Why you should read The Daily Caller

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Tucker Carlson’s new website The Daily Caller is already old by internet standards – a whole one and a half days old to be precise.  I have’t had enough time to really dig as deeply as I’d like into the site just yet, but so far I’m impressed.  It mixes serious reporting with humor and opinion and manages to not sacrificing ant of its integrity in the process.  You can get your serious news (yes, news) on the front page, alongside some opinion pieces from politicians and pundits, and all the wry humor you want from Matt Labash or Jim Treacher (who I imagine will be driving voices at the site).

Here’s a sample from Labash’s first “Ask Matt Labash” column:

Wherever this takes us, our journey begins now:

What would you do to stop the Somali pirates?
— Ron

Whoa, Ron. Let’s back up for a second. That’s a mighty large assumption you’re making, that I’d even want to stop Somali piracy. Have you ever been to Somalia? It sucks: anarchy, grinding poverty, famine. Nothing to do for fun but to chew qat and eat your pets.  So stop Somali piracy? If the good people of Somalia can make their bleak lives just a little more bearable by downloading music without paying for it, I say we let them.

What do fly fishing and dating have in common?
–Moira

I fly fish a lot more than I date these days, on account of my wife. Still, dating and fly fishing are practically one and the same. Both involve the excitement of the chase. Both require skill and cunning. Both involve making effective presentations, so that the pursuer can get the pursued to take something firmly in its mouth before it has a chance to spit it out.  Finally, being successful at either will probably require you to wash your hands afterwards.  Tight lines, Moira!

And here’s a video Jim Treacher posted in a post titled Okay. She’s not famous. Explain. – which seems like a reasonable title for a post which includes this video:

And yes, the rumors are all true – if you haven’t read Treacher he is every bit as funny at the DC Trawler blog as he was back at his old digs….

But aside from the humor and snark, the site is a serious attempt to bring real, honest journalism to the table with a somewhat conservative slant. Insofar as it is a response to the Huffington Post, it is startlingly serious. There is none of the fluff which adorns the front page of the HuffPo. Nor is The Daily Caller an ideological safehouse.  Unlike many other conservative online publications, The Daily Caller is far from reactionary or over the top. I think honest conservative journalism, and a smart, genuine take on current events, government overreach and so forth is so necessary in a time when ever more partisan – or perhaps simply less serious – outlets are turning off independents and moderates from conservatism altogether.

So far the only thing which I find at all distracting from the experience is the site design, which isn’t necessarily bad – just a little out of date.  With sites like The New Republic redesigning and looking pretty awesome, the somewhat rusty look of The Daily Caller just feels old and lo-fi.  You might think complaining about the font a bit petty, but I think things like that are actually vitally important – and let’s face it, the font simply doesn’t work for the main articles.  Notice it’s entirely different on Treacher’s blog (and looks just fine there, in what I imagine is a fairly standard Wordpress installation) and I think the rest of the site should follow suit.

Also – as Alex Knapp points out to me elsewhere, the site’s front page is simply too busy.  This might be helped by simply modernizing the look of the site, but he’s right – there’s far too much going on in too small a space.  Readers need to be able to pick and choose from a fairly straightforward menu.  Categories and various site elements should be blocked off and not too crowded.  Again, check out the new TNR site design for a good example of this – all the blogs and features laid out very nicely and very readable.  You still have a great deal going on but it’s laid out in a way that makes it easy to take in one piece at a time.

Oh – and they need more than one blogger.  The serious news angle is wonderful, and Carlson was right to take that approach rather than simply go the op-ed route, but a site like that needs more serious (or not-so-serious) opinion makers to drive traffic and generate heat.  You don’t want to generate more heat than light of course, but you do need a healthy combination of the two.  As formidable as Treacher may be, he is only one voice.

For now, Tucker Carlson seems to be making good on his promises from his now famous praise-the-New-York-Times speech (from which he was booed off the stage) to bring conservatism journalism into the mainstream.  I, for one, will keep my fingers crossed as I update my daily read.