I think that if newspapers are trying to take academic tone and content, it behooves them to also adopt some of the rigor that helps that pursuit. I too think

I think that if newspapers are trying to take academic tone and content, it behooves them to also adopt some of the rigor that helps that pursuit. I too think that deeper analysis is value-able, but when newspapers do that, they should up their game. If they are trying to present themselves as more academic or scientific, they need more citations and possibly a process akin to peer review (or even submitting a paper with underlying materials themselves to a journal if they are doing original work, as the NYT is claiming to have done here.)