Francis Foster

And a great number of the early progressives actually studied in the socialist precincts of Germany in the late 19th century for longer or shorter periods.

and they're bringing these ideas with them.

This whole freewheeling, anything can happen, as long as we can prove it, we can report it, that whole ethos has to go away.

This needs to be calmed down and governed and run by adults.

And look, their criticisms are basically correct.

I mean, the newspapers were pretty wild.

They would say pretty outrageous things.

So did they need to be professionalized and reined in a bit?

Yes.

But what they wanted to design was far more than that.

They wanted to design a German-French model in which what the media reported and what the governing class wanted was the same.

So what they wanted was to reverse the decision that embarrassed the royal governor of New York in 1735.

200 years later, they wanted a do-over.

And we, the great and the good, should be safe from your ridicule, from your jokes.

And they were going to construct a system to do exactly that.

So at first, they tried a frontal assault.

And they made friends with a very interesting character called S.S.

McClure.

And he starts publishing these long-form magazines.

And they would publish literally 10,000-word articles on very weak production and things of this nature.