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The New York Times to disband its sports department

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Re: The New York Times to disband its sports department

#21

Post by fullshark »

goodbyesf wrote: post #14
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.

Populist papers will be in front of paywalls.

Re: The New York Times to disband its sports department

#22

Post by snowwrestler »

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…

> 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.

The opposite is true, actually: these news services are incredibly, probably overly, sensitive to what stories are driving organic traffic and which are not. They all have multiple dashboards that track site traffic minute by minute and make editorial decisions on an hourly time scale. Specifically they rewrite headlines, metadata, ledes, and add/alter keywords within copy if a story seems to be underperforming. On a daily basis they make writing assignments based on this data.

Big news services can to some extent “push” stories at the beginning, but not for long, maybe a day or two at most. They’re so dependent on traffic for the business model, and so close to the edge of not making money, that they have be acutely aware and reactive to organic traffic patterns.

Re: The New York Times to disband its sports department

#23

Post by 72736379 »

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?

https://www.allsides.com/news-source/new-york-times https://www.allsides.com/news-source/new-york-times-opinion-...

Re: The New York Times to disband its sports department

#24

Post by gowld »

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?

There is no absolute definition of "left", nor absolute calibration.

At best, relative comparisons can be made.

Politics are controversial, but near universal consensus is that WSJ is right of NYT, and others are left and right of both respectively, and in between.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_York_Times#Accusations...

Re: The New York Times to disband its sports department

#25

Post by gowld »

goodbyesf wrote: post #14
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.

The establishment has left and right wings. You may have notices, for example, US Congress (and most others), which literally has seating in two parts, a left wing and right wing.

Re: The New York Times to disband its sports department

#26

Post by DaveExeter »

Analemma_ wrote: post #13
ahstilde wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's not it.

Newspapers used to have a monopoly on advertising, at least in the local area. Once they lost their monopoly they were no longer financially viable.

Re: The New York Times to disband its sports department

#27

Post by Kye »

willcipriano wrote: post #18
synetic wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

The Republican party is only right in the sense that they've gone over the edge, and the Democrats have chosen to stop short of it. We don't really have a left with meaningful power in the US unless you bulldoze the traditional meaning of left and build a shopping center over it. What we have is a nationalist party and a neoliberal party domestically. Every so often a member of one will realize this and move over to the party that aligns with their views. Both are nationalist when it comes to geopolitics.

Re: The New York Times to disband its sports department

#28

Post by spicymaki »

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?

There is no objective criterion on left vs. right leaning. These are all based on impressions. The only thing you can do is survey readers and ask if the NYT has a bias. It is pretty well acknowledged that NYT does have a left lean, but it is not on the extreme left. Another thing to note is that many argue what we call left in the US is closer to center right in Western Europe. Perhaps in a global sense it is at the center.

Re: The New York Times to disband its sports department

#29

Post by UtopiaPunk »

gowld wrote: post #25
goodbyesf wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

The establishment has left and right wings. You may have notices, for example, US Congress (and most others), which literally has seating in two parts, a left wing and right wing.

Both sides of established power uphold the capitalist status quo. While they'll fight over culture war nonsense, they agree more often than not. As it stands, the USA cannot build things like a universal healthcare system or significantly reduce military spending, because the most powerful people in the USA benefit from the status quo (and those in Congress listen to those powerful people more than the rest of us, giving them more power).

So, sure, Congress and media outlets have a left and right, but they largely serve as boundaries as to what is considered the "acceptable" range of ideas.

Noam Chomsky explores the idea well in Manufacturing Consent (both in the book and in the documentary).

Re: The New York Times to disband its sports department

#30

Post by [deleted] »

fullshark wrote: post #19
synetic wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

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