The appeal of New York Times columnist David Brooks . . . Yeah, I know this all sounds like a nutty “it’s wheels within wheels, man” sort of argument, but I’m serious here!

Over the years, we’ve written a bit about David Brooks on this blog, originally because he had interesting things to say about a topic I care about (Red State Blue State) and later because people pointed out to me various places where he made errors and then refused to correct them, something that bothered me for its own sake (correctable errors in the paper of record!) and as part of a larger phenomenon which I described as Never back down: The culture of poverty and the culture of journalism. At an intellectual level, I understand why pundits are motivated to not ever admit error, also I can see how they can get into the habit of shunting criticism aside because they get so much of it; still, I get annoyed.

Another question arises, though, which is how is it that Brooks has kept his job for so long? I had a recent discussion with Palko on this point.

The direct answer to why Brooks stays employed is that he’s a good writer, regularly turns in his columns on time, continues to write on relevant topics, and often has interesting ideas. Sure, he makes occasional mistakes, but (a) everyone makes mistakes, and when they appear in a newspaper with a circulation of millions, people will catch these mistakes, and (b) newspapers in general, and the Times in particular, are notorious for only very rarely running corrections, so Brooks making big mistakes and not correcting himself is not any kind of disqualification.

In addition, Palko wrote:

For the target audience [of the Times, Brooks offers] a nearly ideal message. It perfectly balances liberal guilt with a sense of class superiority.

I replied with skepticism of Palko’s argument that Brooks’s continued employment comes from his appeal to liberals.

I suspect that more of it is the opposite, that Brooks is popular among conservatives because he’s a conservative who conservatives think can appeal to liberals.

Kinda like the appeal of Michael Moore to liberals: Moore’s the sort of liberal who liberals think can appeal to conservatives.

I like this particular analogy partly because I imagine that it would piss off both Brooks and Moore (not that either of them will ever see this post).

Palko responded:

But it’s not conservatives who keep hiring him.

Brooks’ breakthrough was in the Atlantic, the primary foundation of his career is his long-time day job is with the NYT, his largest audience probably comes from PBS News Hour.

To which I replied as follows:

First off, I don’t know whether the people who are hiring Brooks are liberal, conservative, or somewhere in between. In any case, if they’re conservative, I’m pretty sure they’re only moderately so: I say this because I don’t think the NYT op-ed page has any columnists who supported the Jan 6 insurrection or who claim that Trump actually won the 2020 election etc.

It’s my impression that one reason Brooks was hired, in addition to his ability to turn in readable columns on time, was (a) he’s had some good ideas that have received a lot of attention (for example, the whole bobo stuff, his red-state, blue-state stuff), and (b) most of their op-ed columnists have been liberal or centrist, and they want some conservatives for balance.

Regarding (a), yes, he’s said a lot of dumb things, but I’d say he still has had some good ideas. He’s kinda like Gladwell in that he speculates with an inappropriate air of authority, but his confidence can sometimes get him to interesting places that a more careful writer might never reach.

Regarding (b), it’s relevant that many conservatives are fans of Brooks (for example here, here, and here). If the NYT is going to hire a conservative writer for balance, they’ll want to hire a conservative writer who conservatives like. Were they to hire a writer who conservatives hate, they wouldn’t be doing a good job of satisfying their goal of balance.

So, whoever is in charge of hiring Brooks and wherever his largest audience is, I think that a key to his continued employment is that he is popular among conservatives because he’s a conservative who conservatives think can appeal to liberals.

Yeah, I know this all sounds like a nutty “it’s wheels within wheels, man” sort of argument, but I’m serious here!

This post is political science

The point of posting this is not to talk more about Brooks—if you’re interested in him, you can read his column every week—but rather to consider some of these indirect relationships here, the idea that a publication with liberal columnists will hire a conservative who is then chosen in large part because conservatives see him as the sort of conservative who will appeal to liberals. I don’t think this happens so much in the opposite direction, because if a publication has lots of conservative columnists, that’s probably because it’s an explicitly conservative publication so they wouldn’t want to employ any liberals at all. There must be some counterexamples to that, though.

And I do think there’s some political science content here, related to this discussion I wrote with Gross and Shalizi, but I’ve struggled with how to address the topic more systematically.