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Something that I think is rarely discussed when this topic comes up is the loss of prestige. Working for The New York Times or The New Yorker used to have some

• sdenton4 6y ago
  I think much of the journalism of ideas is happening in podcasts now. Podcasts certainly more of a frontier right now, with lots of people (still!) trying out interesting things, compared to the shrinking world of print journalism. 'Rough Translation' with Gregory Warner is one of the best, imo. The idea of to take important stories in the US and find analogues in other countries, and look at how they've played out. Consistently fascinating. https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510324/rough-translation https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510324/rough-translation
  • A12-B 6y ago
    I don't think you're wrong (I don't know enough), but it's quite the caricature of entrepreneur culture to say that podcasts are doing journalism better than the journalists. NYT is one paper, from one city. The scope of print journalism is vast and probably defeats podcasts 100 to 1.
    • sdenton4 6y ago
      Many of the people doing the best work in podcasting are journalists, make no mistake! Many who either are currently or formerly were at NPR, rotating long time contributors to This American Life, etc. For the most part, podcast reporting is closer to magazine reporting than newspapers. ('Democracy Now' is maybe the exception that proves the rule?) But given the survival rate of magazines at this point in history, it's obvious that podcasts are where you're going to see more innovation.
  • 8fGTBjZxBcHq 6y ago
    This ignores the fact that journalism is a professional discipline with established ethical practices that is practiced by groups of journalists and editors together. Now there's definitely an argument to be made that it routinely fails to live up to those standards and that it has certain structural weaknesses and biases that need to be addressed. But it is, overall, a system of professionals who consider their work to be constrained in certain ways that are ethically important to them and the world. Individual podcasters might adhere to some of these standards but as a field it has no aspirations to that. Same with journalists leaving established papers to publish on substack with no editorial oversight. They are not practicing journalism as journalists see the field. These things might replace journalism but they aren't it.
    • sdenton4 6y ago
      Text had no special claims in truth, I'm afraid. And many of the best podcasters are in fact journalists. Greg Warner, Sarah Koenig, even Alex Blumberg...
      • 8fGTBjZxBcHq 6y ago
        That's not what I'm claiming at all. It's not about the medium it's about the structures, constraints, and goals of the work. I'm also not claiming that podcasting can't be journalism, just that the structures necessary for it to be aren't widespread or generally highly valued by podcasters as a group. Plenty of journalists do use it as their medium but that doesn't make podcasting and journalism the same thing.
        • sdenton4 6y ago
          And I never claimed that all podcasting is journalism... Journalism is a subset of (text/audio), and some (writers/podcasters) care a lot more about journalistic standards than others. I would argue that podcasting institutions - npr and affiliates, gimlet, radiotopia - actually do have a lot of understanding and respect for journalistic standards, and also represent a very large share of the most popular podcasts. I don't think the two media are as different in this regard as you seem to believe.
  • mudita 6y ago
    If that's true, then it's a real shame. I strongly prefer written text to podcasts. Maybe that's just my own taste, but to be honest, I believe, that it's just a much, much better medium for conveying ideas. With text I can process the content non-linearly. I can skim to get an overview. I can go back to previous passages and find them again easily even days later. I can take more time to reflect on difficult parts and less time for stuff I know already. I can quote sentences easily to share insights with friends...
    • TheRealDunkirk 6y ago
      I've tried to get into podcasts more times than I can count. I just can't get there. Besides the advantages you describe, I can "consume" the content SO much more quickly on a page than a podcast, even if I speed it up, which seriously degrades the medium anyway.
      • oe 6y ago
        I feel like many if not all podcasters are my “friends” who I chat with, only I don’t need to speak. I don’t see why they should convey their ideas any faster. I enjoy whatever time we spend together and it’s usually enough to fill the time on my commute or washing the dishes.
        • mudita 6y ago
          For me, the experience with friends is similar. If I want to mostly hear their voice and feel close to them, voice messages are great, but if I want or need some information then please, just send me a text.
        • jfengel 6y ago
          I do listen to my podcasts at about 1.4x, with an additional feature to shorten silences (like pauses, and even between words and sentences) that bumps it up to about 1.5x-1.6x. To me, that makes them feel peppier without feeling rushed. (Compared to the standard pacing associated with radio broadcasts, which is what many podcasters aim for.) As you note, this is used to provide distraction during time that my hands are busy but my ears aren't: commuting, running, etc. I suspect that at least some of the others in this thread are listening to music under similar circumstances. Or maybe they're just better than me about getting lost in their own thoughts.
• jimbokun 6y ago
  > I can't name a single person that I'd consider the modern equivalent of Lapham, or even Christopher Hitchens. If this person exists today, they are much more likely to be found on Substack than at The New York Times.
  • keiferski 6y ago
    Right, but that's precisely the point: Lapham was the editor of Harper's, a top literary/news magazine, for almost 30 years. He was in an institutional position of power, not a random blogger on a new startup's site.
• Mediterraneo10 6y ago
  It isn't just that journalism has become an ideological battleground. Even without the cultural warfare, once-mighty publications would still be seen as in decline. The issue is the modern ad-based internet economy. Due to the pressures of swiftly producing content that draws maximum clicks, journalists at even august publications are now forced to create articles little distinguishable from a minimum-wage content writer hired off some freelance platform. There is also the issue of declining attention spans as people consume snackable content on their mobile devices. Journalists have always chafed at limitations of space, but they are under even more pressure today to be concise and eschew subtleties and nuance. The same length as a traditional magazine article from a couple of decades ago, is now seen as a "long read", something for only a niche audience.
  • dehrmann 6y ago
    > The issue is the modern ad-based internet economy Never forget this bias. It's the primary bias of most major news outlets. CNN wants you to keep watching CNN for more news, even if there isn't enough news to fill airtime, so they drag things out, bring on guests, and favor stories with the potential to keep you glued to your TV.
  • symlinkk 6y ago
    Because 99% of long articles are a waste of time that could be summarized in a sentence or two. This is why no one reads articles here or on Reddit, and just skims the comments instead.
    • mitchdoogle 6y ago
      I almost always at least skim an article before diving into the comments. Many times I will read the whole thing, especially if it is short, as this one is. I do believe that most probably don't do that. It's often possible to tell which commenters have read it and which haven't, i.e. if a comment mentions something not even present in the article, or if it mentions something clearly refuted in the article. I think it's important to read the things you comment on, and I think it's important to expect others to do so as well. Ignorance is tolerated too much these days, especially considering that knowledge is easier to obtain now than ever before.
• gxqoz 6y ago
  I'm not familiar with Lapham, but I'd consider many current New Yorker writers to be writing consistently interesting articles. Same with someone like Patricia Lockwood for the London Review of Books.
  • keiferski 6y ago
    I used to be a big reader of The New Yorker. To me, they've slipped even more than the Times over the last decade, probably because they were on a higher perch.
    • gxqoz 6y ago
      I started reading about 10 years ago so don't have a great reference for earlier writing. But just looking at some of ones from this year highlighted on longform, there was some great stuff here: https://longform.org/archive/publications/new-yorker https://longform.org/archive/publications/new-yorker For instance "Trolling the Great Outdoors", "Why Does the Pandemic Seem to Be Hitting Some Countries Harder Than Others?", and "Fish Farming Is Feeding the Globe. What’s the Cost for Locals?". And its TV criticism under Emily Nussbaum (who hasn't written an article since 2019 for reasons I haven't been able to figure out) was consistently excellent.
      • keiferski 6y ago
        It's not that they are universally terrible now, just that they've fallen into the same political-hype blackhole as everyone else. I remember looking at their home page a few years ago and seeing the top 10 articles all being about Trump. That obsession with politics didn't really happen in previous eras and even when it did, it was counterbalanced by some legitimate literary criticism. Looking at their home page now, it's uh, not quite the same.
        • gxqoz 6y ago
          It's certainly true that it's gotten more topical and hence more overtly political. Part of this is surely a change to having more of an online readership (and online-only articles). When you're writing a magazine piece, it can be at best a week behind the news. This constraint doesn't exist for online pieces. That being said, I think the New Yorker still offers some of the best and nuanced political analysis. I certainly prefer it to the New York Times.
• busterarm 6y ago
  I'd argue that slightly more than half a century ago, journalism was largely a blue-collar job with blue-collar attitudes done by working & middle-class people. They saw the job as their responsibility to hold public figures to public account. The prestige journalists chased all of these people out and many of the factors that appealed to them are still there (getting a platform to push your views) but it turns out those appeal much more to ideologues than those who want to write well in a paper with others who write well.
• johncena33 6y ago
  I personally think it's post-modernism and the adjacent ideologies are responsible for this. Since everything is subjective and there's no objective notion of truth and it's all moral relativism, one has the license to do anything they want. That's why activism and ideologies took over professional integrity.
  • keiferski 6y ago
    Well, that's essentially what Allan Bloom argued what was happening in 1987. 33 years later, he certainly seems more right than wrong. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Closing_of_the_American_Mind https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Closing_of_the_American_Mi...
  • monoideism 6y ago
    I think pomo is responsible, along with a handful of other factors: clickbait journalism, dramatically increased echo chamber of journalists due to social media, and (perhaps most importantly), the changing values of Millenials. Regarding the latter, it's only when Millenials started moving up the career ladder at these organizations in the early 2010s that we saw the publications really change. And the insider reports from the NYTimes indicate the change in reporting is basically an outcome of generational conflict. Obviously, many on here are the exception, but in general, younger GenX, Millenials, and Zoomers were all financially screwed over, and they've (perhaps understandably) taken out their rage on society. Why so many have adopted a race-based identitarian outlook, instead of aiming for race-blind equality, I understand much less.
• idolaspecus 6y ago
  There's no modern Lapham because we don't "need" (quotes because I actually think we have a big problem here) one anymore. Lapham's role was as a representative of the learned readership at the institution. These days, we're our own representatives. It is quite trivial for me to curate a list of extremely interesting individuals who publish writing or podcasts or lectures or whatever. Now, the reason I quoted "need" above, what I think is a huge problem with the world today, is that by democratizing production we've done the opposite with consumption. It's super difficult to access high-quality information these days unless you're already fairly well educated and have the tools to filter the noise. I don't really know what to do about this.
• watwut 6y ago
  It is funny, because I read journalists complaining about exactly opposite. Journalism used to be a place where local non-elite people went. It did not required special education, but became more elite over time.
• matthewowen 6y ago
  I think you have this backwards. One of the big problems at the moment in news media is that a tiny number of papers have _so much more prestige_ than their competitors that its sucked the oxygen out of the industry: instead of (eg) Philadelphians reading the Inquirer, they read the Times, and so the Times can grow, and it's a self-reinforcing feedback loop. This is pretty bad for local news, which is bad because there are a lot of local issues in the US! It's important to have good newspapers in (eg) North Dakota because the state has a lot of power. It's also kinda ironic that you mentioned this on a thread about this article, because the author in question is the child of writers/academics/judges/lawyers, educated privately on the UWS, graduated summa cum laude from Yale where we wrote for "prestige" magazines, and then built his career through a bunch of lower prestige publications. He's an exact poster child for the NYTimes being near the top of the prestige chain!
  • keiferski 6y ago
    When I say prestige, I mean among the population at large. The average person in America no longer looks at the Times as a prestigious organization. A few decades ago, they did.
• doggodaddo78 6y ago
  NYT: the paper of "record." Regardless of past or modern quality, it seems kind of arrogant for a promulgater of copy to proclaim they have undisputed monopolies on truth and facts, doesn't it?
  • ternaryoperator 6y ago
    It's a term of art and doesn't have the meaning you attribute to it. Here's the definition from Wikipedia: "A newspaper of record is a major newspaper with large circulation whose editorial and news-gathering functions are considered authoritative." When you consider NYC's other news dailies (the NY Post and the Daily News), it would be hard to disagree that the NYT is the most authoritative.
    • logifail 6y ago
      > It's a term of art [..] "A newspaper of record is a major newspaper with large circulation whose editorial and news-gathering functions are considered authoritative." One definition of "authoritative" would be "able to be trusted as being accurate or true; reliable" I'm not sure how anyone could seriously believe that to be an appropriate way to describe the NYT (or indeed any of their major competitors). To be blunt: they're "accurate" and/or "true", except for the all the times when they aren't.
• doggodaddo78 6y ago
  One issue is that most deep thinkers who challenge the neoliberal, corporate order have been ostracized to dissident status: Ralph Nader, Chomsky, and Chris Hedges come to mind.
• Veen 6y ago
  I’d love to see what the linked article’s writer thinks of Lewis Lapham’s prose. I suspect he’d be quite confused.
• pradn 6y ago
  For erudite articles on everything from Tang Dynasty poetry to the international ransom insurance market, I recommend the New York Review of Books and the London Review of Books. Or, in general, any of the book reviews. They give assignments to gifted scholars and writers who take the books they "review" as starting points to go deep into all sorts of topics.
• Balgair 6y ago
  Aside: Oh Hitchens! There'l never be another like him. Every time I go back and read him, I get another take on the man and his messages; all not short enough, I'm afraid. Each revision tends to oscillate wildly for me. I loathe him and I love him, rarely not at the same time. Death, the artist, very slow; but you've heard that before. His nom de guerre (l'auteur?) still rings true: A drink-sodden ex-Trotskyist popinjay. Rest well.