Claire Lehmann, Quillette founder.
Quillette has been under fire since it was founded by Claire Lehmann in 2015. The old guard doesn't like a fresh face, so when Lehmann launched and was then lauded by Jordan Peterson, the media lined up to take shots. Quillette may not have been the birthplace of the so-called Intellectual Dark Web, but it's been an essential publication for the documenting of free speech concerns and heterodox ideas. It also made space for voices that had been cancelled and writers and intellectuals who had been unpersoned in their communities. Publishing both controversial ideas and controversial people made it a desirable target for take-down artists and hoaxsters alike.
At issue was an article about a construction worker from Queens, a regular Joe who, along with his union buddies, attended a Democratic Socialists of America meeting. The narrative goes that he was horrified to find just how far into academic, privilege theoretical nonsense the socialist movement had drifted. Quillette editors took the man at his word. The story is an interesting one, after all.
Modern media rolls fast, and outlets that run with a lean tight staff are at a disadvantage to the mainstream media outlets until they're not. Mainstream media is also susceptible to hoaxes. We don't have to go too far back to find the case of Jayson Blair who duped The New York Times, running plausible, reported pieces from places he didn't go. This was in 2003, before the proper digital age, and the Times couldn't take these pieces down, all they could do was retract the print with print.
Comment: Since its inception, Quillette has been getting a lot of (largely unjustified) criticism. As the author above states, that's because it's actually good.
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