will do their job and prevent you from putting out profoundly bad content. His "unfiltered" phase is just pure contrarianism with no substance.
- newen 6y ago
  > contrarianism Translation: I can't criticize him on anything subtantive, so I'll just use this word cus it sounds bad or something.

casefields 6y ago

>Earlier this year, for instance, after Yglesias signed a group letter published in Harper’s magazine objecting to cancel culture, one of his colleagues, Emily VanDerWerff, told Vox editors that his signature made her feel “less safe at Vox.” That's truly pathetic. Here's the letter: https://harpers.org/a-letter-on-justice-and-open-debate/ https://harpers.org/a-letter-on-justice-and-open-debate/

voldacar 6y ago
Even more pathetic is not the fact that she feels that way, but that she exists within an inter-institutional matrix of power that rewards and incentivizes her for feeling that way
- civilized 6y ago
  Fire the firers
  - voldacar 6y ago
    Quis accendet ipsos accenditores?
    - ampdepolymerase 6y ago
      The free market. Cancel culture will.
anshumankmr 6y ago
If that letter is transphobic, then what isn't transphobic? Does the bar have to be set so low?

anshumankmr 6y ago

>He said he believes that certain voguish positions are substantively wrong—for instance, abolishing or defunding police—and that such arguments, as well as rhetorical fights over terms like Latinx, alienate many people from progressive politics and the Democratic Party. “There’s been endless talk since the election about House Democrats being mad at the ‘Squad,’ and others saying, ‘What do you want, for activists to just not exist? For there to be no left-wing members of Congress?’” Yglesias told me. “But there’s a dynamic where there’s media people who really elevated the profile of [Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez] and a couple of other members way above their actual numerical standing.” Many outlets, he argued, are missing something important. “The people making the media are young college graduates in big cities, and that kind of politics makes a lot of sense to them,” he said. “And we keep seeing that older people, and working-class people of all races and ethnicities, just don’t share that entire worldview. This just hits the nail right on the head.

hindsightbias 6y ago
Ironic to see contrarian Matt to be defunded by the new Kundera contrarians. No doubt the perfect gruel for Conor, whose raison d’etre has been the libertarian concern troll who would vote for the Democrat if it just weren’t for that one thing...

xxpor 6y ago

What I have a problem with is trying to equivocate between the Tom Cotton op-ed, which was authoritarian unamerican garbage and Matt saying "hey you know only 3% of Latinx people use the term Latinx, maybe we should chill a bit". These are not the same. The real reason he left is because he can make a lot more money writing on Substack! He's still going to host Vox's flagship podcast! https://twitter.com/jbouie/status/1327294634377289728 https://twitter.com/jbouie/status/1327294634377289728

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]