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So what happened with Mark Steyn & the UK media?

It seems we will be reading Mark Steyn mostly on-line now in the UK. If the irascible New Hampshire based Canadian has indeed been axed from two UK media syndication outlets (The Telegraph and The Spectator), does anyone have any information on what caused this? Lionel Shriver of the Guardian ponders that it might be a case of ‘political self-censorship’.

As it happens Steyn was one of the few reasons I look at either of those sadly diminished publications (particularly the Spectator, which I find almost unreadable these days). Any industry insiders out there have any scandal they want to share on what happened? Leave a comments or drop us an e-mail, you know you want to…

74 comments to So what happened with Mark Steyn & the UK media?

  • niconoclast

    At least he has left without a Steyn on his character.

    I think he was airbrushed a while ago over comments he made re the chap who lost his head when all about him were losing theirs(Bigley)

  • Pete_London

    Two letters and a reply to one at the bottom of this page of Steynonline:

    BREAKDOWN LANE
    Please do let us know if or when contract negotiations with the Spectator break down. If they do, I for one will be cancel ling my subscription.

    Andrew Porter
    Melbourne, Australia

    And

    LAST WORD
    Hi Mark, I’ve read all your books and all your articles. You have changed my political perspective, while making me roar with laughter. I know you’ve finished with the Telegraph, but haven’t seen your byeline in the Specci for 3 issues now….please tell me you’re not winding down your contract with them too?

    Roger Beaumont
    Bangkok, Thailand

    MARK REPLIES: As I said last week, the Telegraph Group owes us money which it’s being remarkably uncooperative in ponying up. But one day I’ll be back in print in the United Kingdom again. After I left The National Post, the general view among rival papers was that they didn’t need a right-wing madman like me in Canada. But a year or two went by and they all came creeping back with their woefully inadequate offers. I wouldn’t be surprised to get the odd tinkle from Fleet Street before too long.

  • Cheers for discovering that, Pete! So the buggers just owed him money, eh?

  • Pretty simple. Steyn was a protege of Conrad Black. Black no longer owns Hollinger, nor even Hollinger the Telegraph Group.
    The references to The National Post above are exactly the same thing.

    More here:

    http://timworstall.typepad.com/timworstall/2006/03/mark_steyn_bann.html

  • Verity

    Perry, his close friendship with the Blacks and his outspokenness in their defence had more than anything else to do with this. I think the bigotted Barclay brothers simply resented his stance. As we know, Steyn doesn’t pull his punches, and they couldn’t take it.

    The first one to be dropped, of course, was Conrad Black’s wife, the brilliant writer Barbara Amiel, who not only has an incisive mind and is a dab hand on the keyboard, but is Jewish. She’s also a sound conservative, as is Janet Daley, who was also dropped for reasons unknown.

    For some reason the Barclay brothers hate Conrad Black and all he stands for. OK, so he and his wife gave a few parties on company funds. Without the Blacks, there wouldn’t have been that kind of money splashing around for parties anyway.

    I am delighted to see the Spectator going down the tubes even faster than when the dreaded Boris Johnson was in charge. Their online site is so confusing and impossible to navigate I don’t even go there any more, and I certainly wouldn’t be tempted to subscribe to their online edition, given the mess. They run old stories, they run stories that one read a couple of weeks ago in a completely unconnected publication, you click on an item and a piece by a totally different writer inexplicably comes up.

    Given their treatment of Steyn, and the Blacks, I certainly wish them a fall flat on their faces.

  • GCooper

    Perry de Havilland writes:

    “So the buggers just owed him money, eh?”

    Strange days at the Telegraph. It seems the ludicrous Sarah Sands has (at last!) vanished, leaving behind her the smouldering remains of the Sunday Telegraph, having spent God alone knows how much trying to turn it into a women’s magazine.

    Meanwhile, rumours were rife that Steyn was about to follow his fellow countryman Conrad Black a long while ago, so I don’t think his departure was a surprise. After all, when the Barclay Brothers took over, didn’t someone connected say it wasn’t inevitable that the paper supported the Conservative Party?

    It’s probably a good job that “Dave” came along to relieve them of the necessity, ensuring there was no more Conservative Party to support!

  • John R

    Their online site is so confusing and impossible to navigate I don’t even go there any more, and I certainly wouldn’t be tempted to subscribe to their online edition, given the mess. They run old stories, they run stories that one read a couple of weeks ago in a completely unconnected publication, you click on an item and a piece by a totally different writer inexplicably comes up.

    I’m glad to see that I’m not the only one who finds the Spectator online a mystifying experience. I can’t read it any longer, I’m afraid. And that saddens me more than I can say. The demise of the Telegraph, too, is disheartening. Like you, Verity, I left England with tears in my eyes, knowing that I’d never return; however the very existence of conservative publications like the Speccie and the Telegraph indicated that a flicker of hope remained. Alas, no longer.

  • Millie Woods

    It’s amazing how the up multi-culti crowd first cringe and then work to destroy anyone who does not share their sacred views.
    Furthermore both conman Black – sorry about that but I’m Canadian and know Black’s past history and it isn’t all boy scoutish – trust me – and Mark Steyn have a ribald and glorious sense of humour which the grimmies can’t abide.
    Their mantra is dull, boring and heavy man, heavy ;as for the Barclay twins they’re Scottish. When was the last time you heard a Scottish joke? Obviously they were not going to continue with the light of heart Steyn.

  • Yes, I think you can expect the Speccie’s sales to drop even further now that one reason to read the rag is no longer writing for them.

    Its sad to see that the DT owes their top writer money. It is always distressing to see, as a writer, when magazines and newspapers do not pay their obligations.

  • Verity

    CCooper – Yes, I can see a certain symmetry – the emergence of the Barclay brothers and Dave.

    Yes, Sarah Sands has bit the dust and Patience Wheatcroft has been elevated. We will see. Being a good writer does not necessarily mean the individual has the ability to be a good editor.

    John R – the Speccie site is a nightmare. It can only have been designed by someone on drugs, because there is no coherence, no logic. I am guessing their online readership has plummeted. I always used to be aware on Thursday afternoon that the Speccie would be online soon. Now, Thursday afternoons slide by without my thinking of the significance.

  • guy herbert

    Millie Woods,

    It’s amazing how the up multi-culti crowd first cringe and then work to destroy anyone who does not share their sacred views.

    Uh? Any evidence of this happening here, either to Mr Steyn – whom nobody is working to destroy, even his ideological opponents agreeing he is very funny – or to Lord Black?

    as for the Barclay twins they’re Scottish

    Er, no they aren’t. Hammersmith-born and Sark-resident. Tony Blair is arguably Scottish. The case for the Barclay’s being is considerably weaker. Owning The Scotsman doesn’t count.

    Even if they were, it is blind (and deaf) prejudice to claim Scots in general don’t have a sense of humour. Ever heard of Billy Connolly? Or Armando Ianucci, the Glaswegian satirist, another departing Torygraph writer?

  • Alorac Arucsbo

    Though Mark Steyn is a brilliant wit, I’m not all that sorry to see him gone. Steyn can be witty and get it very wrong. In particular, for years now Steyn has been bullshitting on about the ‘democratization process’ in the Middle East. For example, as recently as 1 March this year he wrote in the DT about the floundering “insurgency” in Iraq.

    That’s pure ideology: the sky is falling in, while Steyn sees the sun rising over the horizon.

    Still, good fun when he knows what he’s talking about.

  • GCooper

    guy herbert writes:

    ” Ever heard of Billy Connolly? Or Armando Ianucci, the Glaswegian satirist, another departing Torygraph writer?”

    You’re on uncharacteristially shakey ground there, I’d have said. While Connollly might have been funny once, there seems little to laugh about where Mr. Iannucci is concerned.

  • Julian Taylor

    If he has trouble getting cash out of The Daily Telegraph he should thank his lucky stars he doesn’t write for News International – getting any kind of payment of out The Times and other publications makes a boulder look like a regular blood donor.

  • Verity

    Billy Connolly was somewhat funny 20 years ago. Iannucci is not funny. Not even a tiny bit. But the Scots can be very funny indeed. No one can match the slicing quick wit of the Glaswegians. Well, no, Cockneys have a similar talent for the quick comeback.

  • It is good to be able to winge about the Spectator,which I have been unable to access since I changed IP .No amount of emailing to re-register or change passwords has ever been acknowledged.
    Another one down the tubes.

  • permanent expat

    I have no idea what the ‘politics’ are in the dropping of Mark Steyn by the DT & Speccie because I don’t swim in that pond. A drop in readership of both publications would be no surprize….and deserved.
    It is part of human nature that we don’t often like to hear people tell it like it is; something at which Steyn is a master. Such folk as Steyn are labelled ‘doomsters’, as others were similarly named in the thirties. Our inability to distinguish between logical & clear-headed thinking on the one hand & doom-saying on the other sometimes defies description….as a few comments in this, Perry’s blog, evince.
    As a hermit, by choice, the Internet is my lifeline to the outside world & I never cease to marvel at the cornucopia of available information. In print, I have been a lifetime subscriber to The Economist….& for some years to The Spectator whose website is, as some have already said, an unmitigated disaster. Who would subscribe to that? Dropping Steyn means that, despite Taki & the occasional laughs, I shall not be renewing my subscription.
    I have had ‘Steyn Online’ bookmarked for as long as I can remember & will continue to be a regular & admiring visitor.
    Mark Steyn is no doom-monger….he simply tells things like they are……others stop their lug-holes & count angels.

  • permanent expat

    Alorac: Rara avis the man who is right ALL the time As Stanley Baldwin might have said, “Wait & see.”

  • Millie Woods

    Lighten up, Guy. And no I don’t have forensic evidence that would satisfy crown prosecution ghouls that multi cultis are a bunch of lockstep totalitarians but the fact that they and their defenders are humourless………well actions do speak louder than words.

  • Verity

    This trouble began brewing when Lord Black was being ousted from the company and Steyne loyally and wittily defended him in print several times.

    I get the feeling the Barclay brothers are not heavily into generosity of spirit.

  • Midwesterner

    hm,

    the tale of tyhe mysterious vanishing DT alrticle of a few weeks ago

    Thanks for that. The article and its disappearance is worth a thread in itself.

  • simon

    I miss Steyn’s film reviews in The Spectator. I won’t renew my subscription unless the magazine impoves.

  • Kim du Toit

    Sad, really. I remember reading the online Telegraph before they even published on Sundays. Nowadays, I only read them for the football and cricket results, or when one of my Readers sends me a news item. The disappearance of Barbara Amiel and Janet Daly simply added to the reasons why not to read the thing anymore.

    As The MRs. will attest, my first action on arriving in London is to buy a Dead Tree Telegraph. I doubt whether I’ll be doing that anymore, either.

    As for the Spectator… ugh. I think I’ve read perhaps two articles this year which weren’t absolute drivel, and I used to link to them about three times a month.

    And Boris Johnson is a prat.

    By the way, if any of you Brits are interested, the American Spectator is definitely a worthwhile read.

  • Nick M

    Who cares.

    Conrad Black is a crook.

    The Telegraph is a dreadful rag and has been for years.

    It’s like reading a version of the Daily Mail that passed its A-levels and became quite successful in accountancy. It’s so small “c” conservative it still hasn’t changed to a compact format.

  • GCooper

    Nick M writes:

    ” It’s so small “c” conservative it still hasn’t changed to a compact format.”

    Don’t encourage them. Have you ever tried to get a good draught going on a coal fire with a tabloid-sized rag?

    At least while one can use the Telegraph for that, it has some use.

  • Millard Foolmore

    Wasn’t Steyn the one who kept saying 2-3 years back that Osama was dead?

    Not to mention his constant assurances that the last pitiful remnants of the Iraqi insurgency were being mopped up, no problemo.

    The fellow’s a former disc jockey who knows nothing about international affairs except what his PR contacts in the military and Washington tell him.

    He’s also somewhat of a mystery man, having claimed at various times to be resident in places (e.g. NH) where none of the locals know anything about him.

    Good on Broadway musicals, not so hot on geopolitics. Smartassed PJ O’Rourke imitators don’t make it.

    Among other of his many offenses, let us remember that Steyn, while beating his chest about the fact that we’re in a “war” which the cowardly left ignores, himself has called for America pre-emptively to surrender to Islam so that when Muslims take over the world, as, in his view, they inevitably will, Islam will be our “friend.” Yet flagwaving conservatives regard this traitorous trickster as their number one man, their hero. Such is the triumph of the faux conservatism that has persuaded legions of patriotic conservatives that it’s the real thing.

    (Lawrence Auster– for his analysis of Steyn’s odd evasiveness about his origins, see

    http://www.amnation.com/vfr/archives/003492.html

    Of course, you libertarians would approve of a man who rises above such tedious things as ancestry and nationality;-)

  • Verity

    Laurence Auster sounds like a whack job who’s never read Steyn, who loathes Islam.

    Millard Foolmore, whose handle would mean something to Americans but no one else, writes: Wasn’t Steyn the one who kept saying 2-3 years back that Osama was dead? And you have proof that he’s wrong, chico?

    And maybe he’s evasive about his whereabouts because he wants to be alive at this time tomorrow.

    You must be tone deaf to imagine that Steyn and O’Rourke have anything in common except a freewheeling attitude to free markets. There is absolutely nothing similar in the structure of their writing.

  • I enjoyed Steyn and I’m sad to see him go, but alas he’s nothing on O’Rourke.

  • Verity

    Steyn hasn’t “gone”. He just doesn’t write for a British publication any more. Meanwhile, he writes for the Chicago Sun-Times, the Western Standard, an Australian paper (I think it’s The Age, but may be wrong) and appears on a national radio talk show. If that’s “gone”, what do you call David Blunkett?

    I am baffled by the posters who think there is any comparison between PJ and Steyn. This is so weird as their writing doesn’t resemble the writing of the other. So that means that everyone who believes in capitalism and free markets can be compared with everyone else who believes in capitalism and free markets? So PJ can also be compared with William Buckley Jr, say? And Steyn’s writing must thus be similar to Thomas Sowell? And Thomas Sowell can be compared to Patience Wheatcroft? And, hey, I’m getting dizzy! Maybe we could put Ann Coulter, Melanie Phillips and Michelle Malkin in the same bag? OK, their writing doesn’t vaguely resemble that of the others, but they’re all women! And all conservative! To hell with their writing styles …

  • peter melia

    Steyn was axed from DT & Spectator because his views did not agree with those of the new owners of the DT & Speccie, the Barclays. And as a result, those two publications have been reduced to mere “advertising revenue incrementors” if there is such a thing. As a Speccie subscriber, missing MS, I am angered by his exclusion. When I realised what was happening, I deleted DT from my start-up group in Avant and inserted Steyn. I have no idea how many popups I have missed as a result of this simple action on my part, but I hope it is an enormous number, and that the lost clicks will eventually impoverish the Barclays. I hope Steyn will directly benefit from my having him in my Start group. Oh, by the way, I have stopped buying the DT. Unfortunately the Spectator is on annual subscription, but when the time comes for renewal, stroll on Spectator.

  • peter melia

    Steyn was axed from DT & Spectator because his views did not agree with those of the new owners of the DT & Speccie, the Barclays. And as a result, those two publications have been reduced to mere “advertising revenue incrementors” if there is such a thing. As a Speccie subscriber, missing MS, I am angered by his exclusion. When I realised what was happening, I deleted DT from my start-up group in Avant and inserted Steyn. I have no idea how many popups I have missed as a result of this simple action on my part, but I hope it is an enormous number, and that the lost clicks will eventually impoverish the Barclays. I hope Steyn will directly benefit from my having him in my Start group. Oh, by the way, I have stopped buying the DT. Unfortunately the Spectator is on annual subscription, but when the time comes for renewal, stroll on Spectator.

  • Verity

    peter melia, I was going to wait to see how the new editor did – in hopeful mode that he would be better than the dire, floppily ‘charming’ (not) Boris.

    The editorship went to the easiest, which didn’t auger well. Matthew d’Acona is very often a good columnist, but I don’t think he is editor material. He doesn’t have that kind of mind. But he won out over the brilliant Quentin Letts (god know, no flies on him!) and the brilliant-in-a-different-way Peter Oborne.

    Once Boris was replaced with an actual editor rather than a dilettante giving jobs to his friends and family, I was going to subscribe to the Online edition – wherever it may be, as it is impossible to find in the zig-zag hell of their website – but dropping Mark Steyn from the Speccie and The Telegraph, no thanks, Barclays.

    I can get Mark on his own site. I have no idea what the Speccie’s like because it’s a giant mess I don’t have the will to work through.

    Anyway, anyone who drops Mark Steyne is not my kind of publication.

  • Verity

    And look at this. And the Brits are still pretending nothing terribly serious is going on (Link)

    The government is going to overhaul the magazine distribution industry? WHAT? Why has this not got the attention of the press? To repeat: The GOVERNMENT is going to OVERHAUL the MAGAZINE DISTRIBUTION INDUSTRY.

    And you in Britain are tolerating this?

  • guy herbert

    MF,

    Of course, you libertarians would approve of a man who rises above such tedious things as ancestry and nationality;-)

    Absolutely. And personal history, too, for that matter.

  • rosignol

    From that story Verity linked to above-

    It gives distributors regional monopolies in return for delivering to all retailers at the same price.

    Sounds to me like the “Magazine Distribution Industry” is rather over-regulated to begin with. Granting regional monopolies for utilities like power generation or landline telco services is one thing- there’s a lot of infrastructure that is impractical to duplicate. What do you need to be a magazine distrubutor? Magazines and customers, obviously, but besides that? A truck and some warehouse space? A business license?

  • guy herbert

    A business license?

    Not in the UK. Specific sorts of businesses are increasingly subject to licensing and regulation, but there’s no such thing as a business license here.

    Magazine distribution is an odd business, and subject to all sorts of weird monopolistic practices. Not only do they choose to limit the customers, so that some people can’t get supplied, they also try to control what the permitted customers buy by supplying “box outs” of unsolicited goods, as well as insisting on exclusive contracts. The trouble is that magazines are time-limited, and have a low margin for something that requires so much handling – so it is very difficult to make any money on a small scale. The barriers to entry and returns to scale are huge.

  • The first one to be dropped, of course, was Conrad Black’s wife, the brilliant writer Barbara Amiel, who not only has an incisive mind and is a dab hand on the keyboard, …

    I’ll admit that beauty is always in the subjective eye of the beholder, but I could usually tell when I was reading an Amiel article, without looking at the byline first, because I couldn’t get past the first few sentences without asking myself four questions:

    *. What is the relevance of this article to anything else in the news?

    *. Why is this writer penning their words as if they are God handing down additional Commandments?

    *. What is going bizarre with on this sentence construction?

    *. Surely there are better writers out there, who deserve this person’s salary?

    The answer to all four questions was obvious of course, though I didn’t know it at the time; she was sleeping with the proprietor. Isn’t hindsight a wonderful focussing agent?

    But assuming she was there with a writing ability, which only yours truly couldn’t see, for a woman with a talent of such undiluted magnificence, it’s funny how she hasn’t popped up anywere else, like Mark Steyn will? I wonder why? Jealousy, I suppose, though her propensity to dip both hands in the till, plus any handy shovels she could get her hands on, has probably proved a serious career hindrance.

    It’ll be interesting to see if she can make it a second time, under a nom de plume, if she feels the need.

    She’s also a sound conservative

    So, robbing shareholders is conservative behaviour? Yes, I suppose it is, if you accept Hoppe’s definition of socialism; that a socialist is any person who believes in coercion to extract property from other people for their own purposes, whether they extract this property by explicit force or hidden fraud. You can call them socialists, liberals, national socialists, conservatives, communists, collectivists, or whatever you like, but I prefer to label them with a term from an earlier bygone age; thieves.

    If Hollinger had been 100% owned by Mr Black, then spend away Ms Amiel, hide it all from the taxman if you can, and what’s a little nepotism between friends? I was, after all, free to stop buying the Torygraph if I didn’t consider its writers up to mustard. And yes, Black was a major shareholder of Hollinger, with I believe 82% of the shares, but this is not 100% is it? If I had been one of the 18% of people he and Ms Amiel did rob, I would have been very keen on paying for them both to have some extra mathematics lessons to work out the difference.

    …Janet Daley, who was also dropped for reasons unknown.

    I suppose her being as mad as a banana can’t have helped, though, bless her.

  • Johnathan Pearce

    Sad to read this but not terribly surprised. It is clear that the Barclays are determined to sweep away any old remnants of the C.Black years, and Steyn, bless him, has been a pugilistic defender of said. A case of when, not if.

    Steyn is a great writer, very funny at times, although O’Rouke is the Master. But there are grounds for criticism. He’s been far too kind to Bush. Steyn has also become a bit of a scratched record at times on the whole “Europe Is Doomed Coz They are Having No Babies and Being Over-run by Them” line for the past 4 years. It may be partly true but after a while one looks for a fresh insight. I have the same problem with writers like Mel Philips, who sounds like she is on the verge of a nervous breakdown all the time.

    The Spectator has been in decline as a serious literary force for years. Boris is an amiable dunce, and was too unfocussed to be an editor in the class of Alexander Chancellor or Charles Moore. Some of the great men, like Colin Welch, Auberon Waugh and Jeff Bernard have gone to the wine-bar in the sky. Paul Johnson writes about watercolours, Taki still rants about Jews and it is all rather tired.

    The blogs are where I increasingly go for intelligence. And as far as mags are concerned, I actually prefer the liberal-lefty publication Prospect, which is more challenging and varied.

    Sad, but the times in which we live, etc…

  • Johnathan –

    Steyn has made some rather, erm, brave predictions about China invading Siberia, too. This seems unlikely considering that even with a population dwindling from 170 million to (worst case scenario) 50 million souls over the next few decades, Russia will still hold the world’s second largest arsenal of nuclear weapons.

    Steyn is a great and entertaining writer, but I think his international relations analyses are often more than a little out of whack.

  • GCooper

    I realise this is like running into the middle of the Rangers stadium and shouting ‘Celtic for ever!’ but I’m afraid I really don’t understand all these ‘Steyn is a great writer…’ remarks.

    Steyn can be funny and he can be incisive, too. But a great writer? As someone remarked to me the other day, his work badly needs editing. Particularly it needs his flights of humour pruning into shape. Too often, he struggles for effect, sounding rather too impressed with his own wit.

    I’d say good, rather than great, or at least very uneven.

    None of which excuses the Barclays, however, who increasingly look as if they are managing the Telegraph group as a personal favour to St. Rupert de Murdoch.

  • Johnathan Pearce

    GCooper, I know what you mean. Sometimes Mark Steyn, who can be v. funny at times, looks like he is trying to hard. But who am I to criticise? If I had a tenth of his ability to churn out wit on a deadline like that, I’d be a happy man.

  • Verity

    I always found Barbara Amiel’s pieces sparkling, incisive and a great pleasure to read. Perhaps, Jack Maturin, she had not been instructed by her editor that she had to write about something in the news – like a schoolchild being handed an essay to do for homework. Grow up.

    I’ve already admitted that they shouldn’t have been giving parties on shareholders’ money. I don’t know what this has to do with her talent as a writer.

    I agree with GCooper that Mark Steyn is a witty, incisive writer. Isn’t that enough? All of a sudden he’s supposed to be Balzac? Hello?

    And again, I don’t understand why some of you keep comparing him unfavourably with PJ, who is a completely different kind of writer. That’s like saying Darcey Bussell is a great ballerina, but she’s not as fiery as a flamenco dancer.

  • Verity

    Is Samizdata being moderated now?

  • Dale Amon

    Sort of yes and sort of no… you got caught in the spam filter for some reason and I just marked it as okay.

  • Verity

    Thank you, Dale!

  • Verity

    Also, to all these languid critics of Mark Steyn – this man writes around four columns a week. Most columnists write one. They’re not all going to be award winners. But most of them are better than anything anyone else in the Anglosphere is writing – even if he hasn’t had time to polish and fine tune them.

    He always refers to “we”, so I think he has a couple of researchers. But the prodigious amount of witty writing that springs off his keyboard is mind-boggling. He’s probably the best-known columnist in the world, now.

  • Johnathan Pearce

    He’s probably the best-known columnist in the world, now.

    I am not too sure about that. He is certainly the darling of many conservative/libertarians, but I dunno how that works outside the reservation.

  • FRed

    HEy now,

    Just because Rusdsia has some Nukes doesn’t mean China can’t invade Siberia…. It just won’t be done with divisions of Infantry.

    It’ll be done with dollars and rubles and euro’s, offers that can’t be reasonably refused, lax visas req’s…. They’ll just own or control everything they want, and let the russian operate the low margin extraction business.

    Or maybe Russia will sell it.

    There’s more than one way to skin a cat.

  • Verity

    Jonathan – name one columnist in the Anglosphere you think may be better known. This is a genuine, non-sarcastic request. I would be interested to see who you, and others, would nominate.

  • Johnathan Pearce

    Verity, let’s try a few:

    Christopher Hitchens;
    Andrew Sullivan;
    Charles Krauthammer;
    Larry Kudlow;;
    Charles Kinsley;
    Robert Samuelson;
    Paul Krugman (yes, he’s a dope but he is famous)
    etc.

    You will notice that there are not many Brits.

    So, yes, Steyn is well known, but I think we should not look at this through our own ideological spectacles. If you mention him to a lot of folk who take a very different political tack, some might give you a blank stare (more’s the pity).

  • B's Freak

    Millard,

    Regarding the following:

    “He’s also somewhat of a mystery man, having claimed at various times to be resident in places (e.g. NH) where none of the locals know anything about him.”

    That would be one of the selling points of living in New Hampshire. That and a part time legislature that’s not paid enough to be able to make it their sole source of income and of course driving around with liscence plates that say “Live Free or Die”.

  • Verity

    Jonathan – Never heard of Paul Krugman, Charles Kinsley or Robert Samuelson. Have heard vaguely of Larry Kudlow, but have no idea what he writes.

    Andrew Sullivan’s well known, but a lot of people can’t be bothered to read him any more because he has become fixated on the love that dare not speak its name – a real yawneroo. I wonder how many Aussies are familiar with any of the names you have listed. Or New Zealanders. (BTW – you say not many Brits, but almost a third of those you listed are Brits – Sullivan and Hitchens.) And Mark Steyn’s a Canadian. No Aussies, sadly enough.

    I maintain that Steyn has the highest journalistic profile in the Anglosphere.

  • Johnathan

    Verity, never heard of Paul Krugman?

    As for Sullivan, well, you may be bored by his advocacy of gay marriage, but he is unquestionably a famous commenter. And on the whole, I rate him as an excellent columnist.

  • Verity

    No, Johnathan – never heard of Paul Krugman. Is he known all over the Anglosphere? Is it just me?

  • John R

    Verity, I’ve never heard of Klugman either. Apparently he writes in the NYT (but that appears to be all); however that would appear to make him world famous. I’m in Oz and have not heard of any of the others on Johnathan’s list other than Sullivan and Hitchens. That may be because I’m not particularly well-read, but suspect it’s because they have no meaningful existence outside the USA. At least Steyn plies his trade worldwide (even in this land, where his column appears occasionally in The Australian).

  • rosignol

    Jonathan – Never heard of Paul Krugman,

    I envy you that.

    Krugman was a competent (by most accounts) academic economist that the NYT brought on-board in the late 90s to help it’s readers make sense of the ‘new economy’.

    Since then, he’s pretty much degenerated into a foaming partisan hack. Due to the structure of the MSM in the US*, his position on the NYT editorial page assures that many of his columns are picked up by other regional and city papers.

    More info-

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Krugman

    Don’t skip the ‘Criticisms’ section.

    *basically, the NYT and the Washington Post set the agenda, and the rest of the ‘national’ section consists of articles cribbed from those two sources and the various wire services- the way the media works in this country is downright incestuous. This is a big part of why my usual reaction to ‘print circulation falling’ articles in the US is ‘faster, please’.

  • Verity

    I only know one person on planet Earth who reads the NYT (but I respect him otherwise), so I doubt that Klugman’s name is in wide circulation. And yes, I also suspect the references are confined to the US and not the Anglosphere. I posited that Steyn is the best known columnist in the Anglosphere.

    If we’re just talking America – which we’re not – I would have thought Thomas Sowell, Ann Coulter and Michelle Malkin were far better known than any of those mentioned by Johnathan, except Andrew Sullivan – and even he is a specialty item. I doubt Christopher Hitchens, as good as he is, is much known outside the chatterati in the Northeast. But I specifically referred to the Anglosphere, and Mark Steyn has name recognition everywhere English is spoken. I am standing firm by my own theory.

  • Johnathan Pearce

    I doubt whether any other than the most obsessive Brit reader of newspapers has a clue who Ann Coulter is. She strikes me as a piece of work and an embarrassment to the thoughtful right. I feel about her in much the same way that the smarter leftists must think about Michael Moore or George Monbiot.

    What bothers me about the Steyn move is that he had the rare ability to see things from the Canuck, US, Brit and Aussie perspective, without being patronising to any of these. I think though that he was losing patience with the Speccy crowd and the fact that it had twerps like Andrew Gilligan and Rod Liddle, who is a thug, on the payroll.

  • Verity

    Johnathan, you are wilfully misunderstanding me. I named Ann Coulter as a specific example of a journalist who would not be known outside the US, and said the ones you named in your list – save Sully and Hitchens – had similar nonentity status in the rest of the Anglosphere. I also said the Americans I named were probably better known within the US than those you listed as being big names.

    In other words, I feel your list failed on two counts: in the Anglosphere and in the US. And Thomas Sowell is far, far better known and resected than those people. As is Michelle Malkin. But it’s still domestic consumption and I was referring specifically to the Anglsophere.

    Mark Steyn is a familiar name in Oz, Britain, Canada and the United States.

  • Verity

    Also, I doubt that Steyn cared about who else was on the payroll at the Speccie. I think he was told his services were no longer required because he is a friend and supporter of Lord Black and the Barclay brothers do not understand the publishing business. Just as well they have plenty of money to lose, because the Speccie and The Telegraph are shedding subscibers and will continue to do so.

  • Johnathan

    Verity, sorry, I re-read your comment and did misunderstand you.

  • Johnathan Pearce

    And Thomas Sowell is far, far better known and resected than those people.

    In Sowell’s case, he has a minor following among free marketeer commenters in Britain, who will know him from his superb debunking of various myths on race. BTW, he’d have made absolute mincemeat of those dreadful “genetic realists” (ie, racists) whom I had the pleasure of taking apart the other week.

  • Verity

    Thanks, Jonathan.

    Again, Sowell is very well-known and read in his native US. Personally, he’s one of my favourite columnists because his mind is so clear and crisp and his writing is just so good.

    But we’ve inadvertently left out the biggest journalistic megastar in the US. I am guessing this individual is the most syndicated columnist in America. Hmmm …

  • Midwesterner

    I assume you mean besides Dave Barry. He’s easily one of the biggest columnists and the very biggest libertarian columnist. Aside from him, I don’t know, who’d we forget?

  • Verity

    Midwesterner nailed it. That’s who I was referring to.

  • Midwesterner

    As soon as you said that, I had one of those ‘Oh! Du-uhh!’ moments. He’s even more effective than his ratings would indicate because he has an audience that isn’t interested in poliitics and has their presumptions relaxed because he’s entertaining them.

    Good call.

  • Verity

    Yes, good call. Also, if you’re ever in an office and there’s something sitting hunched over their computer with their shoulders shaking with silent laughter, they’re probably reading Dave Barry.

    The one that had me so helpless with laughter I had my head on my desk and thought I’d never sit up straight again was “The Worst Song Ever”. That was the run-up. The next article was the actual worst song itself, but I missed it.

  • Johnathan Pearce

    Verity, go and read Sowell’s Vision of the Anointed (assuming you haven’t already). It is magnificent.

    And of course Sowell drives the leftists nuts by being black.

  • Verity

    Thanks for the tip, Johnathan. But it’s a hell of a job to get books delivered down here. I’m trying to get a PO box, which is more reliable. If it works out, I will definitely read your recommendation. Sowell is a brilliant writer – and yes, it must drive the lefties nuts that he’s black, brilliant, conservative and a capitalist. It doesn’t leave them much to feel superior and all-knowing about, does it?

    In return, I recommend the column “The Worst Song in the World” column of Dave Barry. I was laughing so hard I think I didn’t draw a breath for five minutes.

  • veryretired

    …mad as a banana…The image of a psychotic Chiquita gyrating around with that Carmen Miranda fruit hat on is going to haunt me for a long time.

    And when did Sowell get resected? Is there a fund being collected for his recovery?

    Please let me know. I’ll be in the produce aisle.

  • The Wobbly Guy

    Coming from somebody on the fringe of the Anglosphere, I rate Steyn higher than Hitchens, because he’s funnier. Hitchens tends to use a bludgeon too often in his essays; Steyn uses a scapel of humor.

    The other names on the list, I have read, but Steyn is my fav.

    TWG

  • Verity

    Singapore isn’t on the fringe of the Anglosphere. You’re a fully paid up member.

    However, “Steyn uses a scalpel of humour”. ? How ghastly. Perhaps you’re in the Trite-osphere. In which case we wish you a life on the fringe.