 |
|
Joan Walsh
|
Joan Walsh is the new editor-in-chief of Salon.com. She joined Salon as its first full-time news editor in 1998 and became managing editor in 2004. Her work has appeared in a number of publications, including the Los Angeles Times, Baltimore Sun, Vogue, The Nation, and San Francisco Magazine, where she won a 2004 Western Magazine Award for her local politics column. A former consultant to national and regional foundations, Walsh is the author of two books, Splash Hit: The Pacific Bell Park Story and Stories of Renewal: Community Building and the Future of Urban America.
Brian Montopoli: I’ve been a little taken aback by the “Jeff Gannon” coverage in the blogosphere and elsewhere. Salon published a piece by Eric Boehlert that dug into salacious details about Gannon’s past — days after Gannon resigned. Does the Gannon stuff set a dangerous precedent? If we’re willing and able to expose the personal foibles of anyone who engages in journalism that people find objectionable, aren’t reporters going to think twice before sticking their necks out?
Joan Walsh: We’ve had our moments of soul searching about the details of the Gannon story. But, you know, you have a White House that’s so controlling with information, that makes it so hard for reporters to do their job. When they credential a pseudo-journalist and they don’t know his name, and he lies about the nature of these Web sites that are very easy to find, I think it’s fair game. And the fact that he’s gay — I don’t care that he’s gay. The fact that he’s gay isn’t really the story. It’s the extent to which they either didn’t know or didn’t care that this person wasn’t at all who he said he was. And then you add the hypocrisy of his [printed] stances on gay issues and gay marriage and I find it a completely fair, ethical thing to cover.
I shouldn’t be turning reporters on to who my enemies are, but, you know, I’ve been blown away by how nice the coverage of this transition [at Salon] has been, and the mail that I’ve gotten personally, the mail that has come to Salon. We got a reader letter yesterday saying, hey, Salon, you only ran nice letters about Joan Walsh’s transition. So I asked our letters editor to look. We didn’t get any negative letters. It’s been all positive — except for my friends over at Atrios, who have been trying to decide who’s more loathsome, me or Judith Miller. So I’m in good company. But anyway, one of the reasons that they hate me is that I attacked some of them for outing Andrew Sullivan a few years ago, when his online profile was uncovered and it lead to it becoming public what he might be doing in his private life. I thought that was off limits. But this is a totally different story. This is a person who has lied from the very beginning. Once you start pulling the threads, you tell the story of what you uncover. And that’s what we’ve done. I’m proud of it.
BM: Salon has carved out a niche with left-leaning readers. How do you walk the line between trying to be an intellectually honest news source and giving those who come because of their politics what they want?
JW: I think 99.9 percent of the people who come are intellectually curious people. Many of them are liberals, but they come to Salon because they are curious, because they are getting stories they can’t find anywhere else. We won’t pander. We’ve never pandered. After the election, we talked to one another about the fact that if we had run a story a day focusing on the allegations that the Ohio election was stolen, we would — we might have seen subscriptions and readership go through the roof. I shouldn’t say we absolutely would have. But there’s definitely a segment of the left that wants cheerleading and does not want a critical voice. But it’s tiny. In our readership it’s very tiny.
We lost a handful of subscriptions — but we did lose subscriptions — because Farhad Manjoo did great reporting from every angle and concluded that the Ohio election was a mess, people were disenfranchised by long lines, it was disorganized, there were definitely problems, but there was no evidence of systematic voter fraud on the part of the Republicans. So I feel like we walk the line every day, and that we’re on the right side of these issues. We want to be a news organization, not a propaganda machine. We’re not GOPUSA or Talon News. We put ourselves on the map with solid, fearless reporting that no one could shoot down. The commentary is great, but I don’t think it’s primarily what we’re known for, and it’s certainly not want I want to be known for. I want us to be known for our reporting.
BM: Big outlets are gobbling up online media — the Slate/Washington Post deal is the latest example. Salon has just become profitable, no doubt making it more appealing to larger outlets. Do you see Salon staying independent for another 10 years, or is it likely to become one part of a larger media company?
JW: I don’t know. Ten years is a long time — I don’t think [Salon founder] David [Talbot] looked ten years down the road. And if he had, I’m sure he wouldn’t have predicted what we’ve gone through. That doesn’t mean I don’t want to look into the future. I think the big challenge for Salon in the next year or two is developing some partnerships to help us grow. With the focus being so much on survival, we’ve grown, we’ve grown organically, but we’ve grown slowly. I’d like to see us reach more readers, and if we can find a partner or partners that help us do that, that would be great. That doesn’t mean that we have to be acquired. It could be that we acquire someone else. I’m not saying that we’re going to do that, but we’re looking at all sorts of options.
I’m telling this to everyone, and it’s true — we’re a public company so I have to tell the truth — we’re not shopping ourselves. If a great partner came along and wanted to acquire us, we’d have to take it seriously, but there isn’t anybody in that category right now. And I’m sure we’ll get more interest and more curiosity with the announcement [that Salon is profitable]. Certainly we already have. But that’s not on the agenda. I’d like to stay independent as long as possible.
BM: Until around the time the Internet became a part of most people’s everyday lives, the default assumption was that journalism was objective. Now, with blogs and sites like Salon and outlets like Fox News, ideological journalism has entered the mainstream. What are the positives and negatives of that?
JW: The positives start with transparency. You can approach various bloggers and know where he or she is coming from. Are you more outraged about Jeff Gannon or Eason Jordan? That’s the divide of the week. I think readers know what they’re getting.
The thing that bothers me is the extent to which there is a really concerted effort on the right, and even abetted by the Bush administration, to conflate, say, the New York Times with Fox News, and kind of rule out the possibility of there being independent and credible news that we can all read and sort of see in it the reflection of reality. I think that there’s an exaggeration of the extent to which the “mainstream media” is liberal. And it’s a real ideological crusade to tar it as liberal and say, OK, well you’ve got Fox News and then you’ve got the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times. That’s completely wrong. And it’s something that really worries me. I think we should all have the freedom to go to our favorite sites, whether it’s reality TV or it’s an ideological blog that we love or it’s the New York Times, but I think that lumping everything together and saying it’s all the same, it’s all completely driven by the same level of ideological investment, is false. And it’s bad for truth.
Brian Montopoli is a writer at CJR Daily.