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| Forbes |
The last month has put Wisconsin
high in just about every day’s top 10 news stories, with running coverage in the
nation’s major papers, on TV and in politically oriented magazines such as Mother Jones, Slate, Salon and The Nation.
But some of the most unexpected commentary on the Walker Administration’s now-successful maneuver to strip most collective bargaining rights for public employees has been found on the website of Forbes magazine.
Unexpected for two reasons: Forbes is a sharply reported and pungently opinionated business magazine that skews in favor of money and management in its snappily written stories. Yet the commentaries in question have been unapologetically in support of the protesting public employees and their sympathizers.
How did that come to be that readers could find at Forbes.com – part of a magazine that once proudly nicknamed itself “Capitalist Tool” – this story defending teachers against claims they’re bankrupting the states, or this one skewering state Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, or this one contending that Gov. Scott Walker “has lost the war” – all of which got enthusiastically passed around in liberal corners of the Internet?
The voice and keyboard behind those and other commentaries belongs to Rick Ungar, a Los Angeles lawyer and blogger. Curious about the strange bedfellows that put him together with the capitalist tools at Forbes, I got a quick phone interview with Ungar yesterday. He called me from New York’s Penn Station, having just met with editors at the magazine; the sound of Amtrak announcers calling the trains punctuated our brief conversation.
How did Ungar get so interested in the recent Dairy State turmoil? “I tend to follow all domestic politics,” he told me. “But when you get involved with union things I get interested. I come from a union town – Youngstown Ohio” – the steel town immortalized in Bruce Springsteen’s 1995 song of the same name.
He has no other Wisconsin ties though. “In fact I’m a very loyal Ohio State Buckeye, so you’re lucky I didn’t ding you on that alone,” he says. “You can imagine what I’m writing about Michigan, knowing how I feel about them.”
Ungar’s association with Forbes does draw its share of odd couple questions. “I run into it a lot,” he says. “I guess I’m known as the token lefty at Forbes.”
Ungar started blogging two years ago in a similar slot as a “token lefty” at Culture 11, a short-lived, right-leaning Web magazine started by William Bennett, who served as education secretary under President Ronald Reagan. A lawyer by trade, Ungar wrote at Culture 11 on health policy – a topic that he had first gotten interested in back in the mid-1990s.
Lewis Dvorkin read his work and invited Ungar to join True/Slant, a venture combining journalism, entrepreneurship and social networking. (And in case you’re wondering, while so many in the Internet world blog for free, for Ungar, “it’s a paying gig.”)
Forbes acquired True/Slant last year and, to Ungar’s relief, left its ideological mix alone. “I would be dishonest if I didn’t say that I had some questions about that,” he says. “I thought it would be an awkward fit at first. But a) the same editors and the same people I liked very much were going to Forbes. And b) they were prepared to let me write what I wanted to write, and I figured sooner or later I’d find out if they meant it. And I’ve had that opportunity – boy, they meant it.”
Indeed. Forbes editors have been “remarkably supportive,” he says. “They really have. I think they realize that it’s not a bad thing to have somebody with my point of view at the magazine. So it’s worked out extremely well.
“From my perspective I’ve always been more interested in writing for those who I might get to bring to my point of view. I never saw a big benefit in writing for a more liberal online site where everybody already agrees with me. Where’s the fun in that?”
Even though his work is commentary, Ungar says he’s worked hard to check his facts in what he writes, which he says is “one of the things that made it work at Forbes.” He continues: “There have been some articles that I have written that actually were a problem for some close friends of Forbes” – such as pieces criticizing Walker funders the Koch brothers. “Those were the ones that I suspected this was going to be a problem. But it wasn’t, because the lawyers checked out the pieces and they were absolutely accurate. They may not have agreed with my opinion, but I’m very conscious about [accuracy].”
It’s quite a turn for a guy who created the TV cartoon “Biker Mice From Mars” and oversaw Marvel Comics’ TV productions.
“I loved it until about two years ago, when I started to get bored,” Ungar says. “I was becoming much more interested in writing for grownups than I was for kids, and that’s really what I had been doing. So I just stopped.
“It just wasn’t as much fun. And I’ve always let what’s fun drive what I do, and it tended to work out.”
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Of course the other big media news in the last week has been the continued turmoil at NPR. OnMilwaukee.com’s Andy Tarnoff tweeted a Gawker opinion piece urging NPR to embrace the freedom of forgoing government funding. Slate’s Jack Shafer agrees, though he largely excuses the actions of the network’s former fundraiser Ron Schiller.
What do you think? Comment below or write pressroom@milwaukeemagazine.com.
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