IN 2018, THE NEW YORKER wrote me to ask for an interview. I said no. Then THE NEW YORKER *called* to ask for an interview. I said no. I said I opposed short-form journalism lacking nuance. THE NEW YORKER persisted; I relented. Then they killed the story. I guess it went to Nance.
1/ What I told the guy from THE NEW YORKER (not Isaac) was I'd do an interview only if it sent someone to New Hampshire to spend the day with me, as I believed (and still believe) it would make the sort of story the magazine wanted to write about "conspiracy theories" impossible.
2/ My point is, there's a certain sort of story, usually short-form journalism, that major media wants to do on citizen or independent journalism in the Trump era. It starts with a contemptuous bias, and then proceeds to try to confirm that bias. I think we see some of that here.
3/ I don't relate to Malcolm's way of doing things, and he has a coauthor I've never read anything by who has some weird problem with me. But I can relate to anyone researching Trump who's not a fulltime journalist getting treated by fulltime media w/ a certain sort of contempt.
4/ Journalism is changing; not (thankfully!) its ethics, but its modes, formats, interfaces, compositional praxes, subgenres, audience demographics, subcultural paradigms. There are few fulltime journalists who understand these changes and fewer who don't feel threatened by them.
5/ I really like THE NEW YORKER. It does great long-form journalism. But in 2018, at least with me, what it was willing to dedicate was short-form journalism that (it immediately seemed clear to me) was starting with a biased premise, not an earnest question. That was my concern.
6/ So my interest in the Nance interview is in tracking how THE NEW YORKER goes about interviewing a subject like Nance. In my experience, THE NEW YORKER sort of assumes someone like me or Nance is thirsty for an interview.
Which means they *really* don't understand how I think.
Which means they *really* don't understand how I think.
7/ I think that, some day, someone will write a nuanced piece of long-form journalism about the new generation of digital, independent, freelance, and experimental journalists who arose in the Trump era. Because we largely don't know one another and are *wildly* different people.
8/ I want to clarify that I don't think I deserve to be interviewed. That was *not* the point. I'm just a guy. My point was about how fulltime journalists perceive part-time journalists, and part-time journalists perceive themselves. I certainly am sorry if it came off otherwise.
9/ I mean, hopefully it was clear that I was saying THE NEW YORKER only wanted to interview me to *mock* me? That would be a *really* strange thing for me to write a thread to brag about, wouldn't it? I probably should have been clearer on this from the jump. Again, my apologies.
10/ My advice to anyone facing mockery, from any source, is to not participate in that game, particularly when the game is predicated on a profound misunderstanding of the subject on which the mockery is to be delivered. That was my only point here, honestly. Anyway, onward! /end
