Althouse: Taylor Lorenz tiktoks the news about news.

January 25, 2024

Taylor Lorenz tiktoks the news about news.

Good morning. Taylor Lorenz has some great news for you today:
pic.twitter.com/xRP4SALnbv
— Carl Benjamin (@Sargon_of_Akkad) January 25, 2024

84 comments:

rhhardin said...: She should lose the fry voice.; 1/25/24, 7:41 AM
BarrySanders20 said...: I admit I don't have the stamina to withstand 4,000 words per minute machine-gunning out her pie hole. The girl can talk.; 1/25/24, 7:42 AM
rehajm said...: I don’t think people understand how bad the world would be without journalists

We get it right now.; 1/25/24, 7:43 AM
Lilly, a dog said...: This post should have a vocal fry warning.; 1/25/24, 7:44 AM
rehajm said...: …as glorious as her report is the layoffs are happening in nearly every industry. We’ve been stalling market cycles with trillions in helicopter money but it seems that there are limits to what helicopter money can do…; 1/25/24, 7:49 AM
tim maguire said...: Is there some corner where Taylor Lorenz is respected? It's hard to imagine, but this isn't the first place I've seen this bit posted. Each time, excitedly, not sarcastically, encouraging us to hear her important statement. (I haven't listened to the statement, nor will I, but I find it interesting that people are spreading it unironically).; 1/25/24, 7:49 AM
cf said...: Yes. We've had a tragic and fundamental structural hollowing out in local journalism the last 20 years, and what has replaced it is shallow, non-local, corporate supplied news. Daily newspapers' small type classified ads paid for the daily operation, and that model died when Craigslist moved in and nothing replaces it: every local school board meeting reporter, city council meeting reporter who spends hours sitting in attendance and then getting back and writing it up. thousands of them across the country. they are long gone. we are poorer.; 1/25/24, 7:55 AM
mezzrow said...: Even though there's enough vocal fry here to cook up a party order of wings, I recommend the folks least likely to listen to this thing go ahead and do it.

Lorenz is very aware of everything she's saying, except for the fact that that she embodies the force that she criticizes most in her presentation. (actually, I suspect she understands this just fine, on second thought. Lots of this may just be cynical) That's the part I enjoyed the most. As I suspected, she's both correct and clueless. Nice to know (for her) that if it all goes to hell, she'll be OK when it's done cause she's a lucky rich girl with an online presence.; 1/25/24, 7:59 AM
Original Mike said...: If journalists were dispassionately reporting events, I'd share her concern. As it stands, the sooner the remainder of these propagandists lose their jobs, the better.; 1/25/24, 8:08 AM
MadisonMan said...: I think she makes a good point about local journalism and the problem of Facebook scarfing up all the ad dollars, but she's hard to listen to.; 1/25/24, 8:11 AM
tommyesq said...: The entire journalism industry is basically in a freefall. I, Taylor Lorenz, am proud to have done my part (and more!) to make this happen.; 1/25/24, 8:15 AM
n.n said...: How apropos: Tick tock, journolism is not viable. Tick tock, journolism is a "burden". Tick tock.; 1/25/24, 8:18 AM
retail lawyer said...: NPR gutted! Yet still covering grievances with gusto.; 1/25/24, 8:21 AM
wendybar said...: Good. Most of them SHOULD be fired. Most of them aren't journalists anymore, they are activists. Learn to code.; 1/25/24, 8:28 AM
RJ said...: She is an awful vindictive human being. With an awful voice, it turns out.; 1/25/24, 8:28 AM
Koot Katmandu said...: Journalism has been dead for a long time. It is mostly propagandists now.; 1/25/24, 8:31 AM
CJinPA said...: Holy cow that's some fried vocals. I JUST watched a video on that topic yesterday.

My takeaway from her post is that the media industry never really figured out the internet, and her vocal cords are vibrating much more slowly than normal.; 1/25/24, 8:32 AM
hombre said...: Professional journalists are basically propagandists through whom news is filtered. The Donald Trump experience has basically proved that to thinking people.

That is why they hate him.; 1/25/24, 8:35 AM
Pointguard said...: As the old joke goes “ What do you call the layoff of thousands of media folk? A good start.”; 1/25/24, 8:35 AM
Aggie said...: Ahh....Taylor. She's got that Valley Girl crackle-voice vocal fry down pat, with all the mannerisms. Of course - at her age, she's had plenty of practice, God Bless those filters.

The fakest of the Fake. ..."how bad the world would be without journalists", yes Hon, we know, we've been living it for the past 15 years.; 1/25/24, 8:37 AM
CJinPA said...: On a non-vocal-fry note, we DO need people to fill the role we thought journalists were filling. (The most powerful outlets abandoned their role as fact-seekers long ago.)

We will always need people to actually pick up the phone and chase down information (no, it can't all be done via texting and surfing the web. You have to actually talk to people occasionally.) Fortunately, we've seen the rise of citizen journalists who will present the facts that legacy media will not.

The decline in news outlets isn't new. I worked as a journalist for 10 years and in media relations for 20+. In the 90s the newspapers were shrinking - literally. The paper was made smaller due to the price of newsprint. Then came the internet and the decline accelerated.

I'd like to blame it all on liberal bias, but I can't. The most powerful news outlets are found in one-party, Democrat cities, serving a left-leaning subscriber base. The bias is the business plan.

More than anything I'm worried that Americans disagree not just on issues, but on the basic facts necessary to debate those issues. (Not that anyone debates anymore.) We don't agree on who should be the referee in these contests.; 1/25/24, 8:44 AM
Bob Boyd said...: The bottom fell out of the bullshit market.
Americans are still paying to read journalists who haven't set their credibility on fire.; 1/25/24, 8:46 AM
Joe Bar said...: Well, it was hard getting past the vocal fry. However, her analysis is not wrong. The business model for Big Journalism has fractured. The only way for legacy media to survive is through big pocket donors footing the bill for loss leader publications like WaPo and LAT.

I just listened to Matt Bilinsky on the Adam Carolla show analyze the layoffs at LAT. It seems the owner (Daddy) was funding the thing out of his pocket so his lovely daughter (with a Black studies degree) couls be the editor. Grandma found out how much money they were losing, and shut the whole thing down.

There used to be well paid, experienced, intelligent people pursuing the big stories at these marquee papers. They have all been replaced with cheap, young, inexperienced kids fress out of theiir indoctrination camps.; 1/25/24, 8:47 AM
Wince said...: "I don't want to live in a world where all of the news is delivered through 60 second TikTok videos with retention editing."; 1/25/24, 8:50 AM
Oligonicella said...: rhardin - That's the first thing I thought. Anyone talking with that purposeful affectation cannot be serious. Well, not to be taken so.; 1/25/24, 8:52 AM
Roger Sweeny said...: Yes, perfect objectivity is a myth. But "I know I'm right and nobody who disagrees with me is worth listening to" is pretty annoying.; 1/25/24, 8:54 AM
rhhardin said...: Scott Adams joins in the mocking. You'd think investigative journalists would be the first to know that it's not a good business model, not the last.; 1/25/24, 9:12 AM
Charlie said...: I never heard the phrase "nepo-babies" until about a week ago and I'm already sick of it.; 1/25/24, 9:14 AM
TheDopeFromHope said...: Taylor Lorenz grew up in the tony Connecticut town of Greenwich and attended a very expensive Swiss boarding school. Curiously (or not), neither her Wikipedia page nor her own website mention the Swiss boarding school.

She's a spoiled little brat who rails against other people's "privilege," but avoids any mention of her own.; 1/25/24, 9:15 AM
Iman said...: Phony, middle-schoolgirl affectations aren’t very convincing.; 1/25/24, 9:18 AM
Gusty Winds said...: Who gives a shit if "journalists" are being laid off?

The lack of self-awareness is staggering. Maybe quit publishing propaganda and lies, and people might come back to read your shit.

Until then (and it won't happen) X is where the news happens.; 1/25/24, 9:21 AM
Goetz von Berlichingen said...: When the customers of your product no longer find value from it, they will cease to buy it. Traditional news sources (MSM) are more about setting the narrative and rent-seeking than about delivering the cold, hard facts. The demise of 'journalism' is self-inflicted.

The need for accurate dissemination of knowledge is still there within the market place. Open-minded, intellectually-honest people now have the ability to see multiple sides of any issue, if they wish. Well, technically everyone has that ability. Only the open-minded and intellectually-honest will use it.

Goetz von Berlichingen; 1/25/24, 9:24 AM
madAsHell said...: Wow!
...........and the reason that everyone stopped listening to the news!....OMG!!; 1/25/24, 9:32 AM
Lloyd W. Robertson said...: She's making progress. Do the woke want some kind of professional competence, weighing the pro's and con's of various proposals, actual investigation, or will they be satisfied with virtue signalling and cliches?; 1/25/24, 9:38 AM
n.n said...: The field worker was replaced with a migrant, the doctor, engineer, et al with DEI, the custodian with a robot, the journolist with AI, the woman with a man, the baby with another hole in the wall... womb. We live in interesting times.; 1/25/24, 9:45 AM
Bob Boyd said...: A few short years ago these arrogant, prestigiously credentialled word people assumed that blue collar workers would be the first to be replaced by AI because they assumed what those stupid, ignorant sub-humans do at work could only be simple and easy. "Learn to code", they sneered.

You'd have to have a heart of stone not laugh.
Learn to coal, bitches.; 1/25/24, 9:51 AM
Drago said...: Aggie: "Ahh....Taylor. She's got that Valley Girl crackle-voice vocal fry down pat, with all the mannerisms. Of course - at her age, she's had plenty of practice, God Bless those filters."

And she's STILL pretending to be a millenial! Oldest "millenial" ever.; 1/25/24, 9:55 AM
Nancy said...: I was surprised to see how beautiful she is.; 1/25/24, 9:57 AM
Beaver7216 said...: (Please skip the following)
Poor Taylor Lorenz. She appears to be totally lacking in introspection. I listened to the whole thing and learned nothing. No Who, What, Where, When, Why, or How. Just generic opinions covering events that I knew. Still the tik-tok, Twitter mentality. I doubt that she has ever spent 2 hours covering a town meeting or done research into BLS, FRB, or whatever data. Just pontificates away. (Admittedly as I am doing.) And we are all slightly dumber for it.; 1/25/24, 9:58 AM
Curious George said...: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHHt-tYS2es; 1/25/24, 10:08 AM
Wa St Blogger said...: Today I learned "vocal fry". Never heard of it before.

It's all fine and dandy to say "oh, no! The journalism sky is falling." But what exactly would one do about it other than guilt trip people into demanding, without paying for, content? Maybe the loss of in-depth journalism is bad, but if you can't make it economically viable, it will go away because rich people will eventually stop throwing money away to keep it going. There are lots of contributors to the loss of interest in truth and knowledge, journalists are partial authors of their own destruction. Taylor Lorenz held a pitchfork, herself.; 1/25/24, 10:16 AM
TaeJohnDo said...: Taylor Lorenz is rotten to the core. She has no redeeming values, and has attacked and destroyed many people just because she can. Nancy, you might find her pretty; that just goes to show you evil doesn't have to look ugly on the outside.; 1/25/24, 10:16 AM
MayBee said...: There are some amazing journalists. John Carreyrou, who exposed Theranos for example. The journos who started looking into OxyContin and Purdue. We need those people and their reporting.

But too many journos are, as others have said, political activists and too much journalism is just sports reporting for the right "team". We've tuned so much of it out, my husband and I.

Finally, Taylor Lorenz may be one of the least self-aware people in media.; 1/25/24, 10:24 AM
Hassayamper said...: "how bad the world would be without journalists", yes Hon, we know, we've been living it for the past 15 years.

It goes back a lot longer than that. However, in those days there just weren't as many channels to bypass the news media monopoly, and we weren't as aware as we are now of just what shameless propagandists and liars they actually are.

My eyes were really opened by Dan Rather's forged-documents scandal of 2004, but the rot had set in by the 1930's at the latest. John Reed and Walter Duranty are still heroes in some circles.; 1/25/24, 10:34 AM
PB said...: Don't encourage her, except to get a real job.; 1/25/24, 10:39 AM
Odi said...: Her voice makes me glad she's a writer.; 1/25/24, 10:44 AM
Dr. Graphene said...: The world is composed of prtons, neutrons, electrons, and morons. Taylor Lorenz is a moron, and ironically enough, a large part of the answer to the question she asks (i.e., why is the mainstream media in free fall?) Talentless millenial hacks with no sense of history who steadfastly refuse to embrace traditional liberal values such as free speech and intellectual curiosity were never going to sustain the MSM as most of us knew it, and in fact, they have drastically accelerated its decline.

I hope she learns to code!; 1/25/24, 10:50 AM
Yancey Ward said...: Hey, new coders and farmers! If Lorenz was paid for what she is worth, she would starve to death.; 1/25/24, 10:53 AM
Rusty said...: "Journalism is dying.."
The obvious question is, why?
Perhaps other people are providing what you can't, Taylor in a more honest and objective way.
"If there is a market, that market will be filled."; 1/25/24, 10:55 AM
Yancey Ward said...: If Lorenz and all the journalists working in the mainstream media died in a cruise ship disaster in the North Atlantic, the world wouldn't miss them at all.; 1/25/24, 10:55 AM
Iman said...: “I was surprised to see how beautiful she is.”

Ye gods, woman! Different strokes…; 1/25/24, 11:03 AM
robother said...: Yes, indeed, we will miss the real journalists, like those holding Jeff Bezos to account at the WaPo. Journalism is a billionaire vanity project, which they will soon tire of. Welcome to the oligarchy. Enjoy the remaining decades of pretending we still have a democratic republic. The time for middle class prosperity and political power is running out: TikTok, TikTok.; 1/25/24, 11:09 AM
Earnest Prole said...: Sorry Taylor, we’re just not that into you.

Or your friends.; 1/25/24, 11:20 AM
Lem the artificially intelligent said...: They stopped doing their work and wonder why people aren’t paying attention to them.

So typical today.; 1/25/24, 11:25 AM
MB said...: I'm not sure what she means by "false and deluded notions of objectivity". It sounds like she is against objectivity. That's fine as long as you let your readers/listeners know that you are not reporting, you are advocating.

They are deluded if they think they are being objective.; 1/25/24, 11:40 AM
Paul Zrimsek said...: You should care about this, people. Who's going to doxx the conservative Twitter people if journalists aren't there to do it?; 1/25/24, 11:50 AM
Jake said...: I didn't think her voice was especially fried.; 1/25/24, 11:53 AM
Wince said...: Usually when you pose in front of a bookcase it’s a larger set of volumes.; 1/25/24, 12:00 PM
Butkus51 said...: i cant take more than 2 seconds of vocal fry.; 1/25/24, 12:17 PM
stlcdr said...: Original Mike said...
If journalists were dispassionately reporting events, I'd share her concern. As it stands, the sooner the remainder of these propagandists lose their jobs, the better.

1/25/24, 8:08 AM

What Mike said.

When you have mainstream (sic) liars, doesn't matter how 'good' a reporter you are, your profession is a failure.; 1/25/24, 12:26 PM
Bushman of the Kohlrabi said...: “Holding power to account”

Yeah, not much of that going on. Despite endless examples of so-called journalists and news organizations colluding with, and protecting powerful government entities over the last few years, we’re supposed to pretend these people are somehow heroes speaking truth to power? yeah right. More like spokesmen for their preferred political ideology.

See ya Taylor. Enjoy your journalism career at TikTok. God knows you’ve earned it; 1/25/24, 12:30 PM
JK Brown said...: Nancy said...
I was surprised to see how beautiful she is.

Odds are, she's using a filter. Does she really look anywhere normal for a 39 yr old mean girl?

Definitely a filter if you look at the 2022 MSNBC photo included in this article on Lorenz's doxing of Libs of Tik Tok

https://www.foxnews.com/media/taylor-lorenz-twitter-page-excluded-internet-archive; 1/25/24, 12:38 PM
Old and slow said...: It's hard not to love that "girl"! But I'm doing my best.; 1/25/24, 12:47 PM
RMc said...: I don’t think people understand how bad the world would be without journalists

Try me.; 1/25/24, 1:10 PM
Hassayamper said...: “I was surprised to see how beautiful she is.”

Ye gods, woman! Different strokes…

I was discussing this with my wife last night (gingerly, to be sure.) The average woman and the average man have remarkably divergent notions of what a beautiful woman looks like. There are layers of psychological defenses or filters in a woman's mind that all seem to tilt away from the canonical ideal of attractiveness held by most men, e.g. Kate Upton circa 2013.; 1/25/24, 1:17 PM
cfs said...: Has any of Taylor and her ilk who call themselves "journalists" reported on the Kari Lake allegations regarding the Arizona GOP chair? The answer is: No, none that I've seen thus far.

Has any of them reporting on Jame's O'Keefe's latest video drop regarding sex parties on Capitol Hill? The answer once again is: No. They haven't.

Taylor Lorenz and her buddies are not journalists. They are mouthpieces for the progressive left and salesmen of the left's product. They sell a narrative and are now just upset because people are no longer buying what they are selling.; 1/25/24, 1:17 PM
Quaestor said...: Peddle lies and the peasants will eventually stop listening.

FAFO.; 1/25/24, 1:52 PM
The Vault Dweller said...: Journalism definitely has problems. A lot of it is kind of a Prisoners' Dilemma situation. The most popular and the most profitable types of journalism are the opinion shows/pieces, or even the comedy news infotainment shows. But all of those rely on lots of underlying straight reporting, which doesn't earn as much and from what I've heard usually operates at a loss. But the profitable parts can't exist without the someone doing the unprofitable straight reporting. I'm not sure that online citizen journalists are the answer either. Because each new citizen journalist requires people to do a certain amount of vetting to assess their credibility. Which I think leads to people overall just picking the people that give stories they like and ignoring the others.; 1/25/24, 2:04 PM
Iman said...: Fried Honky Boogie.; 1/25/24, 2:22 PM
Iman said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 1/25/24, 2:23 PM
Paul A. Mapes said...: Her voice makes her sound like a Valley Girl but we know she's not because real Valley Girls have higher IQs.; 1/25/24, 2:41 PM
Paul A. Mapes said...: Her voice makes her sound like a Valley Girl but we know she's not because real Valley Girls have higher IQs.; 1/25/24, 2:43 PM
Paul A. Mapes said...: Her voice makes her sound like a Valley Girl but we know she's not because real Valley Girls have higher IQs.; 1/25/24, 2:43 PM
Paul A. Mapes said...: Her voice makes her sound like a Valley Girl but we know she's not because real Valley Girls have higher IQs.; 1/25/24, 2:43 PM
Rich said...: Cable news are responsible for their own demise: having to fill in a whole day with news means they overblow every minor, trivial occurrence. They employ "analysts" and "experts" to spew their personal views as something that people should care about. They talk about the same things over and over at nauseum. Everything for them is "breaking news". Of course people are fatigued, and the only sane thing people can do about it is switch their TV sets off and go do something else.

I read two newspapers daily: FT and WSJ. I also peruse some other news websites on occasion when looking for additional opinions on certain events. Otherwise, I choose to avoid any other news and focus my time on other things.; 1/25/24, 2:50 PM
Rusty said...: Iman said...
"Fried Honky Boogie."
Is that on Spotify?; 1/25/24, 2:53 PM
Lilly, a dog said...: @ Rich--"At nauseum" (sic). Did you ride the short bus today?
The phrase is "ad nauseam." I think your TrashGPT is broken.; 1/25/24, 4:07 PM
Patrick Driscoll said...: They should learn to code, as they tell the millions of laid off blue collar workers they openly despise. AI will be utilized to create first drafts of stories and scripts. A very small number of humans will be employed to proof read and clean up what the AI produces. Not sure why all these useless dweebs didn't see it coming.; 1/25/24, 4:32 PM
Iman said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 1/25/24, 4:39 PM
Original Mike said...: "…the canonical ideal of attractiveness held by most men, e.g. Kate Upton circa 2013."

As for "most men", who knows? But as for me, I'd take a Taylor Lorenz over a Kate Upton.; 1/25/24, 5:50 PM
Yancey Ward said...: Lorenz is physically attractive, but her being a sniveling toad personality-wise ruins all of that.; 1/25/24, 6:18 PM
Joe Smith said...: Fer sure fer sure.

How is this bird brain (h/t 45) in a position of influence?

We are doomed...; 1/25/24, 6:52 PM
Mike of Snoqualmie said...: When I hear or read "Taylor Lorenz", the first thought is the Lorenz Transformation, how the dimension in the direction of motion shrinks when approaching the speed of light. Maybe, Taylor Lorenz is really just a one-dimensional figure.; 1/25/24, 7:30 PM
Big Mike said...: It sounds like she is against objectivity.

@MB, you broke the code! Well done.; 1/25/24, 10:53 PM