I wrote a story for the California Globe about the site CalMatters lecturing the California Globe. If that sounds like the kind of inside baseball that’s only interesting to media professionals, it kinda is. I tried to make the point that there’s a larger issue at stake here — it’s not just about the unsurprising judgement the left-leaning CalMatters has arrived at regarding right-leaning California Globe. The more important principle here is the trend afoot in which established media outlets seem to be asserting some sort of new right to declare who is and is not worthy of the profession.
I’ve been watching in horror as writers on Substack have demanded that the platform drop other writers or abandon it altogether, often accompanied by weepy, self-aggrandizing “why I’m leaving Substack” posts.