Exactly this. I found out the embarrassing way (by asking a journalism tutor) how to end up being a writer like Perry Anderson because I enjoyed one of his long

Exactly this. I found out the embarrassing way (by asking a journalism tutor) how to end up being a writer like Perry Anderson because I enjoyed one of his longer pieces in the LRB, reviewing the work of an illustrious writer on the history of the EU (Luk van de Midelaar). He told me if I wanted to be like that, I'd need to contribute to the New Left Review for six decades and also be a Marxist historian. The point being, becoming a peer of that kind is impossible to do through academia, so some people consider it "clubby". It is, perhaps, that these people have been both commercially successful in their niche and influential that confers that peerhood, not shared social ties (although I'm certain those form too).