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Departing the New York Times

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Re: Departing the New York Times

#21

Post by goalieca »

hackyhacky wrote: post #4

Having read Krugman's reasoning for leaving the Times, I find myself sinking even deeper into pessimism about the future of news media and, more broadly, the future democracy. My interpretation of Krugman's departure is that higher-ups edited and re-edited his columns to reduce the possibility of calling up a kerfuffle. They wanted him to soften his words and blunt his message because they were sensitive to calls of…

> Having read Krugman's reasoning for leaving the Times, I find myself sinking even deeper into pessimism about the future of news media and, more broadly, the future democracy

My spicy take is that the new media has been a net negative for 10+ years. But the positive side is that the 18-24 demographic stopped paying attention. We’re less federated now which comes with pluses and minuses.

Re: Departing the New York Times

#22

Post by hackyhacky »

xnx wrote: post #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.

> 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?

Right! I think this could be an example of skeuomorphism at its worse. I imagine the thought process as being: "We are a newspaper, therefore space is limited and we can't devote precious inches to charts and graphs. Even though most people read us online, and space is actually unlimited, we still cling to the antiquated newspaper format."

Re: Departing the New York Times

#23

Post by tptacek »

sho_hn wrote: post #10
tptacek wrote: 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…

> The Times consolidated their opinion content and eliminated the blog From my reading of the article, you're conflating two seperate events, perhaps due to knowledge of additional facts it doesn't contain, or conjecture, or misreading - it isn't clear. The blog was shuttered, yes, but on his opinion column he just mentions an increase in editorial oversight and getting notes. You call this "consolidating their opini…

The Times shuttered dozens of blogs (all of them, I think?). It was kind of a big deal at the time.

Re: Departing the New York Times

#24

Post by hackyhacky »

djoldman wrote: 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,…

> They proclaim the intention to report on all the relevant news with as little subjective bias as reasonably possible.

I don't think that's ever been the case.

> Opinion and editorial pages are not relevant news with little subjective bias.

Even if it were somehow possible to produce a piece of reporting totally devoid of subjectivity, it wouldn't be interesting and no one would care, because most people aren't subject matter experts in the area of whatever the piece is about.

That's the value provided by expert editorialists, which Krugman was: they frame events in a meaningful way, be it historical, personal, based on experience in whatever field, or with other meaningful comparisons. Yes, such framing is necessarily subjective, but it adds value. Subjectivity doesn't imply corruption.

Re: Departing the New York Times

#25

Post by PaulHoule »

I'd argue that it's worse news than it appears.

Bari Weiss left for the same reason Krugman did (you can make more money for less hassle with a Substack) even though her politics were the opposite and she didn't have as good a gig as Krugman did.

Since the NYT had a web site everybody there knows they live and die based on the usage stats, and the usage stats says that people would rather read Krugman, Klein, Brooks and Blow blow it out their ass rather than read a meticulously researched story (actually news) about some person they never heard of in some town they never heard of about some issue they never heard of that doesn't justify some pre-existing moral conclusion the reader already made.

Substack can steal away the heavy hitters of the opinion page, but it's not going to replace boring journalism, the real news that readers need even if they're indifferent to it [2]

[1] ok, she framed it more in terms of ideology https://www.bariweiss.com/resignation-letter

[2] ever note on Fox News they have a crawler that says "ALERT ALERT ALERT" when they camera leaves the studio? Because they know the viewers are only comfortable when some folks are sitting around the table talking about the way things are spozed to be.

Re: Departing the New York Times

#26

Post by kyrra »

PaulHoule wrote: post #25

I'd argue that it's worse news than it appears. Bari Weiss left for the same reason Krugman did (you can make more money for less hassle with a Substack) even though her politics were the opposite and she didn't have as good a gig as Krugman did. Since the NYT had a web site everybody there knows they live and die based on the usage stats, and the usage stats says that people would rather read Krugman, Klein, Brooks…

Bari Weiss is center left by the way. Prior to her New York times stint, she was at wsj editorial pages where she was to the left of basically everyone. If you read her actual political beliefs, she's more of a classical liberal.

Re: Departing the New York Times

#27

Post by fn-mote »

unyttigfjelltol wrote: post #19
jaredklewis wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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]

We come to HN to read real opinions of real people.

Props for saying your post came from AI, but I don’t think AI can add to legitimate dialogue.

Re: Departing the New York Times

#28

Post by jonstewart »

tptacek wrote: post #23
sho_hn wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The Times consolidated their opinion content and eliminated the blog From my reading of the article, you're conflating two seperate events, perhaps due to knowledge of additional facts it doesn't contain, or conjecture, or misreading - it isn't clear. The blog was shuttered, yes, but on his opinion column he just mentions an increase in editorial oversight and getting notes. You call this "consolidating their opini…

The Times shuttered dozens of blogs (all of them, I think?). It was kind of a big deal at the time.

Krugman says here though that the heavier editing of his opinion columns only started a ~year ago, which was 6 years after the blog ended. So presumably those six years were fine enough.

I overall agree with you on punditry and I didn’t much read Krugman; I don’t much read any of their opinion columnists. But a point to Krugman in that he can write about actual facts whereas Ross, Bret, and David can only write about vibes.

Re: Departing the New York Times

#29

Post by JeremyNT »

hackyhacky wrote: post #4

Having read Krugman's reasoning for leaving the Times, I find myself sinking even deeper into pessimism about the future of news media and, more broadly, the future democracy. My interpretation of Krugman's departure is that higher-ups edited and re-edited his columns to reduce the possibility of calling up a kerfuffle. They wanted him to soften his words and blunt his message because they were sensitive to calls of…

> My interpretation of Krugman's departure is that higher-ups edited and re-edited his columns to reduce the possibility of calling up a kerfuffle. They wanted him to soften his words and blunt his message because they were sensitive to calls of media bias. I think that's exactly the wrong response.

This seems to be how Krugman is framing it, but is editorial oversight actually bad?

In the past this kind of pundit class could basically make things up and papers like the Times would just regurgitate whatever they claim.

We know what Krugman is claiming about the editors, but I could imagine a counterfactual where they were striking misleading or unsupported statements from his posts.

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