The Wall Street Journal editor James Taranto has for many years published a daily digest called Best of the Web. I’ve always enjoyed reading it: Mr. Taranto is a smart and funny guy, an astute observer, and a good writer.
Mr. Taranto has now been promoted to editor of the paper’s op-ed pages, and BOTW is no more. The final installment, which included a look back at the media’s coverage of the last election, is here. (I didn’t see it until just now, having been away.)
A snippet:
When you think about journalism in this way, its failure in 2016 becomes very simple to understand. Whether you see Trump as a hero or a goat””or something in between, which is our still-tentative view””his unlikely ascension to the presidency was a hell of a story. Most journalists missed the story because they were too caught up in defending a system of cultural authority of which they had foolishly allowed themselves to become an integral part.
I thank James Taranto for some of the most entertaining and lighthearted political coverage of the past decade or so, and wish him well in his new job.