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i just read @DavideMastracci& #39;s (4K-word!) take on the ongoing @jonkay/ @BarbaraRKay journalistic reign of terror. given his politics, I was skeptical. but it& #39;s actually well-researched—even if davide& #39;s implicit theory of media criticism is flawed. Thread... https://readpassage.com/how-did-we-get-stuck-with-jon-and-barbara-kay/">https://readpassage.com/how-did-w...
unlike your avg Twitter troll, @DavideMastracci read my columns & listened to my podcasts. this included those in which I described the trajectory of my career from engineering to law to writing. he concedes that I didn& #39;t hire @BarbaraRKay & she didn& #39;t hire me. I Appreciate that
he accurately describes my 2017 decision to leave Walrus. unlike many who came after me at that time, he doesn& #39;t imagine that he has the power to end my career through performative denunciations. he even lists some of my awards & books. @davide put a lot of time into this....
in a single sentence, in fact, @DavideMastracci gave a capsule summary of my whole career:
"Jon also has an incredible knack for identifying important topics he admits knowing little about, taking what he considers to be a crash course and then spending years writing on them"...
"Jon also has an incredible knack for identifying important topics he admits knowing little about, taking what he considers to be a crash course and then spending years writing on them"...
he& #39;s right. aside from my engineering & law degrees, I& #39;m a dilettante. my editors — @mattgurney, @cstarnino, @clairlemon, @AnneMarieOwens, @KenWhyte3 — can attest that I go mad for subjects & dive into them intensely. then after I write a bunch of columns or a book, I move on...
( @DavideMastracci is also right that I was born into privilege, & that my career would have been impossible without this privilege. I got my 1st job in Cdn journalism at a time when cdn bosses were still starstruck by ivy league credentials. few have the $ to send a kid to yale)
but the key error @DavideMastracci makes is that he thinks he can judge a columnist& #39;s value by looking at their pre-journalism CV. every editor know this is wrong. I& #39;ve met brilliant academics who take a month to write a bad column, & high-school dropouts who write gems in a day
expertise matters a lot, of course. which is why I spend much of my time on research. but every popular journalist is, to some extent (though Im admittedly an extreme example), a dilettante. So why does a progressive like Davide judge ppl on their CV (a *conservative* reflex)?..
the answer — & here& #39;s the part that isn& #39;t just me staring into my navel — is that @DavideMastracci& #39;s approach is rooted in (what passes for) media criticism in Canada more generally. It& #39;s all about authenticity: bloodline, race, background... Who "deserves" to have a voice...
ultimately, this is why so many cdn outlets are now self-parodic. on every issue, they front-load the most "authentic" writer—the same activist, writing the same column, issuing the same demand that everyone else shut up. dull & repetitive, but this is what @DavideMastracci wants
I saw this coming in 2017 & said so publicly. I warned colleagues that, as is now evident throughout the lefty press, theyd never be woke enuf for the mob. And I knew that if I wanted to keep writing fearlessly, I& #39;d have to leave Canada& #39;s fishbowl. thanks to @Quillette, it worked
. @DavideMastracci ends his essay by asking me (& @BarbaraRKay) to "step aside, and make room for voices more worth reading."
That day will come. Perhaps soon. But it hasn& #39;t come yet. And when it does, it will be readers, not you, who decide what writers are "worth reading"
That day will come. Perhaps soon. But it hasn& #39;t come yet. And when it does, it will be readers, not you, who decide what writers are "worth reading"
