Journolism School

The Daily Caller has been releasing conversations from Journolist, which the Washington Post’s Ezra Klein described as, in theory, “An insulated space where the lure of a smart, ongoing conversation would encourage journalists, policy experts and assorted other observers to share their insights with one another.” It also became a place where professors shared their political feelings.

“The eventual irony of the list was that it came to be viewed as a secretive conspiracy, when in fact it was always a fractious and freewheeling conversation meant to open the closed relationship between a reporter and his source to a wider audience,” writes Klein in a June 25 post, the day he deleted Journolist. The audience has just gotten a bit wider.

With regards to Fox News, UCLA Law professor Jonathan Zasloff writes on March 12 of this year that “Fox is NOT A NEWS ORGANIZATION, Michael [Scherer]: it is a wing of the Republican Party and the Conservative Movement,” according to The Daily Caller.

“I hate to open this can of worms, but is there any reason why the FCC couldn’t simply pull their broadcasting permit once it expires?” he had earlier asked.

In “Obama wins! And Journolisters rejoice,” Jonathan Strong with The Daily Caller attributes the following November 3, 2008 statement to John F. Blevins, law professor at the South Texas College of Law:  “It’s all I can do to hold it together.”

And, on Nov. 4, election day:

Steven Teles, with Yale: “I’m not sure why, but this part of the Battle Hymn of the Republic came to me . . . . Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! Since God is marching on.” Teles now teaches at Johns Hopkins University.

Harold Pollack, at the University of Chicago: “I am awed by the responsibility we have taken on. Tomorrow a desperately ill African-American woman will present at my university hospital for care, and she will be turned away. She will expect us to live up to what we feel tonight. So we’ve got a lot to live up to.”

Bethany Stotts is a staff writer at Accuracy in Academia.