Chuck Klosterman Asked a Provocative Question About the Media

Does reading more news make you less informed about the public?

When I set off for Thanksgiving break, Subscriber Teutonia World gave me quite a prompt:

Thankful for the StraussGlass deep dive into the Simmons/Klosterman pod that is obviously coming soon.

That would be an ambitious feat considering the podcast is over two hours and, yes, is an especially free flowing conversation. Instead I’ll drill down on The Election Section because, even though it’s from a couple weeks ago, I found it to be a) wholly unique in the media space and b) Still pertinent to broader media trends.

Lucky for me, Subscriber Nathan asked about that exact section (which kicks off around the 32:40 second mark).

Ethan,

I finally had a chance to listen to the pod this morning and came up with the following questions. It’s a bit stream of consciousness, but I hope it helps you with some prompts if you are interested in continuing writing on this epic podcast episode. Chuck says that the more information he takes in, the less he understands the world. “I’m not even close to what’s happening.”

Every poll, every betting market was very clear. This was going to be a close election, a coin flip between Trump or Harris. CK and Bill act as if this was as unlikely as the Death Star being blown up in episode four. How are they so wrong in their expectations, why are they so surprised?

When you listen to their discussion, I’m confused whether CK is being self deprecating, truly honest or trying to find an excuse to justify why he was so wrong. I get the impression he felt that the media betrayed him, but why rely on one poll in Iowa to justify your entire thinking? Why not pay attention to every article that was saying this is a coin flip? Why not pay attention to trends over the past multiple elections where Republicans have generally over performed polls? Why not question the narrative that a few outlets used to suggest that the Iowa poll would mean a Harris mandate? He just accepts the premise, which seems like a very non-CK thing to do.

If CK is so off when it comes to understanding 2024 does this undermine his status as an expert of the 90s or other parts of his past work as a social critic? If he’s so far off on this election, why should I respect his opinion about Nirvana’s influence on pop culture or Bill Clinton’s election in 1992?

Much like CK is questioning everything that he knows in the world I’m questioning why anyone would listen to him or BS for that reason.

Thanks for your time. I’ll take the answers off the air.

-Nathan

Okay, there’s a lot here, and I have a slightly different perspective on much of this. First off, I respected and appreciated the epistemic humility on display in the pod. Nobody forced Klosterman to admit his incorrect expectation. He divulged that on his own accord, to set up a broader admission of uncertainty. Public facing people usually feel pressure to act more savvy than the consumer, not less. I believe Klosterman’s confession and subsequent grappling were wholly authentic.

When you listen to their discussion, I’m confused whether CK is being self deprecating, truly honest or trying to find an excuse to justify why he was so wrong.

I do not know Chuck, beyond the two times he appeared on my podcast, but I found him to be so intensely earnest that I struggled to properly mesh at first. I just can’t imagine him being self-deprecating for the sake of endearing himself to others and I mean that as a high compliment.

Even though I felt like the 2024 election result was as expected, mostly thanks to my weird obsession with early voting trends, I always carried a bit of doubt over what the data was shouting. You just can never really know-know until the result is rendered. In 2022, I was certainly surprised by the Dem overperformance. That result led me to feel a bit like Chuck: Wondering about what I’d missed, questioning if I had a good read on the broader culture.

But let’s set that aside, because really, who cares? The ability to predict one massive high leverage event isn’t a referendum on someone’s entire ability to perceive social trends. More to the point, nobody listens to me, Klosterman, or Bill Simmons for election predictions.

If CK is so off when it comes to understanding 2024 does this undermine his status as an expert of the 90s or other parts of his past work as a social critic?

I would argue that relative political disengagement makes Chuck Klosterman the ideal chronicler of the 1990’s. Like many a Gen Xer, Klosterman isn’t inordinantly obsessed with politics. He’s even made the point, to the chagrin of highly engaged journo lefties, that the 1990’s weren’t an especially political time. Chuck caught a lot of flak for saying so, but the facts were on his side. Voter participation reached historic lows in that era, and, subjectively, being politically apathetic was regarded as higher status. To truly see the 1990s, I believe it helps to have some political detachment, even when discussing the decade’s politics.

There’s a great section in Klosterman’s book where he’s looking back on Ross Perot’s rise with intense curiosity. If a political pundit were charged with writing that chapter, the content might be too infused with themes related to modern Trumpism. Instead, Chuck just regards Perot on his own terms, interpreted exactly as he appeared to resonate in that particular era. And I believe this is where Klosterman excels: Looking back, with passionate dispassion. You don’t need a bead on what’s coming next to be great at that sort of work.

But let’s get to Klosterman’s main question in the podcast: Were the most avid news consumers ironically the most misinformed about the national mood? I think this is a pretty plausible equation, at least within the cohort of Chuck’s (I’m guessing) affluent liberal social circle. My overtly political lefty friends were on the lookout for data points that made them feel better. Much of the media felt similarly, plus there was a benefit to serving predictions that soothed this cohort.

Nobody is immune to this kind of confirmation bias, on either side. The reason it’s notable in this instance, and Klosterman comes right up to the line without making the case, is that the legacy media, post Trump, is so wholly wedded to one team. In the past, much of the media was liberal, but there was more ideological diversity within it. Also, there was more of a professional commitment to objective truth versus “moral clarity.”

I’m generalizing here, but…much of the name brand media apparatus channels fan fiction these days. That structure has been hollowed out, mostly by technological factors, and it has gotten loudly strident almost to compensate for weakness. While the relevance of network news, NPR and major newspapers is greatly waning, it still retains some cachet with highly educated people over age 40.

This cohort, including and especially the boomer liberal archetype (again, generalizing!), sometimes doesn’t know what it doesn’t know. The people who were raised on newspapers hail from an era where one could plausibly believe themselves informed based on these higher quality products. Over time, the eroding presence of “news” got spackled over with ideological reaffirmation, but a lot of consumers still believe that “news” consumption does the trick of elevating them above their peers. They are woefully misinformed here (The science is conclusive that subscribing to House of Strauss elevates you above your peers).

There are similar dynamics on the other side, but the other side just isn’t as well positioned among, for lack of a better term, elites. Perhaps this is all changing now that Elon Musk runs Twitter/X, but that’s a different topic for a different day. My bigger point is that legacy news isn’t failing the intensely ideological customer, though the effects aren’t great. That consumer is looking for and receiving an emotionally cathartic product. Instead, legacy news is failing a guy like Chuck Klosterman: Smart, well read, (likely) liberal, but not politically obsessed.

A well functioning mainstream news system should keep a guy like Chuck reliably informed about the national mood. You shouldn’t have to listen to three hour Joe Rogan podcasts to get a sense of what the American mainstream might plausibly be. The New York Times and the New Yorker should be fairly presenting the other side’s views, in the way that side actually conceives of their own views.

Instead, we’ve lived through a bizarre epoch where the “mainstream” aggressively played defense against acknowledging the mainstream. Donald Trump has been central to this crackup. So many people in media were, for reasons I get, invested in Trump never becoming “normalized.” But it happened, whether brand name outlets wanted to admit it or not.

In the aforementioned podcast, Klosterman posits that perhaps any basic Republican stand in, such as Nikki Haley, could have won, given what happened. Maybe, but I doubt it. A difficult conclusion for a lot of media consumers to grapple with is just that Donald Trump is fairly popular. Not necessarily Obama 2008 popular, or even Obama 2012 popular, but he ran ahead of his party. The rural areas went crazy for Trump, and his brand markedly outperformed Republicans down ballot in minority-heavy urban areas. Nikki Haley isn’t pulling that off. Nikki Haley ain’t got no merch.

It was taboo to notice Trump’s growing popularity in spaces where acknowledgement could get attacked as endorsement. Ever since 2016, legacy media gatekeepers have been haunted by the idea that they might help Trump happen. Turns out he happened anyway, and as he did, they squandered credibility with engaged and apathetic consumers alike.