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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

#31

Post by theironhammer »

DiggyJohnson wrote: post #16
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?

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.

Left on Identity politics, right on economics.

In USA it's all neoliberalism. There is really no Left.

Re: The New York Times to disband its sports department

#32

Post by theironhammer »

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…

It's only left in the sense of left of the New York Post or the Republican Party.

In short, NYT is only "left of" hard right wing.

Re: The New York Times to disband its sports department

#33

Post by UtopiaPunk »

spicymaki wrote: post #28
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?

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…

Agreed. I'd also emphasize that "center" is not synonymous with "neutral." Which is fine, politics cannot be neutral, but sometimes I see people clinging to the idea of the center as something virtuous or good in and of itself. The center is relative because it sits between whatever the left and right is, and those two points vary. Like to your point, I would say the politics of the USA has shifted to the right over the last several decades.

Re: The New York Times to disband its sports department

#34

Post by orwin »

DiggyJohnson wrote: post #16
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?

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.

And to most Europeans, liberals are center-right. Center-left is socdem and part of the green (the bicycle part), then you have socialists/radical greens (both part of the 'radical left' but still like or at least tolerate representative democracy, they mostly want technical solutions for 'better vote'), then you have the far left/revolutionary left, two branches, one based on trotskism, one on anarchism, mostly Jaques Decoeur, Emma Goldman as an ideological pivot from 'regular' Marxism

Re: The New York Times to disband its sports department

#35

Post by tivert »

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, I subscribe to the NYT but they've been pushing more and more opinion articles to the top...

Yeah. Recently I've noticed they've promoted "Opinion" over "World" in their app. World News used to be the second section after "Most Popular"; now it's 3rd, after "Games" and "Opinion. IMHO, it's a bad sign. One of the main reasons I subscribed to them was I liked their in-depth coverage of world news, specifically China, but that's gotten noticeably worse. Maybe Ukraine has sucked up all their budget for that (though for little good, IMHO those stories haven't been very informative or interesting for the last several months).

> ...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 the NYTimes and other outlets to run the Titan sub coverage so incessantly.

I'm not sure if that's gaslighting so much as an appeal to their subscriber's smugness and outrage. I kind of feel they have a lot of subscribers who'd like to be outraged over something like that. And also feel like they'd be happy to oblige.

Re: The New York Times to disband its sports department

#36

Post by ramraj07 »

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…

From Outside of this weird polarization/persecution fetish bubble a lot of Americans seem to be in, the nytimes seems to be doing a decent job trying to be centrist with a left tinge. If it looks too leftist, consider for a moment that you might be the one who’s starting to fall too far off on the right end.

I think the pandemic played a big number on entitled people suddenly being asked to do things out of their choice and obey rules everyone else is subjected to, and polarize them against socialist ideals than before.

Re: The New York Times to disband its sports department

#37

Post by tivert »

The meat:

> The New York Times said on Monday that it would disband its sports department and rely on coverage of teams and games from its website The Athletic, both online and in print.

> ...

> The shuttering of the sports desk, which has more than 35 journalists and editors, is a major shift for The Times. The department’s coverage of games, athletes and team owners, and its Sports of the Times column in particular, were once a pillar of American sports journalism. The section covered the major moments and personalities of the last century of American sports, including Muhammad Ali, the birth of free agency, George Steinbrenner, the Williams sisters, Tiger Woods, steroids in baseball and the deadly effects of concussions in the National Football League.

> The move represents a further integration into the newsroom of The Athletic, which The Times bought in January 2022 for $550 million, adding a publication that had some 400 journalists covering more than 200 professional sports teams. It publishes about 150 articles each day.

> The staff of The Athletic will now provide the bulk of the coverage of sporting events, athletes and leagues for Times readers and, for the first time, articles from The Athletic will appear in The Times’s print newspaper. Online access to The Athletic, which is operated separately from the Times newsroom, is included for those who subscribe to one or more of The Times’s bundle of products.

> ...

> When The Times bought The Athletic, executives said the deal would help the company appeal to a broader audience. They added it to a subscription bundle that includes the main Times news site as well as Cooking, the Wirecutter product review service and Games.

> ...

> In recent years, with the rise of digital media, The Times’s sports department began to downsize, just as many other national and local newspapers did. The section lost its stand-alone daily print section. Not every local team was assigned a beat reporter. Box scores disappeared.

Besides the organization changes, the main effect of this seems like it will push sports coverage out of the basic subscription level ($17/month) and into higher-tier plan ($25/month).

Re: The New York Times to disband its sports department

#38

Post by Pet_Ant »

no_wizard wrote: post #20
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…

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.

Threads is not a counter-argument because it's only working because it has Meta/FaceBook/Instagram and their existing network backing. It's not an unknown player simply offering a better mousetrap.

Re: The New York Times to disband its sports department

#39

Post by gjsman-1000 »

ramraj07 wrote: post #36
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…

From Outside of this weird polarization/persecution fetish bubble a lot of Americans seem to be in, the nytimes seems to be doing a decent job trying to be centrist with a left tinge. If it looks too leftist, consider for a moment that you might be the one who’s starting to fall too far off on the right end. I think the pandemic played a big number on entitled people suddenly being asked to do things out of their cho…

> consider for a moment that you might be the one who’s starting to fall too far off on the right end

Putting off the New York Times specifically for a moment, this is a "no true scotsman" fallacy.

Example:

"The New York Times is not that left-wing, and all centrists realize this."

"Many centrists think they are getting more left-wing."

"No true centrist would think that, therefore, they aren't centrists."

Re: The New York Times to disband its sports department

#40

Post by noname123 »

UtopiaPunk wrote: post #29
gowld wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, gi…

It is a very interesting and uncomfortable notion in American politics and I do agree with Dr.Chomsky's "Manufacturing Consent" and particularly the shift of both left/right-wing American politics away from class towards identity politics.

However I'd take it a step further and disagree with Dr.Chomsky and argue that increasingly "the consent is not manufactured" per-se by the evil advertisers, politicians or Illuminati who are attempting to keep control; but rather I believe by Americans themselves who feel otherwise powerless in the political and capital processes. By that I mean, both a working-class black American in Detroit voting for the pro-immigration policy of the Democratic party - or a working-class white American in Detroit voting for a regressive tax policy of the Republican party is voting for policies extremely to hostile to their own economic interests.

But they do so anyways in a quasi-religious manner like the working-class of Europeans did in the 18th century prior to the Manifesto - precisely because of faith (in Christ, humility and work ethics) which gave meaning and sublimation to their otherwise horrendously and explicitly exploited livelihoods by the nobility. And this religious zeal of "humility" to one's tribe trumps even one's economic interests and gets then in terms co-opted and amplified by political, marketing consultants and the "invisible hand" of the YouTube algorithms of our 20th century - looking to capture and monetize a "demographic authenticity".

If George Orwell was alive today, he might be tickled to add the addendum to Marx's quote "religion is the opiate of the masses" (a la "all animals are equal...") to that of "religion is the opiate of the masses; some identity-based religions however are more profitable than others".

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