Coordinating

Michael Calderone calls his story in The Politico, JournoList: Inside the Echo Chamber. He tells of a ListServ mailing list that has members who are “left-leaning bloggers, political reporters, magazine writers, policy wonks and academics”. Only left leaning, mind you. And what do they do with this list? Well, that’s a secret.

But beyond these specific examples, it’s hard to trace JList’s influence in the media, because so few JListers are willing to talk on the record about it.

POLITICO contacted nearly three dozen current JList members for this story. The majority either declined to comment or didn’t respond to interview requests — and then returned to JList to post items on why they wouldn’t be talking to POLITICO about what goes on there.

In an e-mail, Klein said he understands that the JList’s off-the-record rule “makes it seems secretive.” But he insisted that JList discussions have to be off the record in order to “ensure that folks feel safe giving off-the-cuff analysis and instant reactions.” 

One byproduct of that secrecy: For all its high-profile membership — which includes Nobel Prize-winning columnist Paul Krugman; staffers from Newsweek, POLITICO, Huffington Post, The New Republic, The Nation and The New Yorker; policy wonks, academics and bloggers such as Klein and Matthew Yglesias — JList itself has received almost no attention from the media.

Doesn’t seem secretive. It is secretive.

But Time’s Joe Klein, who acknowledged being on JList and several other listservs, said in an e-mail that “they’re valuable in the way that candid conversations with colleagues and experts always are.” Defending the off-the-record rule, Klein said that “candor is essential and can only be guaranteed by keeping these conversations private.”

And then Klein — speaking like the JLister he is — said there wasn’t “anything more that I can or want to say about the subject.”

Ever wonder why the exact, same talking points will flow effortlessly from many of the left-leaning bloggers and the media at the same time? Ever wonder why there is a creepy, Metropolis-Drone feeling sometimes?

Things like this tend to produce that creepy groupthink (even if that is not the intent of the members of this group). As well as things like this, this and this.

Speaking for myself only, I get my topics by actually reading a lot of online material every day. I get a very few email tips about things, usually about matters pertaining to animals. (Quite a few readers enjoy the Animal Uprising™ schtick). But coordination of stories, groupthink, doesn’t sit real well with me regardless of political affiliation.

I don’t do collectivism well. Obviously, the left is all about collectivism. And things like JournoList tend to prove it.

UPDATE: The original link is via Memeorandum. They also had a link to this post by Mark Hemingway at NRO cheerfully dismembering JournoList founder Ezra Klein’s weak defense of his brainchild.

I would like to think that journalists whose credibility rests on working for publications that represent themselves as objective news outlets as well as very influential civil-service employees would see the problem in granting exclusive access to people with a specific political agenda. Even the appearance that the news, let alone actual policies that affect all Americans, are being shaped disproportionately by reporters and unelected civil servants in the thrall of ideological crusaders is a problem. To some extent I can’t fault the list’s overtly liberal members for trying to get in even better with the press and policymakers than they already are, but if Klein and others on the list want to sluff off the questions here by saying “what’s the big deal?” — well, that’s a problem too.

Again, the list is secretive, despite Klein’s whitewashing. It is also ethically-challenged, whether Klein sees it or not.