Live data from Hacker News

Departing the New York Times

contrarian.substack.com

11–20 of 60 posts

Re: Departing the New York Times

#11

I would like to go a level deeper into the author's experience: why did that change occur? Why did media become so interested in sanitized, toned down opinions and heavy editing? The post was bought by Bezos, so changes are more explainable. What about the times?

[deleted]

Re: Departing the New York Times

#12

While I have a personal dislike of Krugman's writing style, I think the Times needs people of his calibre on staff. Ideally he would have handed the torch over some time ago (the long arm of boomerism) but at this stage it seems that the Times, and most similar organisations are going the way of daytime television: Focusing entirely on a naturally eroding generation until one day they just vanish. Journalism is too i…

I watched "Dear Kelly" the other day, and while the movie isn't all that interesting, I couldn't help but feel like it was the absolute essence of a GenZ take on investigative journalism. I think that's what we got now.

Re: Departing the New York Times

#13
post #3

So, the piece here wants to frame this as an ideological issue, but the kernel of it seems to be: * the Times employed Krugman to generate content, originally on terms that included a Times-branded blog where he could write with minimal editorial oversight. * The Times consolidated their opinion content and eliminated the blog, leaving Krugman only venues with extensive editorial oversight, notably including how ofte…

What's wrong with economists? Not a huge Krugman fan, but I feel economists bring important insights from data that tend to escape regular journalists. If Krugman wore his economist hat more and stayed away from general political punditry, I would probably like him more.

The writing of Emily Oster is a great example of what economists can bring to analysis of current events. I wish we could clone her.

Re: Departing the New York Times

#14

I would like to go a level deeper into the author's experience: why did that change occur? Why did media become so interested in sanitized, toned down opinions and heavy editing? The post was bought by Bezos, so changes are more explainable. What about the times?

My pet theory is that these things happened once the feedback loop for what got clicks kicked in (early 2000s perhaps).

a) The clicks were fake but treated as real to prop up the advertising market, and then fed into the editorial decisions.

b) The clicks were real but we discovered, as others did, that more people click on literal 'clickbait' then on harder to consume, but more authentic content. Short attention spans might also factor in here.

I jump to the oft-repeated story about Google A/B testing a shade of blue (IDK if it's true), versus someone just making a goddamn decision and owning it. We should optimise on our best behaviours, not our average ones.

Perhaps said more succintly, we replaced leadership with local-maxima.

Re: Departing the New York Times

#15
post #3

So, the piece here wants to frame this as an ideological issue, but the kernel of it seems to be: * the Times employed Krugman to generate content, originally on terms that included a Times-branded blog where he could write with minimal editorial oversight. * The Times consolidated their opinion content and eliminated the blog, leaving Krugman only venues with extensive editorial oversight, notably including how ofte…

But "the piece here" is from the horse's mouth so if he wants to frame it like an ideological issue, maybe it is? He claims to have been pressured to tone down his articles to avoid offending people. Not much of a debate if anything that could possibly offend someone is not allowed to be expressed.

Re: Departing the New York Times

#16
post #12

While I have a personal dislike of Krugman's writing style, I think the Times needs people of his calibre on staff. Ideally he would have handed the torch over some time ago (the long arm of boomerism) but at this stage it seems that the Times, and most similar organisations are going the way of daytime television: Focusing entirely on a naturally eroding generation until one day they just vanish. Journalism is too i…

I watched "Dear Kelly" the other day, and while the movie isn't all that interesting, I couldn't help but feel like it was the absolute essence of a GenZ take on investigative journalism. I think that's what we got now.

I admire the investigations "People Make Games" do on their YT channel, their roblox one in particular is worth a look.

Re: Departing the New York Times

#17
The silliest detail to me (and one of my major gripes about many new sources) is that the Times seemed to resist use of charts in his articles? I've read so many articles on the housing crisis, inflation, immigrations, etc. that would be 10x better with a FRED chart.

Re: Departing the New York Times

#19
post #3

So, the piece here wants to frame this as an ideological issue, but the kernel of it seems to be: * the Times employed Krugman to generate content, originally on terms that included a Times-branded blog where he could write with minimal editorial oversight. * The Times consolidated their opinion content and eliminated the blog, leaving Krugman only venues with extensive editorial oversight, notably including how ofte…

What's wrong with economists? Not a huge Krugman fan, but I feel economists bring important insights from data that tend to escape regular journalists. If Krugman wore his economist hat more and stayed away from general political punditry, I would probably like him more. The writing of Emily Oster is a great example of what economists can bring to analysis of current events. I wish we could clone her.

[flagged]

Re: Departing the New York Times

#20
post #9

For a long time, many large US newspapers have had a fundamental and critical internal inconsistency: 1. They proclaim the intention to report on all the relevant news with as little subjective bias as reasonably possible. 2. They make money through advertisements and subscriptions, the amount of which is proportional to the magnitude of their readership. Maximizing point 2 above competes with netflix, books, movies,…

You and the New York Times Company don't agree on what the point of newspapers are. These are always sorta BS but you can just Google their mission statement if you want to know what they think their purpose is.

https://www.nytco.com/company/mission-and-values/

Post reply on HN