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From Vinnie Penn, Glenn Beck’s partner in the late 90s, when both were Top 40 jocks at KC101 in New Haven, Connecticut:

He always knew how to work people and situations for attention. He could pick the most pointless story in the news that day and find a way to approach it to get phones lit up. That was his strong point — pissing people off. He was very shrewd on both the business and entertainment sides of radio. He’s built his empire on very calculated button pushing.

This is from part 3 of Alexander Zaitchik’s terrific profile of Beck at Salon.  If you’re looking for an antidote to the Beck dreck that Time magazine recently passed off as journalism, this is it. Read part one here and part two here.

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Russian bots are impersonating us. Trump and his allies want to silence us. AI wants to (and does!) steal our content. The list goes on. But with 50 years of experience, we know we were built for this moment: We’re ready to keep diving deep and uncovering the truth, then getting that to you right here, completely accessible and never behind a paywall.

While our work is free to read, watch, and listen to online, it’s incredibly costly to make. Court documents, travel, research: It all adds up. Because we’re a nonprofit newsroom, we rely on reader support to fund our investigations. Will you stand with us in these extraordinary times, as headlines clamour for our attention and disinformation is rampant? We can’t get the truth out without you.

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