Thread by @JeffreyASachs

OK, one last reflection on this thread.

Stories about campus free speech controversies get reported in four distinct types of media: local/campus, trade, partisan, and mainstream/national. Think the Boston Globe vs. Inside Higher Ed vs. Campus Reform vs. The Atlantic.

https://twitter.com/JeffreyASachs/status/1123559014065942528

The key actor here is partisan media. With the exception of advocacy groups like @TheFIREorg, they're the only ones actually tracking events on the ground closely. Trade pubs try to keep up, but they lack the resources and all-consuming interest.

And by resources, I mean the networks of students and campus clubs that feed these stories to partisan outlets. Think YAF, the local TPUSA chapter, or College Republicans. When something goes down, an email to HQ is rarely far behind.

The upshot is that these outlets serve as crucial links between what happens on campus and what makes it into the pages of Reason, The Atlantic, or NYMag. If something doesn't appear in, say, The College Fix, it's *far* less likely to go mainstream.

To give you a sense of their power as Outrage Brokers, consider what would happen if Vox published a piece calling for the firing of some conservative prof. BREAKING: Lib snowflakes attack free speech! You better believe @benshapiro would be all over it.

Now imagine if that same sort of article appeared in the Daily Wire. What do you think would happen?

Actually, we don't have to imagine. They published that very sort of article last week to literally zero outcry.

dailywire.com/news/46413/mar…

And why would there be? @benshapiro controls the means of outrage production. He decides what goes to market and what doesn't. And that means that more mainstream journalists, the ones who are building their careers on this beat, are never even aware anything took place.

So here's the thing about it all: It's not that these journalists are biased against liberals and/or students. I mean, maybe they are, but it's beside the point. What matters is that they're overly dependent on a narrow, highly partisan range of sources.

Campus Reform, The Campus Fix, Breitbart, YAF, Daily Wire, Quillette, etc. Those outlets, and the twitter accounts that orbit them, are where they get a huge number of their story ideas. The Left has nothing comparable.

AGAIN: I have emailed journalists these stories, so don't accuse me of just cursing the darkness. It's just that they don't seem to care.

And that's how the entire god damn Nebraska Republican Party can de-platform a former United States Senator and none of us are the wiser.

Anyway, this is the going theory. To nail things down, I'm currently doing a media content analysis on this with @markdaku. He supplies the expertise, I supply the scotch. Expect publication in your local political science journal sometime later this decade.