The death of the newspaper review meant the end of the literary authority who would declare that books by straight, white men are always the best of books. That books by the conglomerate publishing houses are the best of books. That literary culture exists only in New York City.
.. And that is what all those people on the picket line fought to save: a sexist, racist, elitist system.
.. I want to tell them: this world is not for you, you are better without it. Outside the gates, not in. This world was in fact, in part, designed specifically to keep you out. It does not want you. It will not nourish you.
.. Nobody really wants to be James Joyce, though. When it comes down to it.
.. Totally inaccessible and publishing poison, forced to self-publish with the help of two (inadequately celebrated) lesbians, thought to be a madman, and still cursed to this day. No one really wants to be James Joyce, living in borderline poverty with an insane daughter and a layabout son, quietly changing the world but very rarely, if at all, acknowledged for it. So completely out on the frontier his books were confiscated and destroyed by multiple governments.
But everyone wants to think they’re James Joyce, in their cozy teaching jobs, in mortgaged homes, writing about the same things that everyone else is writing about.
.. Anxiety’s primary function is to ready the body for action and for change. It is a complicated uprooting process, the gathering together of energy and focus so that when you decide what to do, you are able to do it.
.. Give a person absolute freedom and probably what they will do is just copy the person closest to them. The anxiety of making a decision under absolute freedom is too much to bear.
.. It’s why the Internet culture is just a copy of newspaper culture, but with a few fucks and shits thrown in.
.. Don’t think there weren’t nights where I woke up with the thought “My entire purpose in life is to help people make decisions about which books to buy; I am simply part of someone’s marketing strategy,” chilling me to the bone.
My Shared Shame: The Media Helped Make Trump
“Trump is not just an instant ratings/circulation/clicks gold mine; he’s the motherlode,” Ann Curry, the former “Today” anchor, told me. “He stepped on to the presidential campaign stage precisely at a moment when the media is struggling against deep insecurities about its financial future. The truth is, the media has needed Trump like a crack addict needs a hit.”
Curry says she’s embarrassed by the unfairness to other Republican candidates, who didn’t get nearly the same airtime.
.. As my colleague Jim Rutenberg put it, some complain that “CNN has handed its schedule over to Mr. Trump,” and CNN had lots of company.
.. A candidate claiming that his business acumen will enable him to manage America deserved much more scrutiny of his bankruptcies and mediocre investing.
.. Begleiter notes that Sarah Palin received more serious vetting as a running mate in 2008 than Trump has as a presidential candidate.
.. We failed to take Trump seriously because of a third media failing: We were largely oblivious to the pain among working-class Americans and thus didn’t appreciate how much his message resonated. “The media has been out of touch with these Americans,” Curry notes.
.. All this said, I have to add that I don’t know if more fact-checking would have mattered. Tom Brokaw of NBC did outstanding workchallenging Trump, but he says that when journalists have indeed questioned Trump’s untrue statements, nothing much happens: “His followers find fault with the questions, not with his often incomplete, erroneous or feeble answers.”
.. We’re in a new world where attitude seems to count more than facts.”
Donald Trump Tweets Like a Latin American Strongman
Trump’s Twitter persona has felt like a revelation in American politics, generating constant commentary and a lot of free publicity (sorry). He’s embraced the medium with the self-assuredness and recklessness of a teenager, tweeting more and with fewer filters than any other American presidential candidate since Twitter’s launch in 2006. But what seems radical in the United States is par for the course in other parts of the world—ironically for someone who champions American exceptionalism, Trump has followed an approach employed by leftist Latin American leaders for years.
.. Federico Finchelstein, a professor of history and department chair at The New School, has recently argued that Trump fits into a mold of “post-fascist” populists, leaders who promote authoritarian democracies characterized in part by no mediation between the leader and the people. These types of leaders have flourished in Latin American countries since World War II, capitalizing on their populations’ desire to #MakeLatinAmericaGreatAgain and shake off their imperialist pasts to become economically and culturally independent.
.. Finchelstein points out that authoritarians’ embrace of Twitter is highly strategic: “They tend to regard independent reporters as deeply suspicious and even enemies, so they use technology as a means of achieving a direct connection.” Unmediated access to their public allows populists to emphasize their “outsider” status and downplay the importance of traditional institutions (a free press, other branches of government).
.. Institutional language—like the staid decorum of Obama’s tweets—becomes undesirable, the mark of a phony.
.. The danger of “real-talk” like Trump’s is that it erases much of what is valuable about a free press: skepticism, debate, accountability.
.. “At the same time that it provides a mirage of full participation, there’s not actually meaningful participation by citizens in the leader’s decisions. What a leader like Trump is asking is, Vote for me, because I know best what you should want. It’s a very authoritarian form of politics.”
The Mutual Dependence of Donald Trump and the News Media
But he is also taking advantage of a momentous and insecure time in American media.
News organizations old and new are jockeying for survival in a changing order, awash in information and content but absent the pillars they could always rely upon, like reliable advertising models, secure places on the cable dial or old-fashioned newsstand sales.
.. In that environment, Mr. Trump brings a welcome, if temporary, salve. He delivers ratings and clicks, and therefore revenue, which makes him the seller in a seller’s market. “I go on one of these shows and the ratings double, they triple,” Mr. Trump accurately told Time a few weeks ago. “And that gives you power.”
.. Fox News has its business challenges like anyone else. But it stands securely atop the news ratings, knows its mission, painstakingly maintains its special relationship with conservative audiences, and is therefore a revenue driver for its parent company, 21st Century Fox.
.. With CNN’s debates and heavy coverage of Mr. Trump, the network’s ratings have increased about 170 percent in prime time this year.
.. Understandably, Jeff Zucker, the president of CNN Worldwide, was beaming when I saw him at a lunch with other reporters last week. “These numbers are crazy — crazy,” he said, referring to the ratings. How crazy? Two-hundred-thousand-dollars-per-30-second-spot crazy on debate nights, 40 times what CNN makes on an average night, according to Advertising Age. That’s found money.
.. The New York Times’s Upshot team, using data from mediaQuant, reported last week that Mr. Trump had received nearly $1.9 billion worth of news coverage; his next closest Republican competitor, Ted Cruz, received a little more than $300 million. Hillary Clinton has received less than $750 million.
.. The imbalance in coverage has, though, led to spectacles like the one on March 8, when all of the cable news networks showed Mr. Trump’s 45-minute-long primary night news conference in full. While Mrs. Clinton’s victory speech went uncovered, Mr. Trump used the time to hawk Trump Steaks and Trump Wine.
.. Where Fox News refused Mr. Trump’s demand this year that it remove Ms. Kelly as a debate moderator, and lost his participation, ABC News appeared to accede to Mr. Trump’s request that it break its debate partnership with The New Hampshire Union Leader, which had harshly editorialized against him.
.. all of the shows went along with Mr. Trump’s insistence that he “appear” by phone — all except one, “Fox News Sunday With Chris Wallace.”
.. On her show on Friday, Ms. Kelly made an oblique call for solidarity. “I’m the second-highest-rated show in all of cable news and I haven’t had Trump on in seven months,” she said. “It can be done without him too.”