Roll Call: Legacy in a Time of Chaos

The year before I came to Roll Call, the Supreme Court had granted corporations personhood and dispensed with limits on political spending. In a post-Citizen’s United world, virtually overnight, it seemed like there was unlimited money for literally everything in politics, except for the industry and hardworking reporters whose purpose was to hold politicians into account.

It crushed me at the time, but it is worth revisiting now, especially as the staff at The Washington Post — the so-called “big leagues” to Roll Call’s farm system — once believed to be untouchable, is being decimated by a billionaire owner. If there is a universal truth about mainstream media in the 21st century, it’s that mainstream media owners do not understand the value of journalism, public service or government. Or, more cynically, they do understand it but choose to destroy that value anyway.