Frederik deBoer:

So when I started blogging in 2008, a thing that would happen would be that a conservative writer would publish something on a conservative website, and then liberals at liberal publications would read those conservative websites, write up their own liberal responses and publish them on their liberal websites, and conservatives would write responses to responses, and so a decent number of people got to be employed.

And what I can’t scientifically say but which seems screamingly obvious to me is that this is almost unthinkable today. It just doesn’t happen. Liberals don’t even bother to read conservative publications, and they certainly don’t respond to them. I can’t say what conservatives do because, unlike in 2008, I barely read conservative publications anymore. It was a thing I felt honor-bound to do and now I just… don’t do it.

I remember that time, and it was nice!

But, like deBoer, I’ve stopped reading conservative blogs and websites that have turned into mouthpieces for Donald Trump. Nor do I read Jacobin or The New Republic. I make an effort to read left- and right-leaning publications, from Talking Points Memo and Vox to The Bulwark, The Dispatch and National Review, but they have to fall within what I consider to be parameters of reasonableness. Read more “Media Bubbles Have Replaced the Blogosphere”