New media has become what it claimed to loathe.

On Ric Grenell's refusal 🫷🏾Karoline Leavitt's wall ✋🏽 and Lex Fridman's sycophancy🥎.

“Van Sickler was beginning to wonder about the relevance of newspaper work. The weeks and months it took for an investigative reporter to map the story out, get it right, and deliver, with the hope that *something* might change as a result — and then *nothing happened.* What was he doing it for — his ego? Because it didn’t seem to matter to anyone else.

But he wasn’t about to stop believing in journalism. ‘You’ve got to believe in something,’ he said. ‘I don’t believe in God — I believe in this.’

— George Packer in “The Unwinding”

This story begins, as is commonplace in this era, with a tweet. Ric Grenell, a presidential envoy for nondescript “special missions,” announced that Venezuela had agreed to allow U.S. deportation flights back into its country. With the Miami Herald being my employer’s flagship paper, I was sent forth to unearth more details. It makes sense to first go to the horse’s mouth, even if that horse is reputationally irascible and