The NY Times can be just as bad as any other online rag. They're incentivized to publish hit pieces, stories to spark outrage, anything to get clicks. Seems for

The NY Times can be just as bad as any other online rag. They're incentivized to publish hit pieces, stories to spark outrage, anything to get clicks. Seems for many at the NYT, journalistic integrity is just some antiquated notion. Take this admission, straight from the horse's moouth [1]: > I’ve made my way up as a reporter in the time of social media and most-read lists. I know what will make a piece pop to the top of that list as soon as I write it down in my notebook. No one has ever pressured me to get clicks, but I’ve been praised all my career with euphemisms like “really knowing my audience.” I can see on the site when my story is above someone else’s. I like it when it is. And I love the warm embrace of the social media scrum. > One easy path toward the top of the list and toward that embrace is communal outrage. Toss something (someone) into that maw, and it’s like fireworks. I have mastered that game. For a couple years, that desire for attention — to feel the crack of my byline hitting the conversation — propelled me more than almost anything else. I began to see myself less as a mirror and more as a weapon. I learned how to weaponize charm, which everyone does, but I do exceptionally well. I would call some stories kills. Resisting virality when you know exactly how to get it is like resisting a cigarette (I love smoking but do not smoke). When I wanted another viral story, I would talk about needing a hit. > Stirring outrage can be good. It can very well be the right thing to do. I won an award for working on an investigation series into predators using social video games to groom children. I’m glad that series made people mad. > But it’s extremely hard to control this tool. I would other times thrust a massive spotlight onto a person who would suffer from it and for no good reason. As an intern at the Chronicle, I got a man fired because he talked to me for a story, and some part of me knew it would happen. The story was a completely silly one, about private women’s clubs in the city, and he was a sweet and gentle man. I still feel sick when I think about him. And I think about him a lot. > In becoming increasingly driven by the pleasure of attention and conflict, I was sharpening my cruelest edges. The roar of Twitter on my side meant the kill was justified and good. I was using the tools that had been gifted to me — my love of people, my ability to write — but pursuing only attention, which is just the affection of the mob. > I do not want to cultivate sociopathy in myself. And cultivating sociopathy was exactly what I was doing. [1]: https://chosenbychoice.substack.com/p/learning-how-to-and-how-not-to-kill https://chosenbychoice.substack.com/p/learning-how-to-and-ho...