I’ve been a moderate conservative for over 40 years. My principal source of news has been the Wall Street Journal. Its investigations, reporting, writing and opinion work have been without parallel. (I’ll admit that my regard for the Journal may have been heightened when they published a piece I wrote on mountaineering.)

But no more. Yes, sometimes they still do very good investigative work. And the opinion pages are still very good and mostly conservative. (And their mountaineering stuff is fabulous, albeit limited.)

I’ll note that those opinion pages often include opinions from the other side. Joe Biden has guest-opined there, as have Elizabeth Warren, Charles Schumer and other leading Democrats. I don’t respect those Dems’ opinions, but I do respect the Journal for publishing them.

Publishing opinions that run contrary to an outlet’s leanings is unusual these days. When Senator Tom Cotton got an opinion piece published in the New York Times, the staff revolted and the NYT editor who approved the piece for publication was forced to resign.

If democracy dies in darkness, credit the mainstream media – the so-called fourth estate of our three-branch system – for turning out the lights.

But aside from good investigative work and the opinion page, the Journal has deteriorated. The writing is increasingly hackneyed and littered with millennial colloquialisms. You can almost see the bosses gathered in a conference room scheming to get more silly slang into the writing in order to attract, they think, the next generation of readers.

Continue reading →