A.G. Sulzberger, the NYT Publisher, was quoted (this week), in Politico, as saying the following:
“We are not saying that this (Biden’s age) is the same as Trump’s five court cases or that they are even,” Sulzberger said in the interview. “They are different. But they are both true, and the public needs to know both those things. And if you are hyping up one side or downplaying the other, no side has a reason to trust you in the long run.”
The Politico quote actually comes from a long interview Sulzberger did with the Reuters institute. It’s worth reading. However, the line at the end stuck out to me.
if you are hyping up one side or downplaying the other, no side has a reason to trust you in the long run.”
The Times wants to be trusted by “both sides” in power rather than do great journalism and opinion that serves its 10 million readers. The Times own data found that more than 95% of Times subscribers described themselves as Democrats or independents, and a vast majority of them believed the Times was also liberal.
James Bennet reveals all
James Bennet, who was fired as the NY Times Opinion Editor because he decided to run an op-ed by Tom Cotton calling to send troops out to quell rioting protestors following the murder of George Floyd, wrote the following in the Economist this last December.
Like me, Baquet seemed taken aback by the criticism that Times readers shouldn’t hear what Cotton had to say. Cotton had a lot of influence with the White House, Baquet noted, and he could well be making his argument directly to the president, Donald Trump. Readers should know about it. Cotton was also a possible future contender for the White House himself, Baquet added. And, besides, Cotton was far from alone: lots of Americans agreed with him—most of them, according to some polls. “Are we truly so precious?” Baquet asked again, with a note of wonder and frustration.
Bennet's piece is worth reading for other insights into the Times but, fair warning, it is 14,000 words long (and self-aggrandizing).
Sulzberger, according to Bennet, concurred with this reasoning at the time, before he fired him.
The publisher, A.G. Sulzberger, who was about two years into the job, understood why we’d published the op-ed. He had some criticisms about packaging; he said the editors should add links to other op-eds we’d published with a different view. But he’d emailed me that afternoon, saying: “I get and support the reason for including the piece,” because, he thought, Cotton’s view had the support of the White House as well as a majority of the Senate.
Bennet, Baquet, and Sulzberger said they believed that the NYT’s readers “needed” to see and read the piece by Cotton in the New York Times because he had the ear of Trump. Huh? How would this possibly serve the NYT's readers?
What is going on The NY Times? — A Theory
I've long puzzled over the NY Times' increasingly destructive role in our politics over the last two decades. I was a loyal and happy reader. But, like many at Kos, I've largely stopped reading the Times. But, I (and we) cannot escape the Times' influence. Friends and family constantly share pieces announcing that Biden will lose and OMG Trump will win, etc.
Why does the Times do what they do? My suspicion, based on the above, is that the NY Times editors are focused on maintaining and realizing their perceived power in politics and culture. So, they constantly work to remain a legitimate arbiter of what matters with the right (because they get vilified or ignored by right-wing pols and influencers which they can't stand) and attack the left to force it to keep the Times pre-eminent.
The Times still does good journalism but too often the Grey Lady writes and reports through the lens of US politics (rather than simply covering the issue at hand). To me, the best example of this is the paper's Ukraine coverage which has been almost entirely focused on the US political debate over the war rather than the war itself. The NYT has missed (and gotten wrong) many of the major developments of the conflict as a result. I, like many here, increasingly relied on the Ukraine coverage at DKos which has been so much better than the coverage at the Times (just with Markos, Mark, and a few others). It's absurd given the disparity in resources.
The Times model makes no sense
The Times conceit — that they need to be the paper for both sides of the political conflict — is outmoded and makes no sense.
No Republican with any standing or influence reads or listens to or cites any of the Times “GOP” columnists. Ross Douthat, Bret Stephens and David Brooks are completely irrelevant to the right and the left. So, what is point of publishing these columns? What progressive Times reader wants to hear what these Yahoos say? The only purpose, I think?, is so the Times leadership can say (“See! We publish conservatives too. We are NOT a liberal paper.”)
Think about how papers in the UK work. The Guardian is a liberal and great newspaper and features liberal columnists. The Telegraph is a conservative and great newspaper and features conservative columnists.
And then there is the constant progressive concern trolling by the Times. Ezra Klein’s piece. The Biden front page age piece quoting — get this — a leadership coach! I had two — nervous — family members cite this piece straight back to me. How does this serve the readership? How is this journalism?
The solution - us
I don't think the traditional modes of shaming the Times work. They just don't care (as you can see from reading the longer piece in Reuters about Sulzberger). They don't care about advertiser boycotts, LTEs, and more.
But, they do care about their subscribers - a lot Bennet also wrote this in his piece
It became one of Dean Baquet’s frequent mordant jokes that he missed the old advertising-based business model, because, compared with subscribers, advertisers felt so much less sense of ownership over the journalism. I recall his astonishment, fairly early in the Trump administration, after Times reporters conducted an interview with Trump. Subscribers were angry about the questions the Times had asked. It was as if they’d only be satisfied, Baquet said, if the reporters leaped across the desk and tried to wring the president’s neck. The Times was slow to break it to its readers that there was less to Trump’s ties to Russia than they were hoping, and more to Hunter Biden’s laptop, that Trump might be right that covid came from a Chinese lab, that masks were not always effective against the virus, that shutting down schools for many months was a bad idea.
What this quote reveals and is confirmed elsewhere is that The New York Times is now completely dependent on its subscribers (us) for its business. Look at the chart below. Almost half of the
company’s revenue — $1 billion — comes from the subscribers.
I heard the Times CEO, Meredith Kopit Levien, on the Pivot podcast and it became clear that a primary focus of the company executives is to hang on (and to monetize) its 10 million subscribers. They are very worried about subscriber engagement. And, they are incredibly sensitive to their wants and desires (because the company is so dependent on this revenue).
Time to band together and become the boss
In other, words, we - the Time's overwhelming progressive subscribers - are in reality their bosses. They work for us. It's ridiculous, consequently, that the Times treats its readership with such disdain and provides such poor journalism and service to its subscribers. It needs to stop.
The Times should be a great newspaper that focuses on top-level journalism and not on maintaining the political power and elite standing of its editors and leaders. There is no reason why they can't do this. The current approach of Times editors does not serve the paper's business or its mission.
We just need to find a way to organize and assert our power as subscribers. I have ideas on how to do this but am eager to find out what the Kos community thinks.