An Arrest in Canada Casts a Shadow on a New York Times Star, and the Times

I always thought of journos as search engine bots. Digging up facts. Contributing to the quality of the index of all knowledge.

Today the index has turned to shit cause Google/Facebook/Twitter have decided to reward them not for index quality but for index engagement.

The reward/pain mechanism has to change.

This is no accident. Between 2007 and 2011, the NYT’s revenue fell by half. It’s only recovered a bit since then. A lot of the paper’s senior reporters are gone, replaced by younger reporters who just aren’t very good. Bloomberg is pretty good these days, so is the Financial Times. I also have to give a shout-out to Jacobin. I’m just about the opposite of their demographic ideologically, but their willingness to acknowledge facts contrary to their narrative is unmatched. I’m also a huge fan of Vox’s podcasts. The online presence is mostly trash, but Ezra Klein, Matt Yglesias, and Jane Coaston are some of the most serious and thoughtful people in journalism right now.

All you need to do is look at the nytimes web site front page. It's nearly all opinion pieces, even the "news" pieces.

There are many forms of journalism. Hunter S. Thompson with his Gonzo style violated about every norm of the craft but he was right, as he said in his obituary of Nixon

"Some people will say that words like scum and rotten are wrong for Objective Journalism -- which is true, but they miss the point. It was the built-in blind spots of the Objective rules and dogma that allowed Nixon to slither into the White House in the first place. He looked so good on paper that you could almost vote for him sight unseen. He seemed so all-American, so much like Horatio Alger, that he was able to slip through the cracks of Objective Journalism. You had to get Subjective to see Nixon clearly, and the shock of recognition was often painful."

The problem isn't that journalists create narratives, narratives are a way to make sense of the world, we're not data absorbing automatons. The issue with the NYT is that the writers don't have any sense for good narrative.

It's all the same kind of sentimental, urban, millenial kitsch you get from people that went straight from their upper middle-class education into blogging, journalism and podcasting, and it produces the kind of tepid stuff that has come from the times over recent years.

> You'd expect journalists to give you facts, instead their focus is on creating emotion through narrative, while rooting for their story, downplaying inconvenient facts.

Factual news looks like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events. People don't want to read that, and journalists must to some degree write what people want to read. It's quite the dilemma.

It is sad.

The NYT used to be a great paper. They've become an opinion-driven organization that starts a project with a pre-drawn conclusion, then starts gathering facts that support the end result. Or so it seems.

I've found the complete opposite to be true most of the time.

"(Mr. Baquet and Mr. Kahn, I should note here, are my boss’s boss’s boss and my boss’s boss, respectively, and my writing about The Times while on its payroll brings with it all sorts of potential conflicts of interest and is generally a bit of a nightmare.)"

A telling quote from the article. Imagine being given this assignment. A writer would need to research this and report on it with utmost care and delicacy. Being firm enough in your findings to report the truth, but doing so in a way that doesn't burn the place to the ground. Interesting balancing act.

Margaret Sullivan should be made the new editor in chief of the NYT after Baquet retires in 2021. I’m utterly appalled by what he’s presided over during the last six years.

> Our responsibility is to empower all of those watchdogs, and to listen to them...

Naturally they had to block critics like nyttypos on Twitter. Watchdogs for copyediting is obviously going too far.

Here's an article on the same story from the Washington Post:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/10/09/new-york-...

This story gets to the main point a lot faster, and is somewhat more critical of the Times.

I think this is something people no longer seem to understand about journalism that’s generally speaking symptomatic of the growing polarization and tribalism in modern thought (if you could call it that).

People seem to think that every news outlet is red or blue, and furthermore that the journalists have absolutely no autonomy. This is not true. Part of the reason the Times is a reputable source is because they publish things that tow the red/blue line along with self criticism and corrections like this....unfortunately people can’t stomach nuance and alternative view points, just consider the outrage the Times faced a few moths ago for publishing the (admittedly stupid) opinion of a republican politician who was advocating for federal response to the Gerorge Floyd protests.

Inability to have rational argument and not get immediately heated in the face of an opposite opinion is a major flaw of proponents of both the right and left....the one thing that vindicates the left in America is that its at least the arguably more humanitarian and ethical side.

The internet helps us all live in our own personal realities and not have to ever deign to have a civil conversation with someone who disagrees with us.

Real newspapers can criticize and investigate themselves. The Los Angeles Times recently ran a series on racism in its newsroom, both historically and today. And that was after an article detailing staff writer who plagiarized his past stories as if they were current.

A news organization which issues retractions and mea culpas is trustworthy, one that cannot reflect on itself may be propaganda or worse.

Reminds me of the journalist Scott Templeton in The Wire season 5. (Just watched that show again and it's top of mind). Incredibly ambitious reporter who sensationalizes stories, bends and breaks the rules, and is supported by upper management at every turn. All while his editor knows he's full of shit.

I listened to this podcast, it didn't really add that much and one of the hosts seems to think the middle east was a peaceful place until the Americans showed up, as in she says there was no ISIS before America destabilized the region.

Nice spin, but in what sense does the NYT have a good reputation?

"My reporting suggests that she was delivering what the senior-most leaders of the news organization asked for, with their support." Scathing indeed.

Desperation to remain relevant.

What leads you to this conclusion?

I find stories about fraudulent journalists fascinating, but despite my interest in the topic I only see big stories about journalistic misconduct once a year or so, whereas scandals involving politicians, television/movie execs, and tech seem to surface at least every couple of months. Police misconduct has sparked months of protests.