This is the piece about @MarkHalperin I have been waiting for. buzzfeed.com/evefairbanks/m… I can't recommend it enough. But I'm sure going to try... 1/
The two best points @evefairbanks makes: Halperin made it seem like access = insight and that power was inscrutable without his access. 2/
Whole point of journalism is make the public world more legible. Halperin reversed it. Everything turned on secret gestures he revealed. 3/
Adding to @evefairbanks devastating analysis: The kind of journalism Halperin popularized, which I have called "the savvy style..." 4/
...operates by splitting off the attentive readers from citizens busy with their lives and floating for the "junkies" an insidious idea: 5/
Which is to look upon their fellow citizens as mere objects to be manipulated by savvy insiders and operatives who know the game. 6/
I wrote about this aspect 6 years ago in 'Why Political Coverage is Broken." pressthink.org/2011/08/why-po… 7/ 
No, Halperin was not the sole cause of this drift. Nor does the savvy style cover ALL of Washington journalism. Those are fair cautions. 8/
BUT... Halperin was the most influential figure in the "inside baseball" practices that set the press up for its spectacular fall in 2016 9/
Read what @evefairbanks wrote, and realize: with Halperin, political journalism took a wrong turn. buzzfeed.com/evefairbanks/m… We have to right it. END
