Thanks, didn’t see what he said about this. Just read an Atlantic article about this and I don’t see why it shouldn’t be easy to avoid the pitfalls from his time with Vox, and why he wouldn’t care a lot about starting a new project where he could offer a better way to do journalism.
Yglesias felt that he could no longer speak his mind without riling his colleagues. His managers wanted him to maintain a “restrained, institutional, statesmanlike voice,” he told me in a phone interview, in part because he was a co-founder of Vox. But as a relative moderate at the publication, he felt at times that it was important to challenge what he called the “dominant sensibility” in the “young-college-graduate bubble” that now sets the tone at many digital-media organizations.
Also, the idea of course is not at all dependent on him, I suppose there would be other great candidates, Yglesias just came to mind because I really like his work.
Yeah, I guess the impression I had (from comments he made elsewhere — on a podcast, I think) was that he actually agreed with his managers that at a certain point, once a publication has scaled enough, people who represent its “essence” to the public (like its founders) do need to adopt a more neutral, nonpartisan (in the general sense) voice that brings people together without stirring up controversy, and that it was because he agreed with them about this that he decided to step down.
Interesting, the Atlantic article didn’t give this impression. I’d also be pretty surprised if you had to become essentially the cliche of a moderate politician if you’re part of the leadership team of a journalistic organization. In my mind, you’re mostly responsible for setting and living the norms you want the organization to follow, e.g.
epistemic norms of charitability, clarity, probabilistic forecasts, scout mindset
values like exploring neglected and important topics with a focus on having an altruistic impact?
And then maybe being involved in hiring the people who have shown promise and fit?
Yeah, I mean, to be clear, my impression was that Yglesias wished this weren’t required and believed that it shouldn’t be required (certainly, in the abstract, it doesn’t have to be), but nonetheless, it seemed like he conceded that from a practical standpoint, when this is what all your staff expect, it is required. I guess maybe then the question is just whether he could “avoid the pitfalls from his time with Vox,” and I suppose my feeling is that one should expect that to be difficult and that someone in his position wouldn’t want to abandon their quiet, stable, cushy Substack gig for a risky endeavor that required them to bet on their ability to do it successfully. I think too many of the relevant causes are things that you can’t count on being able to control as the head of an organization, particularly at scale, over long periods of time, and I’d been inferring that this was probably one of the lessons Yglesias drew from his time at Vox.
I would be extremely surprised if he had any interest in doing this, given what he’s said about his reasons for leaving Vox.
Thanks, didn’t see what he said about this. Just read an Atlantic article about this and I don’t see why it shouldn’t be easy to avoid the pitfalls from his time with Vox, and why he wouldn’t care a lot about starting a new project where he could offer a better way to do journalism.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/11/substack-and-medias-groupthink-problem/617102/
Also, the idea of course is not at all dependent on him, I suppose there would be other great candidates, Yglesias just came to mind because I really like his work.
Yeah, I guess the impression I had (from comments he made elsewhere — on a podcast, I think) was that he actually agreed with his managers that at a certain point, once a publication has scaled enough, people who represent its “essence” to the public (like its founders) do need to adopt a more neutral, nonpartisan (in the general sense) voice that brings people together without stirring up controversy, and that it was because he agreed with them about this that he decided to step down.
Interesting, the Atlantic article didn’t give this impression. I’d also be pretty surprised if you had to become essentially the cliche of a moderate politician if you’re part of the leadership team of a journalistic organization. In my mind, you’re mostly responsible for setting and living the norms you want the organization to follow, e.g.
epistemic norms of charitability, clarity, probabilistic forecasts, scout mindset
values like exploring neglected and important topics with a focus on having an altruistic impact?
And then maybe being involved in hiring the people who have shown promise and fit?
Yeah, I mean, to be clear, my impression was that Yglesias wished this weren’t required and believed that it shouldn’t be required (certainly, in the abstract, it doesn’t have to be), but nonetheless, it seemed like he conceded that from a practical standpoint, when this is what all your staff expect, it is required. I guess maybe then the question is just whether he could “avoid the pitfalls from his time with Vox,” and I suppose my feeling is that one should expect that to be difficult and that someone in his position wouldn’t want to abandon their quiet, stable, cushy Substack gig for a risky endeavor that required them to bet on their ability to do it successfully. I think too many of the relevant causes are things that you can’t count on being able to control as the head of an organization, particularly at scale, over long periods of time, and I’d been inferring that this was probably one of the lessons Yglesias drew from his time at Vox.