3 ms·

This perspective seems almost exactly wrong, considering what's been happening with the NYT lately.

by ksdale 6y ago

Barrin92 6y ago
Nothing much has been happening with the New York Times lately. Most of the conflict around the New York Times is actually exactly said fringe groups being offended because the NYT pisses them off in one way or the other. Liberals complain about the Cotton piece, someone complains about Scott Alexander being doxxed, and someone on the right probably thinks the NYT has been overrun by communists. Which actually proves that the New York Times still works perfectly fine. That's not the sort of conflict an independent journalist would even have, because they would never even dare to publish something that would anger their likely homogenous readerbase and thus threaten their paycheck. It's actually precisely because the NYT still works like a reasonably diverse newspaper that they constantly end up in one shitstorm or the other, not despite of it.
- ksdale 6y ago
  Wasn't someone forced to resign over the Cotton piece? And for what it's worth, I read several people online who I'd be happy to pay and I respect them enough intellectually that when they hold opinions I disagree with, I end up changing my mind as often as not. I may be a weirdo, but I don't think it's unheard for people to seek out online writers precisely because of their independent-mindedness rather than their dogmatic adherence to a party line. In my experience, it seems to be traditional media that has drawn up along party lines. I admire the NYT as an institution, but I certainly don't think it has anything like a monopoly on journalistic integrity.
- julianapostate 6y ago
  Liberals complain about the cotton piece and the editor resigns 4 days later. Scott Alexander deletes his blog and NYT has pretended nothing happened.
  - rchaud 6y ago
    The editor resigned after tweeting that the article was carefully vetted, then admitting that he hadn't actually read the piece himself. That is basically dereliction of duty considering that the piece is from a sitting US senator advocating for military intervention against American citizens. Should he have stayed on in that job? It shouldn't come as a surprise that that topic would cause more public consternation than doxxing the author of a semi-popular blog that the majority of Americans have no stake in.
    - ksdale 6y ago
      Do you think that he wouldn't have resigned if he had read the piece beforehand? Would that have changed their decision to publish? They also demoted the editor who did the actual editing. It doesn't seem like it's obviously journalistic malpractice to publish bad and wrong opinions that come from US Senators, even if the opinions are very bad and wrong. The objection to the piece was to its contents, something the editor has finite control over if they're going to publish at all. Certainly it's debatable whether that piece should have been published, but the stories about failures of professionalism sound like reasons they came up with after they published something that plenty of other major newspapers would have published, and discovered that their readership and employees really didn't like it. To be clear, I think it's totally fine that the organization runs that way, but I think it's wrong to put them on a pedestal.
- clairity 6y ago
  you can still find some good investigative journalism at nytimes here and there, but most of the daily news pieces are full of opinion and partisanship. the editorializing over corona/covid, blm, and the election provide the most obvious examples, but you can see it across world news, cultural pieces, and everything in-between. the cotton piece was published exactly to generate outrage and partisanship, not to be informative, and it backfired--a lack of editorial integrity, not an issue with the offensive content itself.

This perspective seems almost exactly wrong, considering what's been happening with the NYT lately.

by ksdale 6y ago

This perspective seems almost exactly wrong, considering what's been happening with the NYT lately.

Nothing much has been happening with the New York Times lately. Most of the conflict around the New York Times is actually exactly said fringe groups being offended because the NYT pisses them off in one way or the other. Liberals complain about the Cotton piece, someone complains about Scott Alexander being doxxed, and someone on the right probably thinks the NYT has been overrun by communists. Which actually proves that the New York Times still works perfectly fine. That's not the sort of conflict an independent journalist would even have, because they would never even dare to publish something that would anger their likely homogenous readerbase and thus threaten their paycheck. It's actually precisely because the NYT still works like a reasonably diverse newspaper that they constantly end up in one shitstorm or the other, not despite of it.

ksdale 6y ago
Wasn't someone forced to resign over the Cotton piece? And for what it's worth, I read several people online who I'd be happy to pay and I respect them enough intellectually that when they hold opinions I disagree with, I end up changing my mind as often as not. I may be a weirdo, but I don't think it's unheard for people to seek out online writers precisely because of their independent-mindedness rather than their dogmatic adherence to a party line. In my experience, it seems to be traditional media that has drawn up along party lines. I admire the NYT as an institution, but I certainly don't think it has anything like a monopoly on journalistic integrity.
julianapostate 6y ago
Liberals complain about the cotton piece and the editor resigns 4 days later. Scott Alexander deletes his blog and NYT has pretended nothing happened.
- rchaud 6y ago
  The editor resigned after tweeting that the article was carefully vetted, then admitting that he hadn't actually read the piece himself. That is basically dereliction of duty considering that the piece is from a sitting US senator advocating for military intervention against American citizens. Should he have stayed on in that job? It shouldn't come as a surprise that that topic would cause more public consternation than doxxing the author of a semi-popular blog that the majority of Americans have no stake in.
  - ksdale 6y ago
    Do you think that he wouldn't have resigned if he had read the piece beforehand? Would that have changed their decision to publish? They also demoted the editor who did the actual editing. It doesn't seem like it's obviously journalistic malpractice to publish bad and wrong opinions that come from US Senators, even if the opinions are very bad and wrong. The objection to the piece was to its contents, something the editor has finite control over if they're going to publish at all. Certainly it's debatable whether that piece should have been published, but the stories about failures of professionalism sound like reasons they came up with after they published something that plenty of other major newspapers would have published, and discovered that their readership and employees really didn't like it. To be clear, I think it's totally fine that the organization runs that way, but I think it's wrong to put them on a pedestal.
clairity 6y ago
you can still find some good investigative journalism at nytimes here and there, but most of the daily news pieces are full of opinion and partisanship. the editorializing over corona/covid, blm, and the election provide the most obvious examples, but you can see it across world news, cultural pieces, and everything in-between. the cotton piece was published exactly to generate outrage and partisanship, not to be informative, and it backfired--a lack of editorial integrity, not an issue with the offensive content itself.