Of course the Bulwark is my top independent source for news and has been for some time. One of the first indications that we were in trouble was the crowd jeering at members of the media and hearing that they were "the enemy of the people" at every Trump tally. Frightening! I was really lucky to discover the Bulwark and continue to share and discuss it with friends and sometimes family! I was also lucky to find Cascadia Daily News as a great source of local events and politics. Local journalism is so important to a community and independent news sources are hard to come by. Reading and sharing is one of my favorite things to do. I don't "do" social media as my natural inclination is for in person interaction. And I don't generally write comments here but JVL asked so here it is!
Hi JVL, missed you in San Diego! I like Adam Mockler, Danielle Moodie and the Meidas Touch. I will never again watch CBS. Not interested in state TV! I love it when you're dark; I'm right there with you. BTW, I adore Sarah but I think the Supreme Court needs to be expanded. Nothing will turnaround until we get corruption out of SCOTUS.
This decimation of "60 Minutes" is fully in line with the other things that CBS has done. However, the average age of this network's viewer is about 68 years old--so I don't know how many people it will actually impact.
Army brat republican turned independent because - well you know. Haven't watched broadcast TV since about 2020 and avoided a lot since 2016. Watching the shift from traditional to streaming and independent news sources has been interesting and extremely uplifting since Jan 2021. While I mourn the loss of - and am nostalgic for - quality shows like 60 minutes, I am not surprised by what is happening. These days, I get my trusted news from independent sources. I read several Bulwark newsletters, HRC, Joyce Vance, follow Katie Phang, Jim Acosta, and several others who have left mainstream and gone independent. Thanks to all of you for maintaining good journalistic ideals! We readers and watchers want to think along with you. We are ready for difficult conversations and issues. We all are up to the task. We can do this.
Though I haven't watched 60 Minutes on broadcast TV in quite a while, I was on their email feed until Weiss took over. What she and her corporate overlords are doing is a travesty. My go-to for national and international news is NPR, and I'm a member of my local station. I actually think NPR is better off since federal funding was cut off last year, because this makes them completely independent. But it's a shame that federal funding was also cut off for all public TV and radio stations. Some of them serve remote areas that are impoverished and/or don't have reliable internet.
It's pretty bleak, but I think this is just part of the apparent agreement among the Epstein Class to turn the USA's electoral process into a COMPLETELY "pay-to-win" system.
We've known for decades that at the national level, the best predictor for a win is whichever candidate spent the most money on their campaign. But the fact that there can still sometimes be upsets in which the candidate with less cash wins must be driving the gods of the copybook headings nuts. So they're working very hard to stamp out any possibility of voters refusing to do as the advertising industry tells them.
I’m devastated about 60 Minutes. It’s been my rock for the last 20 years for issues both current and timeless. If there’s anything that can be done to reverse this mess, count me in. In the meantime, thank you Bulwark. You’re doing a great job.
I was a teenager when CBS’s 60 Minutes first went on the air in September 1968. My father was a news junky so he dialed into anything, be it paper, radio or the antenna tv, that was news adjacent. Post-supper Sunday nights in our house were dedicated to 60 Minutes. It was must watch television even when there was company present. And that tradition continued for me until this year.
My dad is spinning in his grave & I am weeping for what has been lost.
I am an early Bulwark adapter & have broadened to other sites such as The Contrarian, The Atlantic, various Substacks, etc. And it’s really getting expensive but we must persevere!
I listen to just about everything the Bulwark produces—my favorites are the secret podcast, tnl, and the morning shots, and anything with Catherine Rampel. I also listen to Heather Cox Richardson, Anne Applebaum, Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Fiona Hill, and David Frum. Outside the US, I listen to Ukraine the latest, the Trump Report, and browse the BBC and the Guardian.
Great read today, JVL! I have to say I read a bit about “Nick” in today’s F’ing News - another Jonathon, highly recommend- and this is a disheartening situation, well detailed here. Besides the Bulwark I also subscribe to Xplisset here on Substack, and avidly watch my local PBS (get a Passport, people!) and listen to my local NPR (they gladly accept monthly EFT’s!) I have a subscription to a newspaper that covers some hometown news. There are places to get world and local news, but not the ways we used to.
The Michael Mann film The Insider is excellent. Is is about 60 Minutes struggling to get Jeffrey WIgand's insider testimony about the tobacco industry on the air, after corporate overrules them because tobacco industry lawsuits would hurt the suits' stock options. That testimony was the beginning of the end for the tobacco industry marketing cigarettes to children.
TV news is dying and I don't know what if anything is going to replace it. Having not grown up in the US, I've never watched network news in this country because it has always been kind of garbage (The movie Network was a documentary). 60 Minutes was different (I think of Panorama as the nearest equivalent on British television, but 60 Minutes had rock star journalists which seemed to give it some protection, see e.g. Christopher Plummer as Mike Wallace and the sway he had on decisions in CBS News). But I'm going to guess its viewers skewed older. Maybe even as old as Fox News viewers.
James Murdoch just acquired Vox Media. It's maybe a signal of where news is going. For now it's low budget talking heads, but great oaks can grow from acorns. The biggest challenge that I see is that the oligarchs control the algorithms that drive listeners and viewers attention. The political class needs to defang these people before they destroy our polity but e.g. Schumer's daughter works for Meta (you know, the company that allowed Cambridge Analytica to influence the 2016 election).
Heather Cox Richardson and pretty much everyone at the Bulwark are my go-to people these days... oh, and also The Atlantic and the occasional Ezra Klein though he often annoys me. Why? You are people that I trust and like (para-socially speaking, of course). Also, all of you seem like you're doing your level best each day to figure out how to continue being a good human in the midst of the current hellscape.
A friend originally suggested that I check out The Bulwark, and what immediately attracted me was how, when I listened to you Tim and Sarah talk with each other, it brought me back to how my friends and I would talk back when we were graduate students at UCLA and Ronald Reagan had just been elected president for the first time. We thought it was the end of the world and were trying to find the way forward... seems so quaint now. Anyway, thank you JVL... The Triad is a gift!
"MoBiMom? Is that a reference to molecular biology?
I was a first-year Ph.D. student elsewhere in the greater Los Angeles area in the fall of 1980, and our lab group — led by a first-year assistant professor — had interesting perspectives on the Reagan Years. We were all "Just Kids," to borrow Patti Smith's book title. (That notion seems quaint too.)
Because you asked….I rely on the Bulwark and Charlie Sykes for thoughtful punditry (I read you and Morning Shots religiously), and the Parnas Report and Axios for news ( although the latter with a grain of salt). As for legacy media, I abandoned CBS with Bari Weiss’ appointment, and sold my Disney stock when ABC sold out over the Stephanopolis controversy.
I doubt this is what you are looking for in today’s comments, but I so value what you and the Bulwark bring to journalism I felt compelled to post. Thank you for offering a different path.
I am of two minds about this. On the one hand, it seems clear that CBS, and 60 Minutes along with it, were circling the drain already, along with what remains in the emptying tub of murky bathwater that was 20th century culture. I haven't watched it in years; I think the only CBS broadcasts I have watched since 2010 or thereabouts have been football games, and there haven't been many of those (cf. murky bathwater, etc.). But I understand, and agree, that the show was important and useful because it injected serious journalism into the flow of entertainment content that was the primary (and, in many cases, only) information diet that intellectually lazy Americans (always an appallingly large majority of citizens) fed upon. The only people who watch it now are old; and we need look no further than the Texas Republican Senate primary to know what's going on with most of the olds, these days. And, anyway, they'll be dead soon.
On the other hand, it's sad that young people, born into the absolute sewer that is 21st century culture, will never know that it existed. They won't miss it, of course, and so they won't know that they have been impoverished by its absence, and that is the sad thing: the fate of 60 Minutes is emblematic of the loss of a wealth of truly timeless culture (the works of Plato, Shakespeare, Bach, etc.), texts that must be read to be understood and appreciated. And we know that what's going on with the youngs is that they don't read (I don't blame them for that; it's just a fact). It's not just the contend that feeds the life of the mind that's disappearing; it's also the disappearance of the intellectual apparatus that enables the mind to work on it. The orange man and his minions don't care, because (in his case, and that of his children) they never possessed it, or because it isn't useful to them in their quest for power.
I don't mean that Shakespeare, or 60 Minutes, will ever entirely vanish--at least, not until the sun explodes. The stuff will sit on shelves, where a few people will still know that it exists, and that it was once important; but, lacking the tools to open it up, they won't know why it was important, or understand what it was really for.
Of course the Bulwark is my top independent source for news and has been for some time. One of the first indications that we were in trouble was the crowd jeering at members of the media and hearing that they were "the enemy of the people" at every Trump tally. Frightening! I was really lucky to discover the Bulwark and continue to share and discuss it with friends and sometimes family! I was also lucky to find Cascadia Daily News as a great source of local events and politics. Local journalism is so important to a community and independent news sources are hard to come by. Reading and sharing is one of my favorite things to do. I don't "do" social media as my natural inclination is for in person interaction. And I don't generally write comments here but JVL asked so here it is!
Hi JVL, missed you in San Diego! I like Adam Mockler, Danielle Moodie and the Meidas Touch. I will never again watch CBS. Not interested in state TV! I love it when you're dark; I'm right there with you. BTW, I adore Sarah but I think the Supreme Court needs to be expanded. Nothing will turnaround until we get corruption out of SCOTUS.
This decimation of "60 Minutes" is fully in line with the other things that CBS has done. However, the average age of this network's viewer is about 68 years old--so I don't know how many people it will actually impact.
Army brat republican turned independent because - well you know. Haven't watched broadcast TV since about 2020 and avoided a lot since 2016. Watching the shift from traditional to streaming and independent news sources has been interesting and extremely uplifting since Jan 2021. While I mourn the loss of - and am nostalgic for - quality shows like 60 minutes, I am not surprised by what is happening. These days, I get my trusted news from independent sources. I read several Bulwark newsletters, HRC, Joyce Vance, follow Katie Phang, Jim Acosta, and several others who have left mainstream and gone independent. Thanks to all of you for maintaining good journalistic ideals! We readers and watchers want to think along with you. We are ready for difficult conversations and issues. We all are up to the task. We can do this.
Though I haven't watched 60 Minutes on broadcast TV in quite a while, I was on their email feed until Weiss took over. What she and her corporate overlords are doing is a travesty. My go-to for national and international news is NPR, and I'm a member of my local station. I actually think NPR is better off since federal funding was cut off last year, because this makes them completely independent. But it's a shame that federal funding was also cut off for all public TV and radio stations. Some of them serve remote areas that are impoverished and/or don't have reliable internet.
My Big 4 (alpha):
The Contrarian (including Norm Eisen - Democracy Defenders)
Democracy Docket (Marc Elias)
Indivisible.org
MeidasTouch (including Ron Filipkowski)
+ (alpha)
Ruth Ben-Ghiat
Brian Tyler Cohen
Julia Davis (Russian Media Monitor)
404 Media
Allison Gill (Mueller She Wrote)
Garrett M. Graff
Adam Kinzinger
Paul Krugman
Scott MacFarlane
Michael McFaul
Barb McQuade
Katie Phang
Robert Reich
Heather Cox Richardson
Timothy Snyder
The Tennessee Holler
Joyce White Vance
Steve Vladeck
Andrew Weissman
Justin Wolfers
Sorry - Anne Applebaum
It's pretty bleak, but I think this is just part of the apparent agreement among the Epstein Class to turn the USA's electoral process into a COMPLETELY "pay-to-win" system.
We've known for decades that at the national level, the best predictor for a win is whichever candidate spent the most money on their campaign. But the fact that there can still sometimes be upsets in which the candidate with less cash wins must be driving the gods of the copybook headings nuts. So they're working very hard to stamp out any possibility of voters refusing to do as the advertising industry tells them.
I’m devastated about 60 Minutes. It’s been my rock for the last 20 years for issues both current and timeless. If there’s anything that can be done to reverse this mess, count me in. In the meantime, thank you Bulwark. You’re doing a great job.
I was a teenager when CBS’s 60 Minutes first went on the air in September 1968. My father was a news junky so he dialed into anything, be it paper, radio or the antenna tv, that was news adjacent. Post-supper Sunday nights in our house were dedicated to 60 Minutes. It was must watch television even when there was company present. And that tradition continued for me until this year.
My dad is spinning in his grave & I am weeping for what has been lost.
I am an early Bulwark adapter & have broadened to other sites such as The Contrarian, The Atlantic, various Substacks, etc. And it’s really getting expensive but we must persevere!
I listen to just about everything the Bulwark produces—my favorites are the secret podcast, tnl, and the morning shots, and anything with Catherine Rampel. I also listen to Heather Cox Richardson, Anne Applebaum, Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Fiona Hill, and David Frum. Outside the US, I listen to Ukraine the latest, the Trump Report, and browse the BBC and the Guardian.
Great read today, JVL! I have to say I read a bit about “Nick” in today’s F’ing News - another Jonathon, highly recommend- and this is a disheartening situation, well detailed here. Besides the Bulwark I also subscribe to Xplisset here on Substack, and avidly watch my local PBS (get a Passport, people!) and listen to my local NPR (they gladly accept monthly EFT’s!) I have a subscription to a newspaper that covers some hometown news. There are places to get world and local news, but not the ways we used to.
The Michael Mann film The Insider is excellent. Is is about 60 Minutes struggling to get Jeffrey WIgand's insider testimony about the tobacco industry on the air, after corporate overrules them because tobacco industry lawsuits would hurt the suits' stock options. That testimony was the beginning of the end for the tobacco industry marketing cigarettes to children.
TV news is dying and I don't know what if anything is going to replace it. Having not grown up in the US, I've never watched network news in this country because it has always been kind of garbage (The movie Network was a documentary). 60 Minutes was different (I think of Panorama as the nearest equivalent on British television, but 60 Minutes had rock star journalists which seemed to give it some protection, see e.g. Christopher Plummer as Mike Wallace and the sway he had on decisions in CBS News). But I'm going to guess its viewers skewed older. Maybe even as old as Fox News viewers.
James Murdoch just acquired Vox Media. It's maybe a signal of where news is going. For now it's low budget talking heads, but great oaks can grow from acorns. The biggest challenge that I see is that the oligarchs control the algorithms that drive listeners and viewers attention. The political class needs to defang these people before they destroy our polity but e.g. Schumer's daughter works for Meta (you know, the company that allowed Cambridge Analytica to influence the 2016 election).
Heather Cox Richardson and pretty much everyone at the Bulwark are my go-to people these days... oh, and also The Atlantic and the occasional Ezra Klein though he often annoys me. Why? You are people that I trust and like (para-socially speaking, of course). Also, all of you seem like you're doing your level best each day to figure out how to continue being a good human in the midst of the current hellscape.
A friend originally suggested that I check out The Bulwark, and what immediately attracted me was how, when I listened to you Tim and Sarah talk with each other, it brought me back to how my friends and I would talk back when we were graduate students at UCLA and Ronald Reagan had just been elected president for the first time. We thought it was the end of the world and were trying to find the way forward... seems so quaint now. Anyway, thank you JVL... The Triad is a gift!
"MoBiMom? Is that a reference to molecular biology?
I was a first-year Ph.D. student elsewhere in the greater Los Angeles area in the fall of 1980, and our lab group — led by a first-year assistant professor — had interesting perspectives on the Reagan Years. We were all "Just Kids," to borrow Patti Smith's book title. (That notion seems quaint too.)
Bulwark is it! Thanks for your sass, your delivery and your investigating!
Because you asked….I rely on the Bulwark and Charlie Sykes for thoughtful punditry (I read you and Morning Shots religiously), and the Parnas Report and Axios for news ( although the latter with a grain of salt). As for legacy media, I abandoned CBS with Bari Weiss’ appointment, and sold my Disney stock when ABC sold out over the Stephanopolis controversy.
I doubt this is what you are looking for in today’s comments, but I so value what you and the Bulwark bring to journalism I felt compelled to post. Thank you for offering a different path.
I am of two minds about this. On the one hand, it seems clear that CBS, and 60 Minutes along with it, were circling the drain already, along with what remains in the emptying tub of murky bathwater that was 20th century culture. I haven't watched it in years; I think the only CBS broadcasts I have watched since 2010 or thereabouts have been football games, and there haven't been many of those (cf. murky bathwater, etc.). But I understand, and agree, that the show was important and useful because it injected serious journalism into the flow of entertainment content that was the primary (and, in many cases, only) information diet that intellectually lazy Americans (always an appallingly large majority of citizens) fed upon. The only people who watch it now are old; and we need look no further than the Texas Republican Senate primary to know what's going on with most of the olds, these days. And, anyway, they'll be dead soon.
On the other hand, it's sad that young people, born into the absolute sewer that is 21st century culture, will never know that it existed. They won't miss it, of course, and so they won't know that they have been impoverished by its absence, and that is the sad thing: the fate of 60 Minutes is emblematic of the loss of a wealth of truly timeless culture (the works of Plato, Shakespeare, Bach, etc.), texts that must be read to be understood and appreciated. And we know that what's going on with the youngs is that they don't read (I don't blame them for that; it's just a fact). It's not just the contend that feeds the life of the mind that's disappearing; it's also the disappearance of the intellectual apparatus that enables the mind to work on it. The orange man and his minions don't care, because (in his case, and that of his children) they never possessed it, or because it isn't useful to them in their quest for power.
I don't mean that Shakespeare, or 60 Minutes, will ever entirely vanish--at least, not until the sun explodes. The stuff will sit on shelves, where a few people will still know that it exists, and that it was once important; but, lacking the tools to open it up, they won't know why it was important, or understand what it was really for.