Howdy. Having read some of your other thread contributions, I’m confused as to where you’re coming from on all this. It just seems like nothing ever suits.
What exactly is your concern, here? Is it that the money behind these ventures is tainted by association with a not-perfect person and his not-perfect company? I guess I get that, but I’m withholding prejudgement at present. Some Masters of the Universe are complex individuals; I don’t always care for how Bill Gates spends his money, but I can’t get angry at him for taking the position that he doesn’t ultimately need the bulk of it and that others in his position don’t either. Likewise, I may be vaguely aware of things this Ozymandias (sorry, too much Watchmen, growing up) fella and his associated companies have done that have displeased me, but providing a dedicated platform to some of the most effective, most principled journalists in the game? Yeah, that seems like a net win.
Is your concern that said journalists will be somehow co-opted, or that their pet issues will be ghettoized and forgotten because of said platform? Well, looking at the early string of articles on the Intercept, I doubt the former (hell, they’re almost too earnestly focused), and looking at the extremely high comment rate per article (400 – 700+), I also doubt the latter.
Or does the animosity boil down to these journalists’ “careerism,” at the end of the day? We can be occasionally annoyed when Greenwald allows his brand to trump his message, but we can’t really debate that it is his tenacious reporting and pugnacious, adversarial approach that have kept this vital, evolving story in the public eye. I’ve followed Taibbi since his eXile days, and have been amazed at his growth; he went from being a juvenile, half-baked Hunter Thompson clone to one of the finest journalists in the country. Like Greenwald, he’s managed to keep a convoluted, unsexy, and depressing story front-and-center via deep research and incandescent prose. I say, pay these people.
