Merciless Teen Vogue Staffers Are Not An Outlier, They’re The Future Of Newsrooms – The Federalist

Make no mistake, the journalists at Teen Vogue will soon be in charge of every legacy newsroom. The shortsighted media establishment haplessly fueled its own destruction and theres little recourse.

This week, Alexi McCammond lost her job as editor-in-chief of Teen Vogue because the outlets staff couldnt get over tweets she sent as a teenager which, as the New York Times put it, included comments on the appearance of Asian features, derogatory stereotypes about Asians and slurs for gay people. McCammond apologized for the tweets in 2019 and went on to cover the 2020 election for Axios, earning acclaim from her peers.

After Teen Vogue announced her hiring, staff made hay over the old tweets, forcing McCammond to issue more apologies before the situation ultimately became untenable on Wednesday. This is obviously crazy to everyone who hasnt drank the Kool-Aid, which is a rapidly decreasing proportion of the adult population, thanks in no small part to the journalists who normalized these absurd standards. As such, McCammonds peers in the press leaped to her defense, condemning the successful efforts to oust her.

Its too little, too late. The legacy media fueled the rise of cancel culture, indulging the far lefts bizarre and radical scorched-earth arguments for years through their coverage and their own personnel decisions. They mocked conservatives who sounded the alarm about college campuses. They continue to insist the right is disproportionately obsessed with the culture war, even as it consumes their institutions.

This is a problem that will get significantly worse until the left is forced to pay an intense price for using their corporate heft to impose the rules of cancel culture on the public. That means the people ignoring or cheering unjust retribution against the right will need to grow up and defend the principle of free expression, whether or not its politically convenient.

Just earlier today I wrote about why these small battles are worth fighting. When institutions like Conde Nast hold the line, it prevents the far left from setting standards that unjustly govern our culture. Those unjust standards leave our institutions distracted and weakened and leave our people needlessly divided and paranoid. This is a good example but the point is that its one of many.

Look no further than the leaks from Politicos staff meeting after the outlet let Ben Shapiro guest author Playbook for literally one day. Read Donald McNeils account of how he was pushed out of the New York Times for repeating a slur in the context of a conversation about it. Revisit the Grey Ladys leaks about Bari Weiss, or the downfall of Sue Schafer at The Washington Post, The Atlantics internalfreakout over Kevin Williamson. This isnt happening at Slate. Its happening at the worlds premiere objective news institutions, the publics biggest access points into world affairs. And theyre utterly broken.

Lets not forget that McCammond was hired at Teen Vogue after news broke that shed been dating a top staffer for Joe Biden while still covering him. That, of course, was fine with them. The 10-year-old tweets on the other hand? Unacceptable.

Teen Vogue just cut a promising young center-left journalist loose for tweets she sent as a kid, that clearly dont represent her adult worldview, and that she apologized for. Its ridiculous and telling that even a big slice of the corporate media agrees and is publicly saying so despite saying silent in other cases.

Not only did they heavily contribute to the creation of this problem, they mocked and ignored the people trying to prevent it. They will also be the casualties, which is exactly what conservatives warned would happen.

Theres no good reason for the right to take a victory lap. Whats happened to our culture is far too sad to warrant any celebration.

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Merciless Teen Vogue Staffers Are Not An Outlier, They're The Future Of Newsrooms - The Federalist