Too Smart to Succeed?

News Note: The staff of The Weekly Standard (1995-2018), a respected conservative magazine, were told to pack their things and leave the building by 5 p.m. Friday in a “Christmas massacre.” Employees were told severance pay will depend on their signing a nondisclosure and nondisparagement agreement.

“[T]his is what happens when corporate drones take over an opinion magazine, try to drag it down to their level and then grow angry and resentful when the people at the magazine try to maintain some sense of intellectual standards. This is what happens when people with a populist mind-set decide that an uneducated opinion is of the same value as an educated opinion, that ignorance sells better than learning. . . .

“This is what happens when the commercial forces trying to dumb down the American media run into a pocket of people trying to resist those forces.” 

—David Brooks, columnist, “Who Killed the Weekly Standard?” The New York Times, Dec. 15, 2018. Image: Weekly Standard co-founder William Kristol/Getty.

• Editorial Comment: Dumb is a hot commodity these days.




PeezPix

After the rain

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“I don’t think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.” —Tom Stoppard