My least favorite journalist just attacked one of my favorites. I have to say it made me smile, not frown.

Bari Weiss is the proprietress of Common Sense, and now the new media outlet The Free Press. Axios did a quick writeup of Weiss’ establishing The Free Press and in doing so triggered the Washington Post’s Taylor Lorenz. In the interest of honesty I am a paid subscriber to Weiss’ Substack, and would pay to avoid all things Lorenz.

This person works for the planet's 2nd-richest man and went to Swiss boarding school, yet constantly talks as if she's a low-paid hourly worker just getting by as a cook for a homeless shelter. She also has more corrections appended to her articles than most people have socks. pic.twitter.com/8p3lTl8YvP

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) December 14, 2022

Lorenz is notorious for being an obnoxious, unethical, and sloppy reporter. She engages in doxxing (she famously tracked down Chaya Raichek of Libs of TikTok and sending a mob of angry Leftists after her). And as Greenwald noted she has collected a raft of corrections on her sloppily written pieces in the Post.

That she still has a job shows how desperate The Washington Post is for clicks. Despite being a drag on their credibility, Lorenz brings the all-important clicks. She is a favorite of the angry Left crowd who value snark and bile over facts and reason, and we on the Right love to hate her.

Her problem is not so much her ideology–there are plenty of Lefties who make you think, if not agree–it is that her nastiness and vindictiveness are all she has to offer. She is a mindless mess of emotions.

She makes Keith Olbermann look like a scholar and a gentleman. Seriously.

Bari Weiss has had a meteoric rise as a journalist since she resigned from a plum job at the New York Times. She resigned in protest over the firing of her editor, as well as the harassment she experienced for being both moderate and a jew. She was subject to constant vile criticisms on the Times’ company Slack channel and criticized for her coverage of Israel.

Since her resignation she has gained a following based upon her own talent, not the prestige of the Times. She is widely respected among thoughtful people across the political aisle. Her thoughtful coverage of issues and unwillingness to be swayed by ideological priors is invaluable.

I look forward to reading her new publication The Free Press.

Weiss is no conservative. She is a married lesbian and considers herself center-left, in the manner of liberals from decades past. I would wager that she has never voted for a Republican, although frankly I don’t care. Her calling card is intellectual consistency, not ideology. Pretty much the opposite of Lorenz, who has never seen a principle she wouldn’t violate to score a debating point.

Axios’ report was pretty basic, as all theirs are. Just the facts:

Bari Weiss, the New York Times columnist turned independent newsletter writer, has hired ten full-time employees and over a dozen contractors to help build her new media company, The Free Press, Weiss told Axios in an interview.

Why it matters: The success of Weiss’ Substack newsletter and podcast, both of which she launched last year after leaving The New York Times, shows there’s an appetite for coverage that’s meant to rebuke traditional media products.

• “I’m responding to a demand, and I’m expanding based on the hunger of the audience. And that hunger and appetite is just huge. We’re at the very, very beginning of what this could be,” Weiss said.

Driving the news: Weiss launched The Free Press last Thursday, four days ahead of schedule, to capitalize on the media coverage around her “Twitter Files” reporting.

• In less than a week, The Free Press has accrued more than 105,000 followers on Twitter and its flagship newsletter has added an additional 25,000 free and paid subscribers.
• Weiss’ Twitter following itself has exploded in that time, growing from more than 500,000 followers to more than 900,000 in less than a week.

Weiss and her wife, Nellie Bowles, a co-founder of The Free Press”and former New York Times correspondent, have wasted no time supercharging growth.

• The company has already begun its first paid marketing campaign, which includes digital advertising and posters in cities such as Los Angeles, New York City and soon Austin and San Fransisco. “Up until now, we haven’t spent a penny,” Weiss said.

All pretty anodyne. The who, what, when, where and why of something that is of interest to millions. Weiss is amassing a huge following that, while hardly rivaling the Times or the Post, is a growing and thriving concern. Expect it to have over a million or more readers in months. Because she is filling a void in the media landscape. She also has the advantage of having no legacy expenses, allowing the Free Press to be more nimble and streamlined than an older media outlet.

Lorenz hates that, and by extension hates Weiss for her success. The only part of her attack on Weiss that isn’t projection is that Weiss has a buzzy media startup–that is true and exclusive to Weiss. All the rest of Lorenz’ criticism applies more to her than to Bari. Lorenz went to a ritzy Swiss boarding school with a $90,000 yearly tuition. She is hardly a scrappy up from her bootstraps go-getter. On this, though, she cannot keep her story straight.

A WaPo reporter who cannot even get the basic facts of her own life straight.

The Washington Free Beacon had some fun at Lorenz’ expense, perhaps unfairly criticizing her for being anti-semitic. Lorenz’ victims, including Weiss, have been disproportionately Jewish, so the accusation is not totally implausible, but I am pretty sure that Lorenz is an equal opportunity witch. She hates everybody not her. Lorenz, of course, would have just taken the shot seriously.

Lorenz has survived journalistic scandals that would have killed a career from a less privileged scribe. She constantly whines on Twitter, has attacked her own newspaper on Twitter, and remains employable solely because the fringiest of the fringe Leftists love her to death. And after having lost 500,000 subscribers in recent months, the Washington Post desperately needs every reader.

After Lorenz’ tirade she did the obvious: protect her tweets from public view. The social media/technology reporter for The Washington Post has decided to hide her own tweets from scrutiny, which is bizarre. It is easily possible to keep the tweets visible and disable commenting, so she is clearly more concerned with hiding her output from scrutiny than preventing a ratio.

A social media reporter refusing to be viewed on social media is a bad look.

But that is how Lorenz rolls.

The Washington Post is doing major cutbacks to offset the huge revenue losses they have experienced. It would be immensely satisfying to see them dump Lorenz as part of their cutbacks, but don’t count on it. As one of their most high profile personalities she apparently is an asset; not journalistically, but financially.

Hate clicks are better than no clicks at all.