That’s the sub headline of this piece by the editorial board in the WSJ today:

"We’ve been gratified this week by the outpouring of support from readers after some 280 of our Wall Street Journal colleagues signed (and someone leaked) a letter to our publisher criticising the opinion pages. But the support has often been mixed with concern that perhaps the letter will cause us to change our principles and content. On that point, reassurance is in order.

In the spirit of collegiality, we won’t respond in kind to the letter signers. Their anxieties aren’t our responsibility in any case. The signers report to the News editors or other parts of the business, and the News and Opinion departments operate with separate staffs and editors. Both report to Publisher Almar Latour. This separation allows us to pursue stories and inform readers with independent judgment.

It was probably inevitable that the wave of progressive cancel culture would arrive at the Journal, as it has at nearly every other cultural, business, academic and journalistic institution. But we are not the New York Times. Most Journal reporters attempt to cover the news fairly and down the middle, and our opinion pages offer an alternative to the uniform progressive views that dominate nearly all of today’s media.

As long as our proprietors allow us the privilege to do so, the opinion pages will continue to publish contributors who speak their minds within the tradition of vigorous, reasoned discourse. And these columns will continue to promote the principles of free people and free markets, which are more important than ever in what is a culture of growing progressive conformity and intolerance."

I expected nothing more from the WSJ.

Is that the entirety of the response to the letter writers?

BTW, the letter writers did not address the editorial board. They wrote directly to the publisher about their concerns with the sloppiness of the editorial board. The letter was a brutal point-by-point takedown. If this is the best the board can do in response, they are truly infected by the Trump virus.

Full disclosure:

I've written three op-eds for the WSJ ... many years ago (like almost 20). The editorial board at that point was quite professional. They edited, and they were concerned about logical arguments and evidence. They didn't simply rubber stamp pieces based on ideological simpatico. In fact, one of my pieces was a bit ... challenging for them. I argued that subsidies had a place in the policy tool kit.

Hadn’t read the whole letter but the summary points seemed not brutal at all, rather they seemed transparently political.

They identified how opinion pieces mischaracterized evidence systematically and knowingly.

They connected that to other things that you could call political, but which seemed quite sensible and logical to me.

I didn't see that, I saw different political interpretations of data. (e.g. Fryer)

Well, except Pence getting an actual number wrong. But there's no mention of what the number was so I don't know how consequential it was.

I'll track down the letter itself.

Actually I can't dive into it as I'd want to because all the pieces in question are behind a paywall.

I used to subscribe, but canceled once Murdoch bought them.

The letter is up on twitter.

Yes, Fryer is part of it, but Fryer said the WSJ mischaracterized his work.

However one chooses to evaluate the claims made by the sizable number of newsroom reporters, the fact that the newsroom is this exercised is pretty important. And they aren't "canceling" the editorial board. What nonsense.

Tell that to James Bennett


Yeah the letter’s on the internet but all the pieces it references are behind the wall.