Well, it’s a great response and better written than anything I can provide in reply.

I will say a few things:

1) my comment about the writers of the sites was not to raise questions about the professional lives of those writers or to cast aspersions on working writers; I was an Internet writer in the mid-90s when that was first a thing, and I know how hard the job is. Rather, it was to draw this line of logic: those who don’t believe anything the New York Times says, but do believe something written by an anonymous person at a website with unclear ownership and an unknown agenda ought to at least interrogate that belief.

2) this is a very thorough critique of my writing and my intent, which is appreciated and deserved. It does, however, respond to my writing as though I were David Brooks or Maureen Dowd or someone else with their hands on the levers of big media. In fact, it seems to imply that I am a member of big media beating up on the little guy. I offer this as the sort of literary equivalent of someone getting hit repeatedly with a stick and throwing up his hands in defense: I wrote a blog post Sunday night and linked to it on Facebook and Tweeted it. I’m just some random guy on the Internet. I don’t own Medium. This is my opinion. I have no weight as a public official or a media personality or any greater power than anyone else. I am also not anonymous. I did not cause it to go viral. I did not expect it to do so at anywhere near the scale it has when I wrote it.

3) you’re clearly a pro and know more about the topic, so I hope you’ll write something in a more prominent place than as a response to my article. The world deserves to hear your take on the state of the media. I’m just a guy who was trying to comment on irritating political clickbait. I wish I had done a better job of talking about the ways corporate media caused that phenomenon. Several people have written really excellent critiques of my piece pointing out how much better that would have been. I didn’t because I didn’t think of it. You did. I want to read your take more than my own.

4) I have tried as honestly as a person can to expand the piece since I first wrote it to include more than just the usuncut folks. To continue to accuse me of “doubling down” on just going after one group of people leaves me a little exasperated since you’re reading it after lots of updating.

Again, yes, admitted, my initial focus was on one site because that’s the one I saw the most frustrating bullshit from for 6 months. I am incredibly biased! I have admitted and aired my biases. As I said in the original and in updates, this is not a one-audience phenomenon. Indeed, I think I was pretty clear that folks on the right have been subjecting themselves to bullshit curation (which I guess I stole from Hemingway?) for a decade.

Anyway, thanks for the very well written, bracing, and cordial critique!