So I went on a bit of a tear on Sunday because I am sick of this shit.

To which Whet responded by showing me this: 

Texas Monthly bears the tagline “The National Magazine of Texas”–and it has lived up to the billing. Since its founding in 1973, the magazine has won 13 national magazine awards for public interest, politics, feature writing, and general excellence.

It was a mantle embraced by former owner Emmis Communications Corp, which sold the magazine in October 2016 to Genesis Park, a private equity firm co-founded by Paul Hobby, grandson of former Texas governor William P. Hobby, who owned the now-defunctHouston Post. The buyers quickly found a new editor in Taliaferro, 33, the former vice president for communications and digital strategy for Texas Exes (the University of Texas alumni association) and the editor in chief of Alcalde, UT’s alumni magazine.

Taliaferro spoke with CJR about his plans for Texas Monthly, which are a departure from the magazine’s long history of in-depth political coverage and longform journalism. Of his plans to scale back local political coverage, he says, “Texans don’t care about politics.” As an example of the coverage he plans to cut back on, Taliaferro cited stories on transgender bathrooms.

GAAAAAH.

Texans. Don’t. Care. About. Politics.

Jesus TITS.

This, however, is almost worse:

A statement on the Genesis Park website notes that “Genesis Park is the third owner of the Texas Monthly brand and will use its deep Texas relationships and media history to drive the brand into digital content, social media, expanded events, merchandising and a broader custom publishing business for the next chapter in Texas Monthly’s storied career.”

All of which is shorthand for “we will do anything BUT journalism.” I will grant that digital content and social media can enhance and even be journalism if done correctly, but it was like six seconds ago that publishers were falling all over themselves to produce A THOUSAND LIVE VIDEOS A DAY and then were like no, we will not do that now. Ditto slobbing Facebook’s knob for publication revenue that never really materialized.

So what the hell do merchandising and custom publishing have to do with running a good magazine? Events? Oh, goody, because there aren’t 10,000 event planners in the world. Isn’t it hard enough just to run a magazine? Why do you have to load it up with all this other bullshit too? Fer chrissakes, is it impossible to resist sticking your dick in every bees’ nest you see? If you have a thing that is making money, for God’s sake don’t poke it.

A.