Jim Romenesko, with his usual icy deadpan acumen,
from the
that Betsy Morgan, the former CEO of the Huffington Post, will be in charge of Glenn Beck’s Web site:
“I am a very apolitical person,” says Morgan, who is a member of Poynter’s National Advisory Board. “I’m a business person, who is absolutely fascinated by brands.”
The switch from HuffPo to Glenn Beck isn’t that impressive, in itself: a
safe space for conspiracy-minded cranks
is a
safe space for conspiracy-minded cranks
. But the
in the Poynter Institute’s self-appointed Bureau of Journalistic Standards and Practices—that’s what makes the story delightful.
Morgan does not believe in politics; she believes in business. Business has
. Business is without ideology. She is interested in—”absolutely fascinated by”—brands. What is a brand? It is a concept, or a reductive caricature of a concept, that is meant to construct and restrict the ways that people are able to talk about buying and selling things. Those things being bought and sold include
;
notional corporate entities are people
and
people are notional corporate entities
.
None of this is the least bit political, according a member of the board of
“dedicated to teaching and inspiring journalists and media leaders,” which “stands for a journalism that informs citizens and enlightens public discourse.” Sure, you could say that branding is essentially the opposite of enlightening the discourse; then again, you could say that a journalist’s job is to report on the world as it is.
