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A job title is supposed to describe the work, but it more often describes what its holder can actually do, which is rarely what the letterhead promises and never for as long as anyone assumes. People who understand this move fast. Everyone else finds out what the job was for by reading about it afterward.
Stephen Colbert ⬆
Four months after The Late Show wrapped, it won the Emmy for Outstanding Variety Series. Accepting the trophy, the former host told the room his writers are "all tech avail. Hire them." After getting canceled for costing too much, Colbert used the podium to move his staff onto somebody else's payroll.
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Steve Ballmer ⬇
The Los Angeles Clippers "vehemently" rejected the NBA's finding that the team had dodged the salary cap, calling it the product of a "heavily biased investigation." Eleven days later, the team owner agreed to comply with the league's punishment of a one-year suspension. The vehemence lasted less than a fortnight.
Matt Mullenweg ⬆
After the board of Automattic, the company behind WordPress, put its founder on paid leave without warning, he was back within 33 hours and all three directors who voted for it are gone. But his finance and legal chiefs had used the interval to sign each other $8.15 million in severance. Nothing survived the coup but the bill.
Matt Floca ⬇
The board meeting in March that made the Kennedy Center's vice president of operations its executive director also voted to close the building for two years. Six months on, the building has proved harder to close than to run. Promoted out of facilities into the department of emptying the place.
Joseph diGenova ⬇
The veteran prosecutor spent eight years on television insisting the evidence of bias among those who investigated Trump was overwhelming. Handed the case in April, he resigned in September, having charged no one and saying, "If you want indictments where there's no evidence, you have an ethical problem." Eight years of certainty evaporated in five months.
Deirdre Henderson ⬇
On September 4, the Justice Department wrote to Utah's lieutenant governor: "As you are aware, you are currently under investigation." She was not. "Um, no, I was not aware, but I guess I am now," she replied. A year of federal scrutiny, disclosed by throat-clearing.
Originally a staple of Newsweek's print edition, Conventional Wisdom used arrows to track whose stock was rising or falling in the political circus. We're reviving it in the digital age because the problem it lampooned—hyperbole and partisan certainty masquerading as insight—has only intensified.
CW assigns arrows—up, down, or sideways—to the figures and forces shaping current events. The arrows don't predict the future or claim special insight. They capture the prevailing winds of the moment, uncluttered by tribal howling. In an era when partisan media reinforces rather than questions assumptions, CW operates from the center—skeptical of left and right alike, committed to puncturing inflated reputations and recognizing overlooked truths.
Do you agree with our editors on which way the political winds are blowing? Send us a message here.
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