AI Summary
5 min readToward the end of his final New York Times Opinion podcast before leaving for a correspondent role at 60 Minutes, Ross Douthat told Ezra Klein that he is less sure than he used to be about who the good guys and bad guys are in any given story. He joined the Times in 2009 as the youngest opinion columnist in its history, having come up through the Atlantic in an era when blogging was a side hustle that eventually got absorbed by legacy institutions. Over sixteen years, he wrote as a conservative for a largely liberal audience, a position he describes as a gift — but one that required constant attention to the best version of arguments he disagreed with.
The old blogosphere versus what came after
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What you'll learn
- 1 (01:01) **Ross Douthat’s Career Arc** - From junior editor at The Atlantic to the youngest-ever NYT Opinion columnist, and now a correspondent at 60 Minutes.
- 2 (04:56) **What Blogging Was, and Why It Mattered** - The unmet demand for political opinion after 9/11 created a new media landscape.
- 3 (11:55) **The Healthier Blogosphere vs. Modern Social Media** - The shift from a conversational, link-based ecosystem to a performance-based, algorithmic one.
- 4 (13:10) **A Flashback to the 2008 Campaign** - A clip from the proto-podcast "Bloggingheads" shows the comparatively genteel nature of past political controversies.
- 5 (16:25) **Lessons as a Conservative in Liberal Institutions** - The strategic value of being a heterodox voice and the core principle of persuasive writing.
- 6 (23:37) **The Long Arc of Persuasion and the Trump Disruption** - Douthat’s effort to shift the GOP toward populism was fulfilled, but not in the way he intended.
- 7 (31:53) **The Religious Right vs. The Post-Religious Right** - The shift from George W. Bush’s evangelical coalition to a more pagan, amoral, or post-Christian right.
+ Full timestamped outline available in the app
Guests on this episode
Show Notes
My colleague Ross Douthat is leaving The Times after 17 years to become a correspondent on “60 Minutes.” Before he goes, I’m asking him a few questions.
Douthat has had a unique vantage point on the news media and politics over the last few decades. He’s typically held the role of explaining the right to more liberal audiences, starting as an undergrad, when he was a conservative columnist for The Harvard Crimson. Douthat has also lived through the seismic changes in the media from the both the inside and the outside: He’s made his career at legacy media institutions, but I first got to know him – and spar with him – as an early-2000s blogger (and I have the 20-year-old Bloggingheads.tv clips to prove it).
So what does Douthat make of the transformations he’s lived through? How did blogging change journalism? How did a Republican Party powered by evangelical Christians become a political party dominated by Catholics and pagans? What has he learned about persuasion from writing for liberal audiences? And with the resources of “60 Minutes” behind him, will he finally crack the U.F.O. story once and for all?
Mentioned:
Magnifica Humanitas by Pope Leo XIV
“Is It Time for a New Sexual Revolution?” with Louise Perry, Interesting Times with Ross Douthat
“Christopher Nolan’s Finest Trick” by Ezra Klein
Grand New Party by Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam
Book Recommendations:
Speak, Memory by Vladimir Nabokov
De Gaulle by Julian Jackson
Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].
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