Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The New York Times to disband its sports department

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 80 posts

Re: The New York Times to disband its sports department

#11

Post by FollowingTheDao »

sokoloff wrote: post #7
Pet_Ant wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with modern capitalism is that it doesn't actually incentivise the production of value, but of monetization. News, _especially_ investigative journalism, produces value but is hard to have a moat around and monetise (this is true too of basic science). Whereas Twitter or Facebook or Reddit really don't provide much that a rival couldn't except for that fact that they already exist and people use them and…

Are Twitter and Reddit actually good at monetizing? Both have utility, but I don't think of either as particularly successful on the financial aspect of their businesses.

They were looking good for monetizing, until the users, the ones who make the platforms valuable, screwed it up for them.

Re: The New York Times to disband its sports department

#12

Post by synetic »

fullshark wrote: post #2

Seems like there will inevitably end up being only two national news papers behind paywalls, The left leaning NY times, and the right leaning WSJ. I guess the Post as Bezos's plaything might survive for a while but what's the value add going to be v. the Times? Edit: I bring this up not to derail the thread, but because the Athletic is a national sports news play, seems like the NY Times's end goal is to be the natio…

What is the definition of left leaning as it pertains to a newspaper? Is this an impression you have or is there a roughly objective criterion that the NYT meets to called left leaning?

Re: The New York Times to disband its sports department

#13

Post by Analemma_ »

ahstilde wrote: post #5
fullshark wrote: post #2

Seems like there will inevitably end up being only two national news papers behind paywalls, The left leaning NY times, and the right leaning WSJ. I guess the Post as Bezos's plaything might survive for a while but what's the value add going to be v. the Times? Edit: I bring this up not to derail the thread, but because the Athletic is a national sports news play, seems like the NY Times's end goal is to be the natio…

why is that inevitable?

Most markets with zero distribution and switching costs are winner-take-all. The only reason newspapers were regional to begin with was that it cost a lot of money to print and ship them, once the Internet made that stop being true, the natural equilibrium was toward only a few large papers and the rest dying off.

Re: The New York Times to disband its sports department

#14

Post by goodbyesf »

fullshark wrote: post #2

Seems like there will inevitably end up being only two national news papers behind paywalls, The left leaning NY times, and the right leaning WSJ. I guess the Post as Bezos's plaything might survive for a while but what's the value add going to be v. the Times? Edit: I bring this up not to derail the thread, but because the Athletic is a national sports news play, seems like the NY Times's end goal is to be the natio…

> The left leaning NY times, and the right leaning WSJ

Neither are left or right. They are both serve the interest of the same ambidextrous elite.

Also, in the internet era, all newspapers are 'national' ( or even 'international' ) since they are all equally accessible by the population via their news feeds. All news essentially has national or global distribution now.

Re: The New York Times to disband its sports department

#15

Post by deepsquirrelnet »

delfinom wrote: post #4
fullshark wrote: post #2

Seems like there will inevitably end up being only two national news papers behind paywalls, The left leaning NY times, and the right leaning WSJ. I guess the Post as Bezos's plaything might survive for a while but what's the value add going to be v. the Times? Edit: I bring this up not to derail the thread, but because the Athletic is a national sports news play, seems like the NY Times's end goal is to be the natio…

You know, I subscribe to the NYT but they've been pushing more and more opinion articles to the top that seem to really be about gaslighting their subscribers. Recent example, there was a opinion piece about "how people were obsessed with the rich people in the sub but not the migrants in the mediterranean" roughly. You know, completely gaslighting the fact that the readers had zero say in the coverage decisions of t…

> Recent example, there was a opinion piece about "how people were obsessed with the rich people in the sub but not the migrants in the mediterranean" roughly. You know, completely gaslighting the fact that the readers had zero say in the coverage decisions of the NYTimes and other outlets to run the Titan sub coverage so incessantly.

When I was a kid, I used to play with my older cousins at family events. They were in high school and in wrestling programs, much bigger and stronger than me.

Inevitably in my case, and probably all across family events in America, our play eventually devolved into the “stop hitting yourself” game.

Seems that’s where we’re at now.

Re: The New York Times to disband its sports department

#16

Post by DiggyJohnson »

synetic wrote: post #12
fullshark wrote: post #2

Seems like there will inevitably end up being only two national news papers behind paywalls, The left leaning NY times, and the right leaning WSJ. I guess the Post as Bezos's plaything might survive for a while but what's the value add going to be v. the Times? Edit: I bring this up not to derail the thread, but because the Athletic is a national sports news play, seems like the NY Times's end goal is to be the natio…

What is the definition of left leaning as it pertains to a newspaper? Is this an impression you have or is there a roughly objective criterion that the NYT meets to called left leaning?

That's always going to be a subjective metric, but the general consensus, including my own perspective, is that NYT is a traditionally liberal (so slightly left leaning) paper.

Re: The New York Times to disband its sports department

#17

Post by afavour »

Pet_Ant wrote: post #3
fullshark wrote: post #2

Seems like there will inevitably end up being only two national news papers behind paywalls, The left leaning NY times, and the right leaning WSJ. I guess the Post as Bezos's plaything might survive for a while but what's the value add going to be v. the Times? Edit: I bring this up not to derail the thread, but because the Athletic is a national sports news play, seems like the NY Times's end goal is to be the natio…

The problem with modern capitalism is that it doesn't actually incentivise the production of value, but of monetization. News, _especially_ investigative journalism, produces value but is hard to have a moat around and monetise (this is true too of basic science). Whereas Twitter or Facebook or Reddit really don't provide much that a rival couldn't except for that fact that they already exist and people use them and…

I've always assumed that's why NYT has spent a ton of money building out its cooking and gaming verticals (including buying Wordle). They can basically subsidize the news operation/the bundle can bring in more readers than news would alone.

FWIW this isn't a modern phenomenon: until the internet came along hard news was heavily subsidized by classified ads.

Re: The New York Times to disband its sports department

#18

Post by willcipriano »

synetic wrote: post #12
fullshark wrote: post #2

Seems like there will inevitably end up being only two national news papers behind paywalls, The left leaning NY times, and the right leaning WSJ. I guess the Post as Bezos's plaything might survive for a while but what's the value add going to be v. the Times? Edit: I bring this up not to derail the thread, but because the Athletic is a national sports news play, seems like the NY Times's end goal is to be the natio…

What is the definition of left leaning as it pertains to a newspaper? Is this an impression you have or is there a roughly objective criterion that the NYT meets to called left leaning?

The most recent Republican candidate they endorsed for president was Dwight D. Eisenhower.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_presid...

Re: The New York Times to disband its sports department

#19

Post by fullshark »

synetic wrote: post #12
fullshark wrote: post #2

Seems like there will inevitably end up being only two national news papers behind paywalls, The left leaning NY times, and the right leaning WSJ. I guess the Post as Bezos's plaything might survive for a while but what's the value add going to be v. the Times? Edit: I bring this up not to derail the thread, but because the Athletic is a national sports news play, seems like the NY Times's end goal is to be the natio…

What is the definition of left leaning as it pertains to a newspaper? Is this an impression you have or is there a roughly objective criterion that the NYT meets to called left leaning?

Is an impression I have mostly. Do you really want to debate if the NY times is left leaning right now? I know of no objective criterion, maybe someone came up with one based on the editorial staff or bag or words, or number of news articles about certain topics labeled left v. right. But feel free to reject the premise I guess, seems fairly self-evident if you've paid any attention to what they've been writing at the very least post Trump.

Re: The New York Times to disband its sports department

#20

Post by no_wizard »

Pet_Ant wrote: post #3
fullshark wrote: post #2

Seems like there will inevitably end up being only two national news papers behind paywalls, The left leaning NY times, and the right leaning WSJ. I guess the Post as Bezos's plaything might survive for a while but what's the value add going to be v. the Times? Edit: I bring this up not to derail the thread, but because the Athletic is a national sports news play, seems like the NY Times's end goal is to be the natio…

The problem with modern capitalism is that it doesn't actually incentivise the production of value, but of monetization. News, _especially_ investigative journalism, produces value but is hard to have a moat around and monetise (this is true too of basic science). Whereas Twitter or Facebook or Reddit really don't provide much that a rival couldn't except for that fact that they already exist and people use them and…

How is Threads not a counter argument? Its clearly a counter argument. Twitter has shown great weakness, and something good is coming in, with the marketing muscle and thoughtful support of certain features that are well positioned, breaking Twitters moat.

I suspect if Twitter wasn't perceived as going "down hill" in the first place, Threads wouldn't exist.

Post reply on HN