We Need New Modes Of Journalism, And You Need To Pay For It

It will take many years and several “War and Peace”-length tomes to fully document all the staggering ironies, failures, false assumptions, and crippling pathologies that were made manifest over the course of the 2016 election cycle. It’s been a week now since Election Day and I personally still feel as if I’m on adrenaline-rush overdrive, simply because there’s so much data to process and so much arrogance to point out.

But one thing that should be blindingly, overwhelmingly obvious is that the elite liberal mode of political analysis has failed. Vox is the most obvious representation of this. If you haven’t yet, please drop everything and read this delicious skewering of Vox’s bogus self-conception by Nathan Robinson. The same people who told us “data is destiny” simultaneously ignored data that contravened their assumptions: they ignored that Bernie Sanders polled substantially better against Trump in general election matchups, and that Sanders was clearly far more popular with the American public than Hillary. Nevertheless, Vox transformed into a pro-Clinton propaganda organ, as if dutifully spouting pro-Clinton propaganda was simply the natural extension of a “data-oriented” outlook on life. They ignored data that showed Trump’s prospects were better than popularly assumed due to shifts in the composition of the electorate. They ignored a lot of stuff.

Much the same “data-oriented” people spent the last six months refreshing FiveThirtyEight every half hour, and reckoned that this gave them all the information they needed about the nature of the American polity. They reduced everything to “data” and then built out their presumptions from that; this proved disastrously wrongheaded. Whenever somebody said something about Trump that seemed to contradict the prevailing “data,” we were scorned and mocked. First-hand reporting, talking to ordinary people — “experiential data” — all this was basically discounted by our vaunted liberal elites (and their elite conservative fellow travelers) who thought that Nate Silver and Nate Cohn possessed the keys to the universe.

This smug, insulated, arrogant attitude pervaded our national pundit class, and unsurprisingly it led to cataclysm. Those of us who actually attempted to gauge American politics by doing things other than staring at the New York Times’ “Upshot” projection appear to have gotten things (relatively) right. Look up Chris Arnade’s work if you haven’t already — he’s been indispensable. (Even if he defied me and predicted Trump would lose because of the “Access Hollywood” tape — that was dopey.)

The reason why Arnade is so indispensable is that he doesn’t spend all day snarking with worthless operatives on Twitter, and complimenting fellow well-heeled journalists on how clever they are. He actually goes into the field. He couples his experiential data with the “Nate Silver” type data, synthesizes it, and comes to conclusions accordingly.

I like to think I took a similar tack. The “data” actually told us all along that Trump was fairly likely to win, but because most journalists were so ferociously and unabashedly opposed to Trump, they ignored this data. But I combined that data with first-hand reporting and then came to conclusions. They were mostly correct. You can judge for yourself (click on my Medium archive and peruse.)

So that brings me to the point of this post: in order to correct for the failures that have just unfolded before us, we need new modes of journalism. It really needs to be emphasized that the scale of the failure is something we’ve never before seen in the entire history of the United States. Nothing like the “Trump phenomenon” has ever happened before, and been so utterly misdiagnosed by our elite classes.

Proper analysis takes time and thought and yes, money. So does proper reporting. That’s why I’ve requested financial contributions from my readers/followers: people who appreciate my work are invited to help sustain it. I think this model is workable and fully reasonable — it’s totally voluntary. You still get everything I put out into the universe for free, if you want. But if you value it, you can demonstrate such by ponying up some cash!

This has worked really well over the past few weeks. It’s helped finance a trip that’s allowed me to do some important first-hand reporting, which you can find as always on my Twitter, on Medium, and other places. (You could previously also find it at VICE but — no more. Le sigh.) Eventually this will all take the form of a bigger project, stay tuned. And in the shorter-term, my “Pundit Accountability Initiative” is going full steam ahead — should be done within the next 5 days or so. It will be epic. (I’m writing this post from Laurel, Mississippi, BTW.)

So that’s why I’m maintaining an active GoFundMe: all this stuff takes time and money. It’s a form of labor. I think labor should be compensated. The “new economy” is awful in a lot of ways for a lot of people, but one thing it does provide is dorks like me an opportunity to solicit financial support from people over the internet. So if you want me to keep doing what I’ve been doing — holding pundits accountable, pointing out how we were all failed catastrophically by elite liberal institutions, and so forth — please contribute. Also, yes, I will be going hard at Trump soon. As well as his ghoulish allies like Rudy Giuliani, who I’ve always loathed with a passion. So, don’t contribute if that’s displeasing to you.

One reason why groupthink is so ubiquitous in these decadent elite spheres is because they have to rely on similar revenue models to fund their work. That’s not the only reason, but it’s one. So if I can develop an alternative revenue model, I can avoid groupthink. Strenuously. That’s why I ask for your support. Thanks.