Matt Zeitlin: Impetuous Young Whippersnapper

I have a longer post remembering the little-conversative-Slate-that-could up at Pushback, but I’ll add another reason why I’m sad their gone. 

There is no shortage of political commentary (or really any commentary) out there right now. So why did I like Culture 11, a conservative site, so much?

Two reasons. One, their editors — especially Conor Friedersdorf — were exceptionally fair minded and charitable. I don’t want to be yet another concern troll going on and on about the incivility of internet discourse, but Conor’s instinctive and never failing intellectual charity was incredibly refreshing. The way this intellectual charity played out on the site was that the contributors, especially on their blogs, would constantly get into debates with each other. Now, internet debates tend to play out in two ways. Either, they’re among friends who like each other too much or are too ideologically similar to really produce anything interesting, or they’re among bitter ideologicall enemies who generally just talk past each other. Debates at C11 always seemed to find the right balance of genuine disagreement with respect and comity. Now, I don’t think that’s necessarily a model everyone who finds themselves arguing over the internet should follow, but it’s one that ought to be foundin more places.

The second reason I loved C11 — which Joe Carter elaborates on here – was their willingness to find young and previously unheard of talent. Sometimes this willingness to publish the young and inexperienced lead the site into publishing stuff like this, but more often than not, it meant that this scrappy little conservative site had some of the most interesting commentary, analysis and reportage on the web. 

I have no doubt that my favorite contributors (and some of my not-so-favorite ones) will pop up elsewhere on the internet and go on to as sucessful careers as young journalists can hope to have.