politics and market share

Andrew Sullivan writes here about an ugly punditocracy controversy (or blog/opinion magazine war) that erupted at the American Prospect after newly hired non-partisan Brendan Nyhan (of Spinsanity fame) apparently stepped out of bounds of the magazine’s “liberal” line by writing two posts in quick succession that “attacked” “liberal” positions, was reprimanded, and terminated his relationship with the Prospect.

Sullivan quotes Nyhan:

Why was I asked to slant my work to the liberal party line? In an email statement, TAP editor Michael Tomasky said that “[t]he Prospect is hardly averse to criticizing liberal verities” and that the magazine had no problem with my initial posts criticizing liberals, but “there were a few posts in succession that struck us as either inaccurate or an effort to draw equivalencies where none existed. The Prospect has always opposed a ‘pox on both houses’ posture, and that’s what we came to believe you were doing.”

If you want all the gory details, you should follow all the links back from Nyhan’s Time.com post, linked above. Also, if partisan rancor is your thing, there are follow-ups on his blog, here.

One of Andrew Sulllivan’s e-mail correspondents writes:

Schopenhauer’s point about taking care not to become the beast you fight is eerily apt. In their fanatical drive for unity and victory, they risk becoming what they hate.

Indeed. (I started writing about the drive for ideological purity many months ago. See here and here and here, for example. Then I just said “no” and stopped paying attention.) But something else Nyhan said caught my eye:

Today, online politics has come to be dominated by two warring camps, just like offline politics. And while many critics complain about the polarization of the blogosphere and its effect on elections, how blogs will affect the economics of opinion journalism is less well understood. In particular, partisan blogs have become so popular that they are threatening the business model — and the independence — of center-left opinion magazines, which may be forced to toe the party line to ensure their survival.

Just what media businesses need: political pressure on top of the extreme financial pressures they’re facing. But I’m not really buying the assertion that it’s all about market share. Not after finding out that Matt Welch was cast out of the Prospect family for ideological reasons in 2003 (when I wasn’t paying attention…and I wish I didn’t have to be paying attention to this now). Ugh.