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Comment by dogline | Hacker News Reader

I've been looking for a new source of news, now that Reddit, et.al. have been going weird. I've subscribed to the Washington Post for a bit now, even though I'm on the West Coast.

This is the sort of thing the NY Times has been pushing lately, which seems to be obviously some sort of weird re-writing of history for several topics. It's not the mainstream topics, but it is enough to raise up alarm bells and wonder what's pushing this. All of the articles on Netflix "The Bear" falls on the same thing, and they're pushed as front page news/promotions.

I do like a top word-game, and NYTimes is the pinnical. But, it seems like they're obviously pushing something, not sure what. I don't think all major news sites are like that, but maybe they are.

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I think there's two things going on here. First, there's a phenomenon wherein people, many of them journalists, don't know or care about anything that happened more than about five years ago. They live in the moment, unmoored from any historical perspective and immune to books, encyclopedias, archives, and anything that contains information about things Before. I don't know if this is something that's increasing; it seems that way to me, but it may be that I'm starting to get old enough that I remember a bunch of things first-hand that younger people don't know or care about.

The second is that the core audience for the New York Times is rich Manhattan assholes, and there's sort of a bread-and-butter Times article that's basically "Hey, this rich asshole who makes the world a worse place every second he continues to draw breath is actually a complex nuanced person for reasons we will not adequately explain, so maybe you, Rich Manhattan Asshole, also have redeeming qualities and you should feel better about yourself and keep buying our newspaper".

> obviously some sort of weird re-writing of history

Might this not be a way to get people to accept the reality that the view of reality to which we have been exposed since birth is asymptotically approaching 100% phony, e.g. euphemism, puffery, imaginative vacuity and partial truths at best, paid-for praise, publicity, fraud, BS, deceit, whole cloth hokum and honey-fugling the norm, with every successful persona, product, purveyor and position diligently designed and manifested to be taken up by a specific audience, and to thrive among the myths already held dear by that audience? The NY Times is a media company that has reinvented itself to survive, dedicated to the proposition that survival is the sine qua non of meaning. The facts are not as important as the meaning, and the modern thoughtful reader, particularly the sophisticated reader of the NY Times, engages the text, imagining and constructing their own meaning. Facts are the new adverbs -- to be used cautiously and sparingly, more for distraction or inspiration than for navigation or inference.

I like your list, but it's also very depressing. Can't say it's wrong though.

I would suggest that perhaps you are not looking for news, rather entertaining, thoughtful writing. Maybe something like Lapham's quarterly, and other literary focused publications would scratch that itch? I have realised how much nonsense masquerades as news since using boring report (https://www.boringreport.org/app) but YMMV.

That's an interesting idea, and seems like a good implementation. I'll play with it.

Weekend NYT loves these long contrarian pieces.

Think of it as fodder for tiresome brunchers to annoy their companions with.

“I was reading this article about Uri Geller, and it turns out that few people know spoon bending was really part of the deep essence of his magic act…”

(I too prefer WaPo, and LA Times - also a west coaster.)

I dropped my NY Times subscription about 3 years back, also in preference to WashPo. Haven't looked back, still pay for the NYT Crossword app.

The Atlantic sometimes has amazing historical articles

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