5 ms·

This is also my suspicion, although I've heard that NYT's subscriptions are doing as well as they've ever done and while I wouldn't describe NYT's journalism as

This is also my suspicion, although I've heard that NYT's subscriptions are doing as well as they've ever done and while I wouldn't describe NYT's journalism as "click-bait", they've certainly engaged in more than their share of overt ideological propagandism (which isn't unique to them, but part of a landscape shift away from aspirationally objective reporting).

busterarm 5y ago
The best sign of click bait is posting obviously false, inflammatory articles and then silently putting out a retraction days later after the clicks have come in. The NYT is just as guilty of this as anyone else today.
- raxxorrax 5y ago
  Perhaps the avid reader would say that they are most disappointed in papers like the NYT. You cannot really be disappointed by FOX or CNN. Different medium, but I think it still applies.
- throwaway894345 5y ago
  I think we have different notions of "clickbait". Personally I think NYT's particular brand of dishonesty is a bit more subtle than what I normally think of as "clickbait", but I won't argue the point. They are certainly and frequently guilty of publishing overt falsehoods and then quietly retracting (or even stealth-editing) days or weeks later.
  - themitigating 5y ago
    Did they publish falsehoods knowingly? Every news source is going to make mistakes and retracting the story is normal.
    - throwaway894345 5y ago
      Yes. The example that springs to mind (and I get downvoted without explanation every time I mention this, so goodbye Internet Points) was the Covington Catholic affair--the still photo of the kid in a MAGA hat apparently smugly smirking at a Native American elder (the media reported that he was a Vietnam veteran which was an outright falsehood). The whole of the media developed the same narrative around the still photo which was directly contradicted by a widely-circulated, publicly available 2 hour video. The narrative was that some racist white kids disrespected a Native American elder while the 2 hour video makes it clear that kids had been subjected to a lengthy racist and homophobic tirade.
      - snowron6 5y ago
        I checked their story[1] on the incident you mentioned, and the first paragraph is: >Interviews and additional video footage have offered a fuller picture of what happened in this encounter, including the context that the Native American man approached the students amid broader tensions outside the Lincoln Memorial. and then a link to an article from the very next day[2] explaining what happened in fuller detail after more videos came out. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/19/us/covington-catholic-high-school-nathan-phillips.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/19/us/covington-catholic-hig... [2]https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/20/us/nathan-phillips-covington.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/20/us/nathan-phillips-coving...
        throwaway894345 5y ago
        I'm not sure what point you're making. Your observations are all consistent with the "overt falsehood followed by quiet retraction" claim. Are you quibbling about "days later" versus "day later" with respect to the retraction? > I checked their story[1] on the incident you mentioned, and the first paragraph is: That was added later, hence the italics.
qsort 5y ago
> overt ideological propagandism As an outsider watching from across the ocean, the 2016 election (the race itself and its media coverage, I'm not talking about the result) really hurt you guys. The NYT still does world-class journalism, but not even a paper with that kind of rock-solid journalistic tradition fully recovered from the moralistic crusade it had become. I don't know if that's a bias of my own (I'm open to hear a counterpoint!), but 2016 really stands out as an inflection point in my mind.
- throwaway894345 5y ago
  I share your perspective about a ~2016 inflection point, but the cracks were showing even earlier. I remember in ~2014 things like the Michael Brown shooting coverage across the board parroted activists' talking points which were invariably and conclusively disproven by the evidence (MB wasn't shot in the back as he ran away, etc). This isn't a wider commentary on BLM, although I think BLM coverage provides a really interesting perspective on media coverage. This is all to say that the phenomenon isn't fully explained by Trump, although I think the phenomenon really accelerated as a result of Trump (I'm not positing a causal relationship, if I had to speculate I'd guess it's an intense feedback loop).
  - freedomben 5y ago
    From some articles I've read[1], and discussions I've had (aka mostly anecdata) I really think that it's because views among journalists are changing. They view "just the facts" as potentially misleading because just the facts can lead to incorrect conclusions. Adding in color words that have a touch of opinion/speculation in them is ok if it helps the reader to reach the correct conclusion. Tis is also coupled with a strong sense of moral obligation on the part of journalists to lead people to the right conclusions. [1] https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/11/inside-the-new-york-times-heated-reckoning-with-itself.html https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/11/inside-the-new-york-...
    - AnimalMuppet 5y ago
      But that requires that the journalist knows what the right conclusions are. They're skeptical about other peoples' claims; they're not nearly skeptical enough about their own positions.
thr0wawayf00 5y ago
This is all true, but the key point here is that NYT is one of, if not the most, valuable brand in US print media. They had the money to hire a world-class engineering team to pioneer the print news experience online (the creator of D3js and Svelte have both held engineering positions there), but the vast majority of print publications did not. It's not really accurate to extrapolate NYT's digital success across print media as a whole.

busterarm 5y ago

The best sign of click bait is posting obviously false, inflammatory articles and then silently putting out a retraction days later after the clicks have come in. The NYT is just as guilty of this as anyone else today.

raxxorrax 5y ago
Perhaps the avid reader would say that they are most disappointed in papers like the NYT. You cannot really be disappointed by FOX or CNN. Different medium, but I think it still applies.
throwaway894345 5y ago
I think we have different notions of "clickbait". Personally I think NYT's particular brand of dishonesty is a bit more subtle than what I normally think of as "clickbait", but I won't argue the point. They are certainly and frequently guilty of publishing overt falsehoods and then quietly retracting (or even stealth-editing) days or weeks later.
- themitigating 5y ago
  Did they publish falsehoods knowingly? Every news source is going to make mistakes and retracting the story is normal.
  - throwaway894345 5y ago
    Yes. The example that springs to mind (and I get downvoted without explanation every time I mention this, so goodbye Internet Points) was the Covington Catholic affair--the still photo of the kid in a MAGA hat apparently smugly smirking at a Native American elder (the media reported that he was a Vietnam veteran which was an outright falsehood). The whole of the media developed the same narrative around the still photo which was directly contradicted by a widely-circulated, publicly available 2 hour video. The narrative was that some racist white kids disrespected a Native American elder while the 2 hour video makes it clear that kids had been subjected to a lengthy racist and homophobic tirade.
    - snowron6 5y ago
      I checked their story[1] on the incident you mentioned, and the first paragraph is: >Interviews and additional video footage have offered a fuller picture of what happened in this encounter, including the context that the Native American man approached the students amid broader tensions outside the Lincoln Memorial. and then a link to an article from the very next day[2] explaining what happened in fuller detail after more videos came out. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/19/us/covington-catholic-high-school-nathan-phillips.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/19/us/covington-catholic-hig... [2]https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/20/us/nathan-phillips-covington.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/20/us/nathan-phillips-coving...
      - throwaway894345 5y ago
        I'm not sure what point you're making. Your observations are all consistent with the "overt falsehood followed by quiet retraction" claim. Are you quibbling about "days later" versus "day later" with respect to the retraction? > I checked their story[1] on the incident you mentioned, and the first paragraph is: That was added later, hence the italics.

qsort 5y ago

> overt ideological propagandism As an outsider watching from across the ocean, the 2016 election (the race itself and its media coverage, I'm not talking about the result) really hurt you guys. The NYT still does world-class journalism, but not even a paper with that kind of rock-solid journalistic tradition fully recovered from the moralistic crusade it had become. I don't know if that's a bias of my own (I'm open to hear a counterpoint!), but 2016 really stands out as an inflection point in my mind.

throwaway894345 5y ago
I share your perspective about a ~2016 inflection point, but the cracks were showing even earlier. I remember in ~2014 things like the Michael Brown shooting coverage across the board parroted activists' talking points which were invariably and conclusively disproven by the evidence (MB wasn't shot in the back as he ran away, etc). This isn't a wider commentary on BLM, although I think BLM coverage provides a really interesting perspective on media coverage. This is all to say that the phenomenon isn't fully explained by Trump, although I think the phenomenon really accelerated as a result of Trump (I'm not positing a causal relationship, if I had to speculate I'd guess it's an intense feedback loop).
- freedomben 5y ago
  From some articles I've read[1], and discussions I've had (aka mostly anecdata) I really think that it's because views among journalists are changing. They view "just the facts" as potentially misleading because just the facts can lead to incorrect conclusions. Adding in color words that have a touch of opinion/speculation in them is ok if it helps the reader to reach the correct conclusion. Tis is also coupled with a strong sense of moral obligation on the part of journalists to lead people to the right conclusions. [1] https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/11/inside-the-new-york-times-heated-reckoning-with-itself.html https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/11/inside-the-new-york-...
  - AnimalMuppet 5y ago
    But that requires that the journalist knows what the right conclusions are. They're skeptical about other peoples' claims; they're not nearly skeptical enough about their own positions.

thr0wawayf00 5y ago

This is all true, but the key point here is that NYT is one of, if not the most, valuable brand in US print media. They had the money to hire a world-class engineering team to pioneer the print news experience online (the creator of D3js and Svelte have both held engineering positions there), but the vast majority of print publications did not. It's not really accurate to extrapolate NYT's digital success across print media as a whole.