There’s no substitute for experience. It was a lesson my father drove into me, and there were no exceptions to his maxim. Once when I complained that an editor I worked for at the Toronto Star was an idiot, my father’s immediate response was, “How long has the editor worked at the Star?”
“Several years,” I responded.
“How long have you worked at the Toronto Star?”
“Six months,” I replied.
“Your editor may be an idiot, but he still knows a lot more than you about working at the Star. Learn what you can from him.”
Fortunately, I had great respect for most of the Star’s editors – a good thing, too, because one wouldn’t have lasted very long at the newspaper questioning the judgment of experienced editors running the biggest and among the profitable newspapers in Canada. Reporters during the glory days of the New York Times and the Washington Post wouldn’t have dared questioned the judgments of Abe Rosenthal and Ben Bradlee, the respective former editors of those once venerable publications whose leaderships were responsible for the reputations on which the Times and the Post still coast.
Great leadership is in short supply at U.S. legacy media publications and broadcast outlets, which is why the American public holds them in so low regard. I was aghast that the Washington Post didn’t promptly rescind the hiring of Taylor Lorenz, a tech reporter then editor Sally Buzbee lured from the New York Times more than two years ago. Lorenz made clear from the get-go that working at the Post was merely a pit stop on the way to greater personal brand glory.
“When you think about the future of media, it’s much more distributed and about personalities,” Lorenz told Business Insider. “Younger people recognize the power of having their own brand and audience, and the longer you stay at a job that restricts you from outside opportunities, the less relevant your brand becomes.”
Buzbee would have been wise to heed my critical assessments of Lorenz (see here and here), as her personal brand promotion repeatedly resulted in embarrassments that diminished the Post’s reputation. Lorenz recently left the Post, amid yet another controversy. The New York Post reported that Lorenz labeled President Biden a “war criminal” in a selfie from a White House event in which Biden was visible in the background. She had circulated the picture to friends in a private social media post.
After the Post ran its story, Lorenz posted on X: “You people will fall for any dumbass edit someone makes.” She reportedly told her Washington Post editors that someone else had added the caption to the photo. Lorenz a few weeks ago left the Washington Post, although it’s not certain her exit was voluntary. NPR reported that Lorenz lost the trust of the newsroom’s leadership both by posting that selfie with the caption about Biden and then denying to her editors she had done so.
Not surprisingly, under Buzbee’s leadership, the Washington Post lost half its readership and was racking up tens of millions of dollars in losses, which is why she was shunted aside in June and chose to leave the publication.
When it comes to questionable leadership judgment, Katrina vanden Heuvel puts Buzbee to shame.
Vanden Heuvel is the editorial director and publisher of The Nation, a publication founded by abolitionists in 1865 and long famed for its far left advocacy. Vanden Heuvel was once a regular contributor to the Washington Post’s editorial pages and her bio is still posted on the publication’s website.
Even a cursory read of Vanden Heuvel’s bio makes instantly clear that she’s an erudite woman with a distinguished journalism career advocating progressive causes. A graduate of Princeton, vanden Heuvel speaks French and Russian, as well as English, she’s written at least four books, and garnered oodles of public service awards. In the Hall of Fame of leftist journalism, vanden Heuvel long ago earned her place.
One might expect that an aspiring journalist who landed an internship at The Nation would be awed by the opportunity to work under vanden Heuvel, hoping to soak up the knowledge and experience she’s accumulated over decades. That certainly doesn’t appear to be the case. The Nation predictably endorsed Kamala Harris for president last month, but the publication on Friday published an editorial by its interns questioning the judgment of their journalism elders.
Reading the editorial, one can imagine that The Nation recruited its interns from the pro-Palestinian encampments on college campuses. The editorial is a rabid anti-Israel diatribe, and the tone and tenor of the piece creates the impression it was written by spoiled and entitled Zoomers who likely garnered their smug sense of intellectual and moral superiority from the college professors who brainwashed them.
Here’s a taste of the dissenting editorial:
On September 23, The Nation endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris for president. “Of course we endorse Harris over Trump,” the unsigned editorial reads. “But we also endorse Harris in her own right, as an experienced and capable leader with a vision for America’s future…that represents a clear advance on Democratic nominees of the past half century.” The endorsement goes on to cite the magazine’s abolitionist founders—“both visionary radicals and deeply practical politicians”—as touchstones for the decision to support Harris.
We, The Nation’s current interns, find this endorsement unearned and disappointing. We have a different interpretation of the magazine’s abolitionist legacy, one that says a publication committed to justice must refrain from endorsing a person signing off on genocide. We do not support Donald Trump, but to champion Harris at this moment is to ignore the atrocities that are being carried out with weapons supplied by the Biden-Harris administration.
The Nation’s endorsement notes that on foreign policy the “positive case [for Harris] is harder to make,” adding that “she has failed so far to offer anything more substantive to the millions of Americans…desperate for an end to America’s unconditional support for Israel’s brutal war on Gaza.” Yet it goes on to endorse her anyway—implying that domestic concerns are somehow more important. We disagree. On the grounds of Gaza alone, Harris should not have received The Nation’s endorsement.
The Nation’s endorsement of Harris contained some false information, including that Harris “has failed to offer anything more substantive to the millions of Americans … desperate for an end to America’s unconditional support for Israel’s brutal war on Gaza.” In fact, six in 10 Americans (60%) favor the United States supporting Israel militarily until the hostages are returned and about half (49%) favor such support until Hamas is dismantled. The decisive support is despite the legacy media’s dishonest reporting that Israel is engaged in Palestinian genocide, when in fact the country seeks to defend itself against terrorists openly advocating the murder of all Israel’s residents.
The interns opted to double down on the misinformation, linking to Al Jazeera stories claiming that Israel has killed 175 journalists in Gaza, and has a “hit list” to kill more. An Israel-based watchdog group called Honest Reporting continuously documents that some of the “journalists” supposedly killed in Gaza in fact were terrorists tied to Hamas. Egypt last year also alleged that some of Al Jazeera’s journalists in that country were in fact terrorists.
To their credit, the interns behind The Nation’s dissenting editorial included their names. One of them, a University of Chicago grad named Kelly Hui,has already published an extensive body of work that’s been highlighted by Canary Mission, whose mission is to document people and groups that promote hatred of America, Israel and Jews.
According to Canary Mission, Hui has expressed support for terrorists and repeatedly spread hatred about Israel and Jews. Check out the dossier Canary Mission has accumulated on Hui’s activities. It’s telling that the Nation hired Hui given her radical background.
Hui and her intern colleagues advocated readers “don’t just unsubscribe but boycott news outlets that feed the genocidal rhetoric,” which their editorial suggests includes The Nation itself. I’m doubtful that will help The Nation’s fundraising efforts.
My guess is The Nation’s dissenting interns will have no trouble landing jobs at even bigger legacy media publications, particularly the rabidly anti-Israel Washington Post, whose foreign desk reportedly employs six Al Jazeera veterans. In fact, a new position at the Post possibly opened up in wake of Washington Post editor-at-large Robert Kagan resigning after publisher Will Lewis announced the paper would not endorse a candidate in the 2024 presidential election.
In yet another journalism embarrassment, New York magazine and Olivia Nuzzio, the 31-year-old supposed wunderkind political journalist who had a sexting affair with Robert Kennedy Jr., have parted ways. Nuzzio and her former fiancé, Politico’s Ryan Lizza, have since sued each other.