Journalism is a notoriously tough business, a brutally competitive field with a relatively low median salary. The New York Times (NYT) reportedly receives some 5,000 applicants for its 25 yearly summer internship positions, making it approximately two to six times more competitive than similar roles at firms like Boston Consulting Group (BCG) or Bain. Conversely, a senior editor at the NYT makes around $125,000, while a senior partner at BCG can make more than $1 million a year. Yet in our national culture that lauds money and prestige over just about anything, journalists rate their careers as some of the happiest and most fulfilling, more so than management consultants.
Journalism is more fulfilling than the most outwardly coveted, compelling and compensated fields because it is life-affirming — it allows you to live in a manner that reflects and supports your innermost beliefs and convictions. Talented prospective journalists give up careers in fields that would pay them orders of magnitude more in pursuit of liberty.
On Oct. 30, TSL published a piece that looked into the Claremont Independent (CI). It discussed the paper’s history and described the CI’s history and role in the national landscape of conservative media, as well as their conservative funding. It was not intended to critique biased or flawed reporting, but rather to contextualize the CI within its institutional ties and sponsors.
Upon publishing, TSL received Letter to the editor: In Response to Claremont Independent coverage, signed by Daniel Ives PO ’84, who saw it differently. In sum, Ives claimed that TSL’s piece intended to impart implications of bias on the CI.
“Behind The Claremont Independent: Its origins, funding and wider impact,” co-written by Sophie Myers PZ ’27, TSL managing editor Adam Akins PZ ’27 and special projects editor Nadia Hsu PO ’27. The piece sought to investigate the CI in response to the national spotlight focused on the CI’s reporting during “the Trump administration’s broader crackdown on pro-Palestinian speech across college campuses.” In doing this, TSL sought to do what it does best: covering and examining 5C events and culture.
Of course, one would be remiss to call the piece straight news: It was an investigation. Like all — or rather, in our day and age, hopefully most — pieces of journalism, it was written by people, and people unavoidably hold opinions. The piece from TSL clearly presents an argument about the CI. I am not saying the piece was perfect. Few pieces are. But I don’t believe the response was fair.
Therefore, I am personally disappointed in the literacy of readers when I hear TSL’s discourse with the CI referred to as “jealous,” for engaging in reporting. Criticism of pluralism, disagreement and cross-institutional review amongst publications disingenuously frames essential journalistic accountability as juvenile competition. This viewpoint claims that the best journalism is viewless, but such writing is impossible. No human is without an opinion or a history, and as a writer, you can disclose your view, or hide it.
Ives attacked TSL’s piece, calling it “unmistakably jealous,” on the grounds that the CI had been cited by the House of Representatives and TSL had not. In this vein, Ives questioned TSL’s journalistic integrity. He went on to boldly state: “The measure of reporting is factual accuracy, not the political identity of those who share it.” Finally, he shared choice words indicating his political views on Israel, criticizing Myers for not disclosing her political views, and implied that she was unable to be unbiased because of her relationship with Undercurrents. Closing his statements about Myers, he wrote, “Transparency is not optional; it is the baseline requirement for credibility in this context.”
Ives’ view clearly struck a chord, and students identified with the narrative. Campus discussions, Fizz posts and inevitably, by the time this piece goes out, something on the Golden Antlers, have similarly discussed the situation in terms of David and Goliath. However, we can only understand this lapse in judgment on behalf of readers through what we can infer about Ives’ lens: He sees TSL’s pieces’ flaws by looking through a View From Nowhere.
The View From Nowhere, now a much discussed philosophy of journalism, originated from philosopher Thomas Nagel. In metaphor, he wrote that, as a shot in a film pulls from narrow to wide, it simultaneously presents a more detached, objective and useful viewpoint. In finding the omnipotent perspective, the camera presents the titular “view from nowhere.” Therein, subjectivity and opinion are placed below objectivity and absolutely no opinion in the hierarchy of discourse. The problem, critics say, is that such a view is not only impossible — for how can a writer have no preconceptions, no motivations, no conscience and, in sum, no humanity — but it is undesirable. Discourse, the lifeblood of culture, requires perspectives. The book, of course, sees this impossibility, while some readers clearly do not.
Jay Rosen, in his seminal and vignette on the issue, said as much. He wrote, “But even in objectivity there is id … The daily gift of detachment keeps giving, until you’re almost ‘above’ anyone who tries to get too political with you … There’s power in that.” At first glance, Ives’ argument seems emotionally compelling, but its rhetoric rests on unsteady foundations. Weaponizing readers’ conflation of objectivity for desirability, Ives’ stance languishes in the unearned comfort of viewlessness.
Those who condemn the piece from TSL to the stockades of bias, and more sinisterly, figures like Ives who encourage such a condemnation, do so under the “id” of such a perspective. By condemning TSL for taking a view from somewhere, critics become dependent on these unsteady foundations. Both TSL and the CI seek to emphasize pluralism in their own distinct ways.
Furthermore, the claims that conservative CI donors, particularly the kind of institutions expounded upon in TSL’s article, expect some sort of ideological return on investment isn’t ridiculous, or poor journalism. Such a view can coexist with the acknowledgement that CI writers freely express their opinions free from outside influence. These funds simply furnish their platform. It would be disingenuous to imagine that donors, particularly overtly political ones like the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, give without any expectation of the proliferation of their viewpoints. The CI, like many institutions ranging from Pitzer College to the Catholic Church are, if not explicitly so, implicitly understood to be ideological, and are headed by people with publicly available beliefs. Any support of an institution supports its viewpoints indirectly. And that’s ok.
Myers’ ideological beliefs certainly were on display, and were met with charges of bias. But should the CI have to disclose that it’s a biased institution because it is run by people with viewpoints? I think not. While Ives himself continually criticizes the evidence of a viewpoint in TSL’s piece, he makes his own viewpoints, particularly relating to Myers, clear. Yet in leveling his hypocritical charge of bias, Ives presents us with the false choice between objectivity and ideology, perhaps not because he believes in it but because he knows it is going to be popular.
Yes, TSL’s piece implied that the CI was a fundamentally conservative institution. And in this, perhaps it erred. They are an institution peopled in, not insignificant part, by conservatives, forming a platform that is financed by conservatives, who in their financing largely intend to support conservative institutions.
I doubt this concession would smooth things over; Ives seemed to take great offense at any claim of trace conservatism on behalf of the CI. But why is conservatism such a dirty word for him? Likely because he, in privileging objectivity and the CI, needs to lean on their supposed objectivity to contrast TSL’s claimed bias, and therefore win the day for them.
Nevertheless, Ives has a leg to stand on because TSL made a second, much larger mistake. TSL policy states that senior staff have little power to prevent or significantly alter speedy publication of letters to the editor, provided the letter has an attributed author. Yet in a way, Ives’ letter was anonymous. When attempting to verify his identity, TSL’s editorial board were unable to verify if a “Daniel Ives” was in fact in the class of 1984. In good faith, they published the letter in accordance with the planned production schedule and policy on letters to the editor. Only after the publication of the piece were TSL employees able to get an appointment at Pomona’s archives, where they failed to find a Daniel Ives, class of 1984.
As to the consequences of this discovery, like all journalism, we can only make inferences based on our personal perspectives. TSL’s piece illustrated the CI’s funding and informed its institutional culture, which indirectly led to its publishing of the faces and names of those involved in the Oct. 7 protests. I can only make an inference based on my ideology that, because no such Ives could be found in the records, and because the piece reads as so extremely vitriolic and biased, no such person exists. Instead, the real author, in adopting a pseudonymous name and a consciously flawed, yet intentionally popular, argument, is someone who is someone who has a viewpoint, one that is glaring to the public and could, not unlike Meyers, attract claims of bias. Ives himself wrote that “Transparency is not optional; it is the baseline requirement for credibility.” I am sure the irony was not lost.
It’s impossible to objectively measure the success of a paper, and TSL’s relationship with the CI only pushes us to do better work. I have nothing but respect for my fellow student journalists at the CI and beyond, even if Ives does not. However, I have no patience for Ives’ attacks on pluralism, the very lifeblood of journalistic discourse.
Ives wants to sacrifice the expression that makes journalism so rewarding in favor of integrating it into a winner-take-all consultant’s economy.
Political journalism dies with the death of pluralism, and in attacking the necessity of TSL’s view from somewhere, critics seek to lose it all in their victory. This is an infinite game: Not about winning or losing, but about keeping the lights on, for democracy dies in darkness.
Parker DeVore PZ ’27 is from the mean streets of Seattle, and if he had more time, he would have either written a shorter letter or perhaps taken up luge.
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