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What follows is navel gazing of the worst kind, so there’s no need to remind me of this in comments. But the chart below is sort of weirdly fascinating anyway. Based on data from Andy Baio, it represents the linking behavior of the Washington Monthly’s Political Animal blog over time. Positive numbers indicate that a blog links mostly to stories favored by liberals, and my linking behavior, from January 2007 through August 2008, was moderately biased to the left (a value of .05 places you in about the leftmost 20%). Then Steve Benen took over, and the blog immediately began linking overwhelmingly to stories favored by liberals. But over time, Steve became more ecumenical, and by January of this year he was favoring liberal stories only slightly more than I had.

I have no conclusions to draw from this. It’s just pure wankerific navel gazing. Do with it what you will.

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BEFORE YOU CLICK AWAY!

“Lying.” “Disgusting.” “Scum.” “Slime.” “Corrupt.” “Enemy of the people.” Donald Trump has always made clear what he thinks of journalists. And it’s plain now that his administration intends to do everything it can to stop journalists from reporting things they don’t like—which is most things that are true.

No one gets to tell Mother Jones what to publish or not publish, because no one owns our fiercely independent newsroom. But that also means we need to directly raise the resources it takes to keep our journalism alive. There’s only one way for that to happen, and it’s readers like you stepping up. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

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