1. You know I've been arguing that we shouldn't take glee in the demise of The Weekly Standard but this complacent and blinkered David Brooks column is making me reconsider. nytimes.com/2018/12/15/opi…
2. Brooks' column is semi-interesting in that he's arguing Weekly Standard is victim not just of Trumpism but also of late capitalism's hostility to high culture. Of course, Brooks uses more guarded language ("corporate bureaucrats" and "corporate drones").
3. The core of Brooks article is the correct observation that it's difficult to produce a high-brow political cultural magazine under capitalism because there's no market for it. But Brooks being Brooks, he avoids calling it capitalism & talks of "corporate bureaucrats."
4. In talking about "corporate bureaucrats"instead of capitalists, Brooks is playing the familiar game of using Weber as a shield against Marx. It's not the economic system of class inequality that's at fault but the cultural problem of bureaucracy.
5. But let's agree that running a high-brow magazine under capitalism is tough. Still, it has been done and can be done. There are different models for it. The Weekly Standard model (relying on a rich funder) can work but carries risk.
6. The problem with the rich funder model (which, to be upfront, is also TNR model) is that you're at the caprice of the funder. In Standard's case, GOP funders reluctant to lay out money for a magazine that is at war with Trumpized GOP.
7. If you are a billionaire Republican, you are willing to lose money on a magazine like Weekly Standard because it gives you a voice in GOP policy & politics. But of what value is the magazine if it is marginalized by the existing party?
8. There are other models for high-brow magazines. There's the covert CIA funding model (used by William Kristol's dad Irving at Encounter), the foundation funding model (used by the senior Kristol at Public Interest).
9. There's the model of affiliating with an academic institution (true of countless little literary magazines and of course of much scholarly publishing).
10. Finally, closer to home, there's the possibility of relying not on one or two big donors but many smaller ones. The model of The Nation, National Review & American Conservative. @ToryAnarchist discusses that here: spectator.us/unhappy-demise…
11. The multiple smaller donors can be supplemented various branding & fundraising exercises like cruises, talks and festivals. Both the Nation and TNR have had branded wines (ours was quite good).
12. While we're in a difficult media market, the fact is people do manage to put out smart good magazines & political journalism by mixing and matching different funding strategies (with things like digital subscriptions taking up slack of loss advertising).
13. So rather than the large & gloomy Weberian problem of "corporate bureaucrats" what felled the Weekly Standard was a more narrow problem: a brittle business model depending on caprice of people who don't value their product (GOP billionaires).
14. I can't believe I'm typing this but Baseball Crank (@baseballcrank) makes a good point here that GOP billionaires seem narrowly utilitarian in wanting short term obvious benefits for their $$. (see discussion below)
15. I actually think there's a good argument that GOP big money guys are being myopic & stupid here. Something like The Weekly Standard is a good investment as a Plan B for if Trump crashes and burns.
16. I mean it's not too difficult to imagine whole Trump thing collapsing (through scandals & Trump's own personality). If that happens, it would be useful for GOP to have a group of people who can credibly say they opposed this all along.
17. In general, Brooks column would've been better if it acknowledged the problem was TWS's business model & not some grand trend of "corporate bureaucrats."
18. On the right, I think American Conservative, Modern Age & @ubookman are all substantive publications; on the left there's @thebafflermag. N+1, @jacobinmag, @curaffairs & many more. So no need to mourn just yet.
19. I was wondering why Brooks' column rubbed me the wrong way. I finally figured it out. Brooks wants GOP plutocrats to hand him & his buddies lots of dough to write whatever they want, no questions asked. That seems a bit entitled.
