Writer, a self-identified ‘“big S” Socialist,’ favors instead “the pink paper of liberal capitalism,” Financial Times, and not for its politics, needless to say.

Compared to the Times, the reporting is usually more in-depth; the reporters generally have more expertise; the coverage is more comprehensive both geographically and substantively; even the op-eds are better (likely because they are far fewer, and they’re not used to pad the paper with “content”—confessionals, puff pieces, listicles—rather than reporting).

Most refreshing, the FT does not lose itself in the mire of myopic American culture wars, which very rarely breach the surface of material politics and/or economics. When it does run soft news, it’s higher quality (Rana Foroohar’s “Lunch with the FT” with Rebecca Solnit, for example, transcends the genre of fawning celebrity profile into an understated but scathing critique).

I get that, especially the “expertise” part. So it is with your everyday college-educated reporter, who learns on the fly and even if becoming serviceably knowledgable, has an audience on whom the expertise would be wasted.

As for her “big S” socialism, it means she’s feeling the Bern. And she’s a Marxist, she says, which means she endorses the Manifesto of 1848, “a plainly awful book, packed with hatred and, frankly, stupidity” of frightening relevance to today’s leftism, as explained just yesterday at a Catholic Citizens of Illinois monthly luncheon at the Union League Club by Paul Kengor.

More later about the Manifesto . . .