The Death of the Rude Press

As I said years ago, Nick Denton’s innovation was importing a vituperative British style of journalisticishness in place of the American postwar evenhanded-establishment Sulzbergerianism.

But that that venom only works as the basis of public discourse tempered by strict libel law and a sense of elite solidarity, that it’s all just a squabble among Oxbridge classmates jockeying for the top, you play your play and then clock out and have drinks together.

(America lacks the level of elite solidarity it needs for the alternation-of-absolute-power governance or cultural pillarization we’re developing either, but oh well)

And you know America does still have tabloidy, no-holds-barred journalism adapted from the British model! It has Murdoch’s Fox!