‘The Taranto Principle’
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
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Years from now, in journalism schools, they will call it the “Taranto Principle.” At least that is what they will call it, if they still have journalism schools years from now. In the future, the great republic may only have Web log schools, those being schools where students are taught to sit in their underwear in front of their luminescent laptops and pound out semi-literate diktats to an — for the most part — unobservant world. The amalgamation of all this indignation is today called “The Blogosphere.” Its competing rants are occasionally treated as significant in the press, though lunatics howling on street corners are not … very curious.
What is the Taranto Principle? It is a principle laid down by the Wall Street Journal’s perceptive editorialist, James Taranto. Mr. Taranto, in his column “Best of the Web Today,” surveys the press and reports daily on their output with special emphasis on their contradictions, hypocrisies and — most deliciously — imbecilities. Like all other thoughtful observers of American press, Mr. Taranto recognizes that they are heavily biased toward the Democratic Party and the left in general.
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