Salon’s Alex Pareene recently spoke to TPM about his favorite political targets and what it would take (not really) for him to stop writing his hilarious takedowns.How would you describe the state of political journalism today? In one sense, it feels like it’s never been more inane and more minutiae-obsessed and more annoying. But on the other hand, there are so many great, great, great commentators and reporters. We’re definitely very, very lucky to live in a sort of golden age of easily available, great criticism and commentary and reporting. I think in the pre-internet age, you would have had a couple national newspapers and your local newspaper, and if you wanted to see some great story that a newspaper in another town did, you’d have to hope it got reported on the evening news. So in that sense, we totally are spoiled by the easy availability of all this free reporting. The market forces don’t necessarily make the great stuff more popular. It can feel like there’s a never-ending wave of bullshit every day, which I’m sure that also felt like was the case when there was no Politico.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=96289