Meet the New Journolist, Smaller Than the Old Journolist [Cabalist]

The Atlantic ^ | July 21, 2010 | Jeffrey Goldberg

[2ndDivisionVet]

Blogosphere, please join me in celebrating the birth of Cabalist, the wittily-named successor to Ezra Klein's infamous Journolist, the listserv of liberal bloggers, pundits and academics that inadvertently brought down (very temporarily) the ex-Washington Post blogger Dave Weigel, and which is now the subject of an endless and embarrassing (for certain former Journolist participants) investigation by The Daily Caller, which has discovered e-mail chains suggesting that certain Journolist members were secretly devising partisan campaigns to advance Democratic Party interests. (Message to normal Goldblog readers: This post will consist mainly of inside-journalism double-meta-navel-gazing; we will return to our regular programming shortly. You may stop reading now.)

Shortly after the Weigel scandal, Klein, the Washington Post's left-wing policy blogger, shut down Journolist, which was meant to be off-the-record, though why anyone thought a listserv with 400 members, many of whom were professional scribblers, would stay off the record is beyond me. But the idea behind Journolist -- a forum in which like-minded opinion-makers could share information and ideas (much of the content of Journolist that I have seen consisted of eye-glazing wonkery) but also, on occasion, plot campaigns against Journolist's ideological foes -- would not die. Hence, the birth of the heretofore secret Cabalist, which unlike Journolist, has only 173 members, rather than 400, but which in other ways resembles Journolist (such as in the propensity of Cabalist members to leak ostensibly private information to non-Cabalist members, including to yours truly). The 173 members are mainly veterans of Journolist, and don't ask me what happened to the other 227; perhaps they were purged after being judged splitters in secret on-line show trials.

it.

[2ndDivisionVet]

Any IT experts here know how to get into this?

[Carley]

They are not embarrassed. They will go on and on with their lies and hatemongering.

[Billthedrill]

The members of Cabalist...spent much of yesterday debating whether to respond collectively or individually to the Daily Caller series, or to ignore it.

The irony is pretty rich. People accused of forming a collective effort to influence the media narrative are now making a collective effort to influence the media narrative about that effort. How bad is it when I find myself agreeing with Andrew Sullivan, f'Petessake?

[PapaBear3625]

I think the article is a parody/humor piece, I don’t think any new listserv would call itself Cabalist, but I would not be surprised if the old Journolist crowd has reconstituted themselves as a smaller and (they hope) less leaky group.

[sodpoodle]

*****..the idea behind Journolist — a forum in which like-minded opinion-makers could share information and ideas...**

....and determine the most effective way to influence the voting public to select a governing elite comprised of Marxist, Maoist, Socialist progressives, under cover of darkness and lies....

[philman_36]

I wonder how long it's going to be before information comes to light on the natural born citizen controversy. It just seems strange to me that with their grimy mitts in so many subject matters that these "journalists" had nothing to say regarding such a contentious subject.

An aside...can you say "pointing out the obvious", boys and girls?
7:45:48 AM...the JournoList will rise like the phoenix from its current heap of ashes and live again under a new name.

[rxsid]

From Lsoft, the makers of the ListServ email software:

How to join and leave a mailing list

Granted, those instructions are for an older version of ListServ. Furthermore, it would depend on how the email list was set up as far as who can join and how (i.e. public vs private, etc).

[rxsid]

"I wonder how long it's going to be before information comes to light on the natural born citizen controversy."

Wouldn't THAT be something! (And NOT surprising).

[philman_36]

Wouldn't THAT be something!
It might be that it's so explosive that not even The Daily Caller wants to go there.

(And NOT surprising).
'Not very sporting' of them if they had the info and didn't release it.

[rxsid]

"Wouldn't THAT be something!
It might be that it's so explosive that not even The Daily Caller wants to go there

----------------------------------------------------

Most definitely, a possibility!

[OldDeckHand]

"I think the article is a parody/humor piece, I don’t think any new listserv would call itself Cabalist, but I would not be surprised if the old Journolist crowd has reconstituted themselves as a smaller and (they hope) less leaky group."

No, it's the real deal. They're just that full of themselves.

[OldDeckHand]

'In other words, members of Journolist 2.0 were debating whether to collectively respond to a Daily Caller story alleging -- inaccurately, in their minds -- that members of Journolist 1.0 (the same people, of course) made collective decisions about what to write."

This is the funniest part of the whole story. Of course they made concerted and collective efforts to shape media coverage to their political bent, and they're doing it all over again, while at the same time denying they did it in the first place.

With respect to, "Any IT experts here know how to get into this", that would be a serious violation of no less than 3 federal criminal statutes. I'm sure you were kidding, but just in case someone doesn't think you were, I thought I'd point it out.