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Real journalism serves an important function in society. I've just subscribed to @TheEconomist to do my part and underscore this point: my call to bury the rotting corpse of the NYT is not meant as an attack on the very few real journalist institutions remaining. We need more.
Clarification: I think having Big Buildings Containing People With Press Passes, that do at least some real journalism, is still horrifyingly vital to modern society. If you just want one more honest blogger, sure, support them directly via Substack.
"Why?" you ask. (A): Because some investigations work better when you show up with an Official Press Pass that places you in the recognized social role of an Investigator to the bureaucrat, and announces you have a non-dismissable moderately powerful institution behind you...
(B): Because many people live halfway in the shadow-world of what they believe that other people believe. They may not believe-and-bet-on what newspapers say, but *do* take what's in the newspaper as their *social* reality. Announcing social reality takes a big building.
Society has yet to be redesigned to work without either of these roles, and given that's how society works, it actually matters a lot that *somebody* can do Press Investigations, and *some* social reality *somewhere* be announced by a big building that is relatively more sane.
That said, I'd be even more eager to support any real, press-pass-issuing, relatively-saner-coverage institution that didn't have a paywall! It is a surprisingly large problem for our society that @TheEconomist has a paywall and Faux News doesn't.
Huh. Didn't know that. That said, I prioritize the social-reality function over the investigative function, and I'm not sure I'd rate FT coverage on the same level of facilitates-saner-social-reality as the Economist. https://twitter.com/polisisti/status/1361096544578109450?s=20
