9 ms·

So they think that they can just replace that role with social media? Wasn't the whole issue with newspapers in the 2016 election was they relied far too much o

So they think that they can just replace that role with social media? Wasn't the whole issue with newspapers in the 2016 election was they relied far too much on social media and ended up in a bubble? I don't see anything in the article that makes me feel like they are interested in fixing that problem.

PhantomGremlin 9y ago
ended up in a bubble? Yes they did. They know it. And they don't really give a fuck. After the election they did some public navel gazing about what went wrong. To prove they were serious, there was even an editorial about The Future of the Times. So I wrote to Ms Spayd. I challenged her, at the next meeting of journalists and editors, to say something like: "show of hands, who voted for Donald Trump for president". My contention is that the result would be zero. Nada. Zilch. Even if they did vote for Trump, they wouldn't be dumb enough to admit it publicly to a room full of their colleagues. So how can the Times ever begin to understand the 46% of the country who are the deplorables who voted for Trump? They can't, and they don't want to. Or, maybe, Ms. Spayd actually did what I suggested. And the powers that be decided that she just wasn't a good fit for them anymore. And that's why she was shown the door. :)
- wcummings 9y ago
  Employing Trump voters would create an unsafe work environment for women and minorities.
- pg314 9y ago
  > So how can the Times ever begin to understand the 46% of the country who are the deplorables who voted for Trump? You don't need to be a member of a certain group to be able to report on them. E.g. you don't need to be terminally ill to report on people that are terminally ill, or member of the KKK to report on them.
  - panzer_wyrm 9y ago
    In the last election people reporting on the KKK outnumbered the clan 10 to 1.
  - bitwize 9y ago
    No one is expecting liberal journalists to turn conservative. What we need is for liberal journalists to take conservatives seriously. If the liberals really are right (and I think they're righter than the right) then they should be able to address conservative grievances within their own framework. But in recent years, they haven't been. Encouraged by Obama's success, the liberal establishment has determined that conservatives are all racist sexist homophobic rubes and can be freely ignored. That's how you end up with Connecticut, currently a wasteland where the taxes are unusually high even for a New England state, but public satisfaction in public infrastructure and services is low. If there are ZERO Trump voters among staff at the Times, that is a strong indicator that the Times reporters are spending a lot of time in a bubble, and could benefit by hiring a conservative just to function as devil's advocate (like Fox News did with Alan Colmes).
    - mtberatwork 9y ago
      > and could benefit by hiring a conservative just to function as devil's advocate They do hire conservatives (Brooks, Douthat, Kristol, etc) and they just hired Bret Stephens. > (like Fox News did with Alan Colmes) You make it sound as if Alan Colmes, during his time at Fox, was there to give an equal voice to the liberal side of an issue, but in reality he was just marginalized to be the token "lefty" punching bag for Hannity.
      - PhantomGremlin 9y ago
        I don't follow the Times that closely any more, but from what I can see David Brooks is their analog to what Alan Colmes was to Fox. Somewhat like a court jester. But even Brooks knew enough to publicly declare that he wouldn't vote for Trump, even though Trump's political views probably aligned more closely to Brooks than Hillary's views did.
gnicholas 9y ago
Agreed. I have occasionally tweeted corrections at authors of articles and have never gotten any response. And these aren't famous authors who get too many tweets to respond too — these are contributors with a handful of Twitter followers. If the new model of interacting with the public is anything like this, I don't have much hope for it. I will say that when I eventually sent an email to the NYT's corrections email address, they immediately fixed the errors in the articles. This won't help with close judgment calls or understanding how the newsroom works, but at least it can be used to address blatant errors.
matt4077 9y ago
Nate Silver has done some good work on what exactly went wrong, and it was a combination of factors: - (some) polls were systematically off, mostly because they underestimated white non-college turnout and overestimated black turnout. Note that poll errors were actually lower than for any other election–only this time they actually got the winner wrong. - Most of the poll aggregators operated under the assumption of statistical independence of state-level results. This was a serious mistake, and both Huffpost as well as The Upshot (to a lesser extend) should be somewhat ashamed. 538, by the way, did this right and had Trump at 3X% on election day. - There actually was some significant change in voters' intent in the last days, possibly fuelled by all the news stories the FBI directors was generating. It's highly likely that an election two weeks earlier or two weeks later would have ended differently. It's also important to note that newspapers aren't really in the business of predicting the future. If they "relied too much on social media" for any facts they reported, I'd love to see some examples.
- humanrebar 9y ago
  Beyond making bad predictions and tonally describing the election poorly (it didn't seem to be coming down to the wire based on the coverage), the NYT did an atrociously poor job of explaining the mind of a Trump voter to its readership. To this day, there is a lot of reliance on imagery of be-mulleted bogeyman that is both facile and harmful if America wants to live in harmony with itself again some day. That is, we're not just talking about getting the numbers wrong. The "narrative" itself is way out of whack as well.
- kobeya 9y ago
  2X% actually (I remember watching it in real time), but the point stands as it was way higher than anyone else thought.
  - scott_s 9y ago
    And Nate Silver got a lot of flak for that in the week before the election.
    - 9y ago

PhantomGremlin 9y ago

ended up in a bubble? Yes they did. They know it. And they don't really give a fuck. After the election they did some public navel gazing about what went wrong. To prove they were serious, there was even an editorial about The Future of the Times. So I wrote to Ms Spayd. I challenged her, at the next meeting of journalists and editors, to say something like: "show of hands, who voted for Donald Trump for president". My contention is that the result would be zero. Nada. Zilch. Even if they did vote for Trump, they wouldn't be dumb enough to admit it publicly to a room full of their colleagues. So how can the Times ever begin to understand the 46% of the country who are the deplorables who voted for Trump? They can't, and they don't want to. Or, maybe, Ms. Spayd actually did what I suggested. And the powers that be decided that she just wasn't a good fit for them anymore. And that's why she was shown the door. :)

wcummings 9y ago
Employing Trump voters would create an unsafe work environment for women and minorities.
pg314 9y ago
> So how can the Times ever begin to understand the 46% of the country who are the deplorables who voted for Trump? You don't need to be a member of a certain group to be able to report on them. E.g. you don't need to be terminally ill to report on people that are terminally ill, or member of the KKK to report on them.
- panzer_wyrm 9y ago
  In the last election people reporting on the KKK outnumbered the clan 10 to 1.
- bitwize 9y ago
  No one is expecting liberal journalists to turn conservative. What we need is for liberal journalists to take conservatives seriously. If the liberals really are right (and I think they're righter than the right) then they should be able to address conservative grievances within their own framework. But in recent years, they haven't been. Encouraged by Obama's success, the liberal establishment has determined that conservatives are all racist sexist homophobic rubes and can be freely ignored. That's how you end up with Connecticut, currently a wasteland where the taxes are unusually high even for a New England state, but public satisfaction in public infrastructure and services is low. If there are ZERO Trump voters among staff at the Times, that is a strong indicator that the Times reporters are spending a lot of time in a bubble, and could benefit by hiring a conservative just to function as devil's advocate (like Fox News did with Alan Colmes).
  - mtberatwork 9y ago
    > and could benefit by hiring a conservative just to function as devil's advocate They do hire conservatives (Brooks, Douthat, Kristol, etc) and they just hired Bret Stephens. > (like Fox News did with Alan Colmes) You make it sound as if Alan Colmes, during his time at Fox, was there to give an equal voice to the liberal side of an issue, but in reality he was just marginalized to be the token "lefty" punching bag for Hannity.
    - PhantomGremlin 9y ago
      I don't follow the Times that closely any more, but from what I can see David Brooks is their analog to what Alan Colmes was to Fox. Somewhat like a court jester. But even Brooks knew enough to publicly declare that he wouldn't vote for Trump, even though Trump's political views probably aligned more closely to Brooks than Hillary's views did.

gnicholas 9y ago

Agreed. I have occasionally tweeted corrections at authors of articles and have never gotten any response. And these aren't famous authors who get too many tweets to respond too — these are contributors with a handful of Twitter followers. If the new model of interacting with the public is anything like this, I don't have much hope for it. I will say that when I eventually sent an email to the NYT's corrections email address, they immediately fixed the errors in the articles. This won't help with close judgment calls or understanding how the newsroom works, but at least it can be used to address blatant errors.

matt4077 9y ago

Nate Silver has done some good work on what exactly went wrong, and it was a combination of factors: - (some) polls were systematically off, mostly because they underestimated white non-college turnout and overestimated black turnout. Note that poll errors were actually lower than for any other election–only this time they actually got the winner wrong. - Most of the poll aggregators operated under the assumption of statistical independence of state-level results. This was a serious mistake, and both Huffpost as well as The Upshot (to a lesser extend) should be somewhat ashamed. 538, by the way, did this right and had Trump at 3X% on election day. - There actually was some significant change in voters' intent in the last days, possibly fuelled by all the news stories the FBI directors was generating. It's highly likely that an election two weeks earlier or two weeks later would have ended differently. It's also important to note that newspapers aren't really in the business of predicting the future. If they "relied too much on social media" for any facts they reported, I'd love to see some examples.

humanrebar 9y ago
Beyond making bad predictions and tonally describing the election poorly (it didn't seem to be coming down to the wire based on the coverage), the NYT did an atrociously poor job of explaining the mind of a Trump voter to its readership. To this day, there is a lot of reliance on imagery of be-mulleted bogeyman that is both facile and harmful if America wants to live in harmony with itself again some day. That is, we're not just talking about getting the numbers wrong. The "narrative" itself is way out of whack as well.
kobeya 9y ago
2X% actually (I remember watching it in real time), but the point stands as it was way higher than anyone else thought.
- scott_s 9y ago
  And Nate Silver got a lot of flak for that in the week before the election.
  - 9y ago