Donald Trump and the media’s quest for a Goldilocks conservative

Brian Beutler in Crooked:

At a company-wide town hall-style event in early April, Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor of The Atlantic, and his star writer, Ta-Nehisi Coates engaged in some candid public soul searching about how it is the venerable magazine, founded by abolitionists over 150 years ago, had hired (very briefly) a writer who advocated state-sanctioned hanging of women who abort pregnancies, and compared a small black child he encountered on a reporting trip to “a three-fifths scale Snoop Dogg” who gestured like a “primate.”

An Atlantic employee surreptitiously recorded the event, which leaked to Huffpost Thursday, giving the public unique insight into how journalists are grappling internally with both Donald Trump’s presidency and the lengthy campaign the conservative movement has undertaken to discredit mainstream media among fellow travelers.

More here.