Thread by @ClaireBerlinski

Do I have any Twitter followers who haven't yet signed up for @cosmo_globalist? Here's why you should: claireberlinski.substack.com

There's a severe crisis in journalism. For a variety of technological, regulatory, and cultural reasons, largely but not entirely related to the rise of the Internet, newspapers are dying. Foreign news coverage, especially, has all but disappeared.

You can read about this here: claireberlinski.substack.com/p/social-media…
The result is that whereas foreign news made up 40 percent of the broadcast news, during the Cold War, now it's less than 4 percent. And print coverage of events overseas has declined by 80 percent.

What little coverage remains tends to be grossly scattershot and superficial, often written by people who aren't even on the scene: They're in D.C. or New York, getting their news from the wire services.

The result--as everyone who lives in any country that's not the US knows--is ridiculous. Sometimes grotesquely so, as France, for example, will attest: nytimes.com/2020/11/15/bus…
(Macron was right.)

The people writing about Paris or Mumbai from their desks in New York often seem to be writing about some imaginary country where everyone shares the woke preoccupations of the New York journalist class.
Or they write in condescending caricatures and clichés.

What's more, most people now receive their news from social media, which algorithmically sorts celebrity gossip to the top. There's news to be found out there, but casual consumers get as little information about the rest of the world as Soviet citizens during the Cold War.

For many years, I despaired of this, as all journalists do.

Then one day, as I was despairing of it on Twitter with my old friend @VivekYKelkar (with whom I worked a quarter-century ago at the original Asia Times), I said, impulsively,

"Who wants to join me in fixing this problem? Shall we start a new publication?"

Better to light a candle than curse the darkness, right?

To my surprise, friends around the world, said, "I'm in."

Usually, something like this would end there--we'd all vow to do something then forget about it because our lives are busy and it takes a huge amount of effort to start a new publication. But this time was different.
The pandemic had made us prisoners. We had nowhere else to go.

So we did it. We started a new publication. Here it is: cosmopolitanglobalist.com
FAQ:
Q: Why did you call it the Cosmopolitan Globalist?
A: All the other domain names were taken already.

Q: How is it different from other publications?
A: It's better.
Q: How do I sign up?
A: Right here: claireberlinski.substack.com. You'll receive our free newsletter, too.

Q. Around the world, liberal democracy is in retreat. The West is divided, and Caesarism is flourishing. Why?
A. We wonder, too. If you want to know, you should subscribe.
Q. A free newsletter? How do you make money?
A. From paying subscribers, which we hope you'll become.

Q. What do I get if I pay?
A. You get access to our discussion forums, debates, and podcasts, plus our premium newsletter, Global Eyes, a news survey that tells you what's happening in every corner of the globe.

Plus, you get our Magic Goggles™ Translation Superhighway. You can read about this here: claireberlinski.substack.com/p/global-eyes-….
And that's not all!
You also get the chart or the map of the day.

And you get the Stern Scolding of the Day from Hu, Supervillain CCP Mouthpiece. (Many readers tell us that having their thoughts rectified by Hu is the best part of their tapped-out, decadent, imperialist running-dog mornings.)
Plus, you get to support a worthwhile venture.

And if you subscribe now, you get to lock in your subscription at a very reasonable, low price.
So come have a look at what we're doing, here: cosmopolitanglobalist.com

And sign up for our newsletter: claireberlinski.substack.com/about?utm_sour…

We'd love to have you join us, and if you follow me on Twitter, that means you'd probably like @cosmo_globalist very much.