Rise in Power Hierarchy Through New Tools in Tech Environment

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The emergence of tools like Slack and community listservs has led to a flattening of traditional hierarchies, allowing individuals at different levels to assert authority. This shift in dynamics has caused a collapse of the old gatekeeping systems in media companies and universities, giving rise to small factions that can challenge established authority figures. The new environment enables anyone to post and receive validation, diminishing the conversational authority of traditional figures like editors in chief.

Yascha Mounk and Nellie Bowles discuss her career at The New York Times and reporting on the ground from urban “autonomous zones” in 2020.

Nellie Bowles is a writer and reporter and the head of strategy at The Free Press, where she writes the TGIF column. Her book is Morning After the Revolution: Dispatches from the Wrong Side of History.

In this week’s conversation, Yascha Mounk and Nellie Bowles discuss how she came to chafe against the institutional culture of The New York Times and why she left; how new power hierarchies arose within media and institutions where small groups came to wield outsized power; and how the transformative ideas about power and society that became dominant in 2020 continue to hold great influence.

This transcript has been condensed and lightly edited for clarit y .

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