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- * The Enlightenment Wasn’t Enlightened (6-23-26)
* Mr. Burge Draws The Line (6-23-26)
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* Why Does Australia Produce So Many Great Journalists? (6-11-26)
* Steve Wynn and the Press: Power, Litigation, and the Contest Over Las Vegas (6-3-26)
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* What would it look like if the Financial Times put its reader first? (6-1-26)
* What It Would Mean for the Los Angeles Times to Put the Reader First? (6-1-26)
* What It Would Mean for The New York Times to Put the Reader First? (6-1-26)
* Why Wembanyama Lives on the Perimeter (5-31-26)
* The Emotional Palettes Of San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco & Sacramento (5-27-26)
* The Administrative Capital: Sacramento Legal Culture (5-27-26)
* San Diego - The Quiet Republic (5-27-26)
* The Quiet Bar: San Diego Legal Culture (5-27-26)
* SF v LA Legal Culture (5-27-26)
* Why Talent Travels Poorly Between San Francisco and Los Angeles (5-27-26)
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Category Archives: Journalism
MSM Symmetry In Iran Coverage
Most national security reporters sit inside the same information ecosystem as the officials they cover. Their sources are Pentagon officers, intelligence briefers, congressional staff, and think tank analysts. When a crisis hits, those relationships become the primary pipeline of information. … Continue reading
Posted in Blob, Expertise, Iran, Journalism
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Understanding The Elite Frame On The Iran War
Large news organizations learn from the last war. They rarely evaluate each conflict in isolation. Instead they carry forward the moral lessons they believe they failed to apply previously. Before the first Gulf War in 1990-91, much of the elite … Continue reading
Posted in Buffered, Journalism
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Journos Take Public Pronouncements Too Seriously
Here’s another cliche from the FT’s historian Eugene Rogan: “Given conflicting American aims and justifications for the war, it is difficult to predict just how it will reshape the region.” Conflicting American aims (stated by public officials) and justifications (stated … Continue reading
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Decoding Kara Swisher
Kara Swisher serves as the high-priestess of accountability within the Silicon Valley “clerisy.” If Christiane Amanpour is the moral ambassador of the international order, Swisher is the internal auditor of the meritocratic elite. Using David Pinsof’s Alliance Theory, she manages … Continue reading
Posted in Journalism
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Decoding CNN’s Christiane Amanpour
Christiane Amanpour’s position as a moral narrator within the Western foreign policy ecosystem functions as a mechanism for what Jeffrey Alexander calls social performance. She does not just report on events; she scripts them into a binary of sacred and … Continue reading
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‘The last thing the Middle East needed was another war’
“The last thing X needed” is one of the most revealing clichés in journalism because it quietly smuggles in a worldview. It pretends to describe reality but it actually expresses a moral wish. When a journalist writes “the last thing … Continue reading
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Decoding Charlie Rose
Written with AI: The transition of Charlie Rose from broadcast networks to independent digital platforms illustrates a core tenet of Alliance Theory: high-status nodes in a network are often more durable than the institutions that house them. While CBS and … Continue reading
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Everything Shocking Requires Fuel
Fires need fuel. Wood, paper, cloth, dried grass, coal, oil, natural gas. Anything with carbon in it that can combine with oxygen at high enough temperatures. The chemical term is fuel, but the practical answer is: anything that burns. The … Continue reading
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Decoding Washington Post Columnist David Ignatius
David Ignatius is best understood through David Pinsof’s Alliance Theory as a narrative diplomat for the American foreign policy establishment. He is the Senior Correspondent of the Intelligence Server. As a longtime Washington Post columnist and novelist, he does not … Continue reading
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Where Will It Stop?
Here’s another journo cliche — where will it stop? The FT: “Trump’s war on Iran is spreading. Where does it stop? US allies in the Arab world have been plunged into a conflict they neither wanted nor consented to. Historian … Continue reading
Posted in Iran, Journalism
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