It looks like The Weekly Standard is going to shut down.
The easiest way to sum up the failure of the Weekly Standard is this: Why would anyone on the right offer financial support to the Weekly Standard when CNN will call us a racist for free? And why would anyone on the left offer financial support to the Weekly Standard when CNN will call us a racist for free?
Sarcasm aside, that is the Weekly Standard’s primary problem. In the age of Trump, the publication offers nothing we cannot get everywhere else in the elite media, nothing we cannot find at the far-left Washington Post, MSNBC, New York Times, CNN, etc.
Smug virtue-signaling and superior Trump-bashing are the cheapest commodities in today’s news business. They are literally everywhere. And so, instead of offering a unique voice and perspective in an ocean of left-wing media, the Weekly Standard instead chose to sit in the middle of this ocean and sell saltwater.
Back in the late 1990s, I used to subscribe to The Weekly Standard, and they did some good articles. They were the first place I read about how the French government had lost control of the predominately Muslim banlieues. But I dropped my subscription because I wasn’t reading as many magazines any longer as my Internet reading increased, and National Review filled my “what I read at breakfast and dinner” needs.
There were always oddities in The Weekly Standard‘s worldview, including their embrace of “National Greatness” conservatism, which struck me as Big Government with a conservative facade. But judging from their Twitter timelines, the 2016 election seems to given them a more severe case of Trump Derangement Syndrome than any other institution on the right. They became the voice for that tiny strand of elite conservatism that cared more about properly creased trousers and liking the right opera conductors than improving economic conditions for the middle class or reigning in the excesses of big government. They’d rather join forces with Democrats than let the uncouth ruffian Trump besmirch their class credentials by winning without them.
Now some tweets on the subject:
Writers for @weeklystandard have written fundraising copy for Peter Strzok, called for gun control, praised censorship of conservatives, endorsed pro-abortion Democrats, and even run sock puppet smear campaigns against their own @dcexaminer colleague @SalenaZito.
— Sean Davis (@seanmdav) November 26, 2018
Good idea, they could donate monthly to keep TWS going long term. Maybe call it "subscription."
That will solve their loss of readers due to their voluntary decision to be condescending to their target audience.
— Noah (@reeb1011) December 5, 2018
Fate of The Weekly Standard is uncertain, editor tells staff
I guess selling out to Democrats is bad business for a "conservative" publication.https://t.co/eFoPemMCY2
— John Cardillo (@johncardillo) December 4, 2018
Tags: Media Watch, The Weekly Standard, Trump Derangement Syndrome, William Kristol
It couldn’t happened to a better rag and Bill Kristol hardest hit!
The next one should be NRO – another conflicted rag publishing left endorsed hit pieces. Today’s articles include one about white supremacy in the republican party and written by – you guess it – a while liberal posing as independent.