Archive: The Wall Street Journal

The Purpose of Journalism Is to Get the Story People love and need real reporting, but reporters have decided their job is something else entirely.

-- The Wall Street Journal:

We are talking about journalism this week, about newspapers and warring newsrooms and lost readership and what to do. At bottom, though this gets lost, all the arguments are really about what journalism is. Here is what it is. It is a dark night on a vast plain. There are wild sounds—the hiss of prehistoric […]

The Dishonorable Attack on the Alitos A left-wing activist impressed her comrades, hardened her foes, and got attention. So what?

-- The Wall Street Journal:

I suppose this is about being an honorable combatant in the middle of a culture war, which entails seeing the humanity of your perceived foe and, in the seeing of it, preserving your own. The story, which you’ve already heard, is that a left-wing activist who calls herself an “advocacy journalist” went to the June […]

We Are Starting to Enjoy Hatred The country has long been divided, but estrangement has become alluring in the age of Biden and Trump.

-- The Wall Street Journal:

I’m seeing something and maybe you are too. We talk in our country about political polarization and it’s real: We’re split into a thousand pieces within two big camps of left and right. We decry the harshness of our political discourse, particularly online, where outrageous and dehumanizing things are said. But what I’m seeing is […]

The Uglification of Everything Artistic culture has taken a repulsive turn. It speaks of a society that hates itself, and hates life.

-- The Wall Street Journal:

I wish to protest the current ugliness. I see it as a continuing trend, “the uglification of everything.” It is coming out of our culture with picked-up speed, and from many media silos, and I don’t like it. You remember the 1999 movie “The Talented Mr. Ripley,” from the Patricia Highsmith novel. It was fabulous—mysteries, […]

Bad Leadership Is a National-Security Threat The American porn-star trial, the tawdry British memoirs—all signal weakness and decadence.

-- The Wall Street Journal:

Most politics is day by day, and certainly we consume it that way. But the thought that presses on my mind has distant horizons. The criminal trial of Donald Trump, de facto Republican presidential nominee, commenced Monday in Manhattan Criminal Court. The case revolves around charges that he directed hush money payments to Stormy Daniels, […]