How Long Does The Whip Snap?

Ever-eager to solidify my standing as a "Whippersnapper who's kind of Fogeyish," I'll take Mickey Kaus' assignment on the whippersnapper factor in the blogosphere. And, even better, I'll do it bullet-point style:

• It's a mistake to underplay the value of experience. I think I do better work than I did two years ago, and hopefully will do work that's better still ten years further in the future.
• That said, it's a bit hard to see the harm in permitting less-experienced people to publish things knowing that this happens in a media climate where they (we) aren't squeezing other people out.
• It's also a mistake to overestimate the youthfullness of blogging. There are no really old people blogging, but the bulk of the prominent bloggers are people in their thirties and forties. You would think people wouldn't want to get the bulk of their information from smart-ass 25 year-olds and, as it happens, they don't do this in practice.
• What I think you do need to worry about is this. It used to be that the closest thing to a reliable way to get glamorous pundit work was to pay your dues as a reporter. Perhaps kids graduating from college in the Class of 2008 will decide that the best thing to do is start a blog. Thus, maybe our pool of serious, hardworking reporters and administrative work-doers will dry up as everyone says "fuck dues-paying, I wanna be like Matt Yglesias." But someone needs to do the work!
• The good news / bad news is that I suspect the whippersnapper window is closing.
• When I started blogging in January 2002, writing a blog about politics on the internet was a very easy thing to break into. Between January 2002 and May 2007, the social and economic value of having a well-regarded political blog has skyrocketed. A 20 year-old college junior with little in the way of reporting skills to offer simply couldn't break into the blogosphere these days.
• Thus, I think you'll find that folks like me, Ezra Klein, Julian Sanchez, etc. are blazing a trail that nobody will follow.
• A more likely model is Andrew Golis who used a blog he started in college to help get a job as an Associate Editor at TPM Media where he's essentially paying his dues (and, of course, doing some writing) much as young people looking to break into the business have always done.

Long story short, I don't think Fogeyish concerns are totally wrong on the merits, but I don't think they actually have a great deal to worry about. New technology subverted traditional career paths but just because it was "new" not because of anything intrinsic to the technology. Now that it's not so new, a more traditional pattern is reasserting itself.

Comments

There are no paradigms in the ether.

Never site Mickey Kaus for anything.

Posted by Thunderlips | May 13, 2007 2:46 PM

It's a mistake to underplay the value of experience. I think I do better work than I did two years ago, and hopefully will do work that's better still ten years further in the future.

It's a mistake to think that the incline of improvement will remain constant or increase. You get your returns on experience earlier. In ten years, you may spell better. It's not clear to me that you will become more insightful. Indeed, it's likely you'll be less so, because you will have spent ten years honing a specific angle of attack on the world, and, when the world changes, you're going to be loath to give up that angle and write off as the costs of that experience. See, e.g., Mickey Kaus, who fears exactly the same things he feared twenty five years ago: unions, minorities, and Democrats.

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | May 13, 2007 3:03 PM

If they ever have that Kaus-Klein bloggingheads, Mickey should wear a monocle while Ezra sucks a lollipop.

Posted by otto | May 13, 2007 3:19 PM

As someone in the college class of 2012...DELETE THIS POST...i mean, you're really killing my happy future prospects...like actually doing journalism before punditry, having to work for the dark lord peretz, well, thats a bummer then, having this window close. Thanks for all the inspiration matt!

Posted by matt z | May 13, 2007 3:22 PM

Yup.

Posted by Petey | May 13, 2007 3:31 PM

"As someone in the college class of 2012...DELETE THIS POST"

Dude, if you're in the class of '12, give up now. Don't even worry about the blog arena being full. Global warming will kill you before your career gets on track anyway.

I'd suggest starting up a substantial crack and smack habit. Why not have fun as the ship sinks?

Posted by Petey | May 13, 2007 3:33 PM

"Ever-eager to solidify my standing as a "Whippersnapper who's kind of Fogeyish,"

Take up pipe smoking, Matthew.

Posted by Petey | May 13, 2007 3:34 PM

Actually a bunch of pundits over the years managed to avoid the "dues paying" phase. As with most things, in this area the internet didn't change the world as much as the kids think it did.

Before there was an internet, there was Marty Peretz, who "paid his dues" by buying for the magazine. Peretz anointed twentysomethings Michael Kinsley and Andrew Sullivan, and a slightly older but no more experienced Charles Krauthammer as pundit/columnists, none of whom ever did much in the way of reporting.

On the other side, William F. Buckley also became a punditry sensation when very young, by publishing God and Man at Yale around Yglesias' age, then founding The National Review. I believe he bestowed similar fortune on a bunch of young 'uns over the years also, although I wasn't a reader.

Posted by old guy | May 13, 2007 3:45 PM

will you keep improving? hard to say.

one of the things that has helped you in your early years is that you were being taught by some of the best philosophers in the world, and being exposed to the writings of some others. your time as an undergrad made you read and think about a lot of cutting-edge stuff in political science, econ, ethics, and--even--theories of truth and other enigmas.

Question: are you coasting on that burst of stimulation, without replenishing it?

I don't want to get all seven-habits on you, but you really should think about sharpening that saw. I mean, getting more education.

like SomeCallmeTim, I worry that you are going to atrophy into pundit-hood. Whereas what you should be doing is renewing and expanding your education-base by getting advanced training in some suitably rigorous field (law, econ, philosophy, poli sci, etc.)

You could be a higher-profile Brad DeLong, i.e. someone who really knows some stuff, and brings that to his writing. Or you could be your generations Mickey Kaus, i.e. someone who doesn't know shit.

Posted by covey | May 13, 2007 3:48 PM

"A 20 year-old college junior with little in the way of reporting skills to offer simply couldn't break into the blogosphere these days."

I don't see how this makes much sense. Posting your hastily dashed-off opinions on the Internet doesn't exactly seem like an area where much real entrenchment can occur. Why couldn't a 20 year old start a blog today and, with some sharp writing and canny self-promotion, rise to the upper echelons of the blogosphere within a year or so? You really think people wouldn't bother reading, talking about, or linking to his writings because he isn't one of the already established "names"?

Posted by Alex | May 13, 2007 4:12 PM

Will you keep improving?

Couldn't get worse!

(Sorry, it just seemed so easy....)

Posted by anon | May 13, 2007 4:14 PM

I have a slight disagreement with Covey. One of Matt's great accomplishments was to get a Harvard philosophy degree without having his reality sense completely destroyed. If he could survive that, he can survive anything.

Posted by John Emerson | May 13, 2007 4:26 PM

I think your advice to the youngsters is good. It's also good to see you worry about approaching Broderhood. I'm glad to see this thread has morphed into well-meaning advice about how to avoid this. Are you good at languages? If so, learn Arabic and Mandarin, young man.

Posted by Pithlord | May 13, 2007 4:50 PM

Speaking of experience: When I was a very junior enlisted man in the USAF, a wise NCO pointed out the difference between experience and putting in time. Some senior NCOs and Officers hadn't grown a bit over years and decades: they didn't have experience in the sense of continually facing and adopting change in themselves and the internal/external situation. They had maybe 3 years experience multiplied by 5 or 10 by just putting in time.

So, as long as your curiousity and drive leads to undiscovered and new pastures, don't worry about experience not being gained - it is and you will realize its benefits, including deeper insight into not just how things work, but how people deal with change.

That said, Kaus is a very good example of putting in time and not a paradyme of experienced life.

Posted by JimPortlandOR | May 13, 2007 5:08 PM

So I take it you're about to advertise for an intern?

Posted by otti | May 13, 2007 5:40 PM

I hope you're wrong about the whippersnapper window closing. Perhaps, like mathematicians, pundits do their best work when young. Certainly neither experience nor age has improved the output of many current old-timers .

Posted by Peggy | May 13, 2007 5:53 PM

Matt's smart and open-minded and energetic now, and as he ages the increased wisdom may well be counteracted with a decrease in open-mindedness and energetic-ness. Or, perhaps not. Either way, the idea he could become a Kaus is slanderous.

Posted by djw | May 13, 2007 8:05 PM

I wouldn't spend too much time worrying about anything written by Kaus, who is a prime example of the "for thee but not for me" school.

Posted by matt Newman | May 13, 2007 10:28 PM

The virulent Mickey-phobia always leaves me cold.

Sure he's got some weird politics in some areas, but left-center contrarians aren't satanic.

Plus he's fun to read, and precisely one third of his contrarian ideas are actually correct!

Posted by Petey | May 13, 2007 10:34 PM

Petey's right. And Kaus gives good bloggingheads.

Posted by otto | May 13, 2007 10:37 PM

Does Kaus rhyme with mouse ( as in Mickey Mouse)?

Posted by Grogor | May 13, 2007 10:37 PM

left-center contrarians aren't satanic

I don't know. I think the jury's still out in Mickey's case.

Someone who's authentically "left-center" simply could not have been rooting for the Republicans to retain their congressional majority, as Mickey was.

Being a full-time immigration hound is also not something you see a lot of left-center folks doing, or cheerleading the surge, and on and on.

Posted by lowellfield | May 14, 2007 12:00 AM

Age Brings experience, but it also tends to bring a hardening of views and a refusal to re-examine your conceptions of the world. I think that balances out any real advantage general experience can bring to a discussion (and Matt was also quite obviously a very sheltered person when he began writing).

It's hard to overstate the degree to which people are a product of their time. Older people aren't simply just older than we are, they are fundamentally different from us because the world they came up in is not the world that exists now. It's changed in ways people never really seem to. Most baby-boomers are still living in 60's and 70's, and treat the world as if it still is the world of the 60's and 70's. Give the turmoil of those decades, this tends to severely skew their view.

Posted by Soullite | May 14, 2007 7:18 AM

Low, most of us don't root for Republicans, now. But many of us don't particularly care for the democrats. If your biggest concern is social equity, then you've really got no reason to back one party or the other. The Democrats may offer more entitlements, and those help, but they just paper over our societies lack of egalitarianism and do little to help create a society where skill, and not birth, dictate position. Quite the contrary, their trade, education and general opposition to reform they do everything they can to preserve their status as elite members of society, and to extend that privilege to their children. If you don't care that much about abortion, and making sure that wealthier blacks, gays and women (but not poorer ones) have real opportunities, you have little reason to become involved in politics in this country at all. There is simply no place for you.

Posted by Soullite | May 14, 2007 7:25 AM

Kaus is not fun to read. His mannerisms are old and stale. Nor is he a center-leftist - he's simply your standard Horowitz conservative, the one with the lefty past he likes to use for cred. Horowitz's style is much shriller, and he's open about being on the right, while Kaus pretends that he is making up his ideology one position taken at a time. They just always happen to be rightwing! It's a complete and inexplicable accident!

However, he is fun to make fun of.

Posted by roger | May 14, 2007 9:42 AM

Kaus is neither fun to read nor center-left. He is basically a right winger with a contrived contrarianism that is his stock in trade. I defy anyone to point out something that suggest the Maus man is in anyway to the left.

True experience can be invaluable. Actually learning about something of substance while experiencing it day to day can bring wisdom and perspective that is hard to come by. However, in my view most mainstream journalists/pundits do little of the hard work of mastering a given area and rely instead on the same hackneyed opinion makers and think tankers to do their work for them. Has experience made Maureen Dowd a better journalist? Broder? The bad Klein? Kaus? I believe the answer would be no, no, no, and hell no.

Posted by Klein's Tiny Left Nut | May 14, 2007 11:13 AM

Reading this is amusing for me because, as a college junior thinking pretty much exactly what you describe, it's pretty frustrating to know that there's virtually no way a blog I start could get big enough to help me break into the political journalism/punditry world. So I'm interning with the Prospect this summer, but that's of course an option open to a limited number of people. We'll see how it goes.

Posted by Sam | May 14, 2007 4:35 PM

When you are 25 years old, all of your experiences of self are likely to be cases of outgrowing your limitations.

By the time you are 35 years old, you will be aware of how trapped you are in habits of mind, which you never outgrew, and may never outgrow. But, still, you will be amazed at how "young" you still are: most people are healthier, and stronger at 35 than at 25, and even if they are not quite as fast or sharp, they make up for it by being a bit wiser and more economical in their thinking and movement. The fast ball is fading, but mastery of the knuckleball may be on its way.

By the time you are 55, you know for certain that all progress has halted. It is all down-hill. Your strengh, beauty, hopes, importance, powers are all in inevitable, irreversible decline.

At 75, you finally know what is important, what you most wanted in life, because whatever it was, it is slipping away.

Posted by Bruce Wilder | May 14, 2007 9:00 PM

As someone a hairsbreadth away from 55, I think Bruce is rather full of it. In most any field, there is an ecosystem of young energy, somewhat older innovation, and grey-haired experience. Without the latter, much time is wasted re-inventing the intellectual wheel. Without the first, the innovators would settle in their ruts too soon. Without innovators to integrate ideas and experience, either naiveté or sclerosis will prevent progress.

People differ enormously in their ability or willingness to acquire new information and adapt to new situations. I've met plenty of thirty-year-olds who have hardly progressed since graduation, and sixty-year-olds who are still soaking up and digesting new knowledge and using it in new ways. When I was younger, I learned to distinguish those with premature intellectual sclerosis from those who might have aging bodies but facile minds. As I have aged, I've aimed to use what I learned from the latter, the ability to see new things in terms of the patterns they form with what is already known.

Few human endeavors depend upon the efforts of single individuals any more. The groups I've seen work best are those that integrate varying levels of experience -- including the more able of the pre-geriatric set. I don't expect many of the new ideas come from the latter, but a lot of the bad ideas will be challenged before the group as a whole can slip off track.

Posted by idlemind | May 14, 2007 10:03 PM

What's all this knocking of Kaus? The guy has one of the shrewdest minds on the internet. Wait a minute, I think I know. He doesn't toe the line drawn in the sand by the bloviating left and its running dogs.

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