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i just read @DavideMastracci's (4K-word!) take on the ongoing @jonkay/ @BarbaraRKay journalistic reign of terror. given his politics, I was skeptical. but it's actually well-researched—even if davide's implicit theory of media criticism is flawed. Thread... https://readpassage.com/how-did-we-get-stuck-with-jon-and-barbara-kay/
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't hire @BarbaraRKay & she didn'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'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's right. aside from my engineering & law degrees, I'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's value by looking at their pre-journalism CV. every editor know this is wrong. I'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's the part that isn't just me staring into my navel — is that @DavideMastracci's approach is rooted in (what passes for) media criticism in Canada more generally. It'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'd have to leave Canada'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'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't come yet. And when it does, it will be readers, not you, who decide what writers are "worth reading"
