Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Stamping your little feets and demanding that they see how important you are? Not working anymore.

It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.

Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.

Technically true, but collectively nonsense

Nothing says ‘pro-life’ like letting children go hungry.

I am pretty sure these ‘journalists’ were not always such a bootlicking sycophants.

The lights are all blinking red.

This has so much WTF written all over it that it is hard to comprehend.

Just because you believe it, that does not make it true.

Bark louder, little dog.

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

She burned that motherfucker down, and I am so here for it. Thank you, Caroline Kennedy.

Baby steps, because the Republican Party is full of angry babies.

Someone should tell Republicans that violence is the last refuge of the incompetent, or possibly the first.

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

Dumb motherfuckers cannot understand a consequence that most 4 year olds have fully sorted out.

A democracy can’t function when people can’t distinguish facts from lies.

The current Supreme Court is a dangerous, rogue court.

Those who are easily outraged are easily manipulated.

Not so fun when the rabbit gets the gun, is it?

“The defense has a certain level of trust in defendant that the government does not.”

This must be what justice looks like, not vengeful, just peaceful exuberance.

The gop is a fucking disgrace.

American history and black history cannot be separated.

You are here: Home / Economics / C.R.E.A.M. / NYTimes: If It Weren’t for Hypocrisy, We’d Have No Ethos At All

NYTimes: If It Weren’t for Hypocrisy, We’d Have No Ethos At All

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Ah, the heroic Mr. Sulzberger. Margaret Sullivan — now doing great work at the Washington Post — silently congratulates herself on not having to defend this bullshit. Per Vanity Fair:

… The initiative was unveiled on September 15 in a slick press release introducing a 10-person “cross-functional” team that includes three journalists from the newsroom—newly acquired former Politico executive editor Paul Volpe, veteran media reporter Edmund Lee, and senior Culture editor Susanna Timmons—plus staffers from product, design, marketing, and audience insights. It’s part of a supercharged standards operation that’s been expanding under the aegis of Cliff Levy, one of the Times’ highest-ranking newsroom figures and someone whose name has been bandied about in the succession sweepstakes. It was described to me as “such a signature thing for the publisher” and “one of his biggest priorities right now.” The announcement raised eyebrows in media circles, but it also left many scratching their heads, with boilerplate such as “developing innovative ways of deepening our audience’s trust in our mission and in the credibility of our journalism, no matter where it is encountered.” What does that mean?…

The more people outside of coastal bubbles like New York, Washington, and L.A. who trust the Times and understand its mission, the more subscribers the Times can potentially net. The goal is 10 million paying readers by 2025; at the end of the second quarter, there were 7,936,000, including 7,133,000 digital-only subscribers. As a third source with knowledge of the project put it, part of the idea is “to broaden the Times’ readership and make sure that the Times is innovating. Broader means all kinds of readers, including politically. But we need more young readers, we need more readers of color, more who are middle class or lower class, and so on.”

The trust-and-innovation project is one of several major newsroom initiatives unfolding as the clock officially begins to tick down on the Times’ executive-editor succession. Dean Baquet, who’s been in the job since 2014, turned 65 on Tuesday. Executive editors traditionally step down by the end of their 65th year, but there’s speculation that Sulzberger wants Baquet to stick around longer than that…

The high-dollar blathering will continue until morale [paid subs] improves! The company still has some of the best, most experienced actual reporters in the world, a deep reserve of trust, and the physical infrastructure to change for the better. But doing so would mean admitting that Sulzberger and his cadres of corner-office enablers were other than Totally Correct & Cutting-Edge on All Topics of Import, so…

Reader Interactions

121Comments

  2. 2.

    Jerzy Russian

    A good way to make sure your newspaper does not suck is to write content for it that does not suck. Is there any indication that this is part of the plan?

  3. 3.

    craigie

    I’m intrigued only by the idea that they may feel that maybe they suck, and have to do something about it.

    On the other hand, probably not. Instead, it’s just “how do we get more subscribers?’ without ever really answering that question.

  7. 7.

    sdhays

    I’m someone who would probably be a subscriber if so much of their political coverage wasn’t so awful. Somehow, I doubt that they want to expand their subscriber base by going after be like me.

  8. 8.

    Betty

    I am surprised they put low income folks on their list. I doubt these folks can fit a NYT subscription into their budget.

  9. 9.

    zhena gogolia

    Doesn’t it sound as if they’re trying to “correct” in the wrong direction? Gaining the trust of the guys in the diner in Rolla, MO?

  10. 10.

    dr. bloor

    The more people outside of coastal bubbles like New York, Washington, and L.A. who trust the Times and understand its mission, the more subscribers the Times can potentially net.

    Wait, what?

  11. 11.

    Roger Moore

    @Jerzy Russian:

    Strictly speaking, the problem isn’t a lack of non-sucky content; it’s the presence of sucky content.  The underlying problem is that doing badly enough in one critical department- political coverage- is enough to undo all the good work done elsewhere in the paper.  It’s really the paradox of the NYT.  They have these really fantastic straight news reporters, some of the best in the business and worthy of the paper’s excellent reputation.  On the other hand, they have political coverage* that appears completely disconnected from that excellent coverage and seems to undermine it.

    *And some non-political coverage, especially in their lifestyle sections, that shows a complete disconnect from the way most of the country, and probably most of their readers, live.

  12. 12.

    PsiFighter37

    I don’t understand why the NYT feels it is its mission to interview random racist white people in the middle of Bumblefuck. It’s the paper for New York Fucking City. That doesn’t mean you have to print every single thought that comes across Charles Blow’s mind (his last editorial was severely myopic IMO), but you are a paper for the biggest city in this country, and one that happens to be not only highly liberal, but one that, for the its target audience (rich white people on the Upper East and Upper West Sides), have traveled to enough of these shitholes to know they don’t want to live in, or spend much time in, those places.

    Anyways – just another step in decline and fall. I can’t wait to see Dean Baquet and his clique of clowns interview GOP primary contestants, if there are any to Cheeto, in 2024.

  14. 14.

    Roger Moore

    @zhena gogolia:

    Doesn’t it sound as if they’re trying to “correct” in the wrong direction? Gaining the trust of the guys in the diner in Rolla, MO?

    I don’t think that’s what they’re really doing.  The aren’t trying to gain the trust of the guys in a diner in the midwest.  They’re trying to prove they aren’t just a provincial paper interested only in the coastal elite.  Of course they’re mostly interested in the midwestern elite rather than the run-of-the-mill midwesterner, but proving they are in touch with the whole country is essential.

  15. 15.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Betty:

    No joke. Annual newspaper subscriptions and home deliveries tend to be hundreds of dollars. It ain’t cheap

    @zhena gogolia:

    Well, they can’t interview Biden voters. That would be boorrring!

  16. 16.

    FlyingToaster

    I’m going on record that this is a justification to ramp up the fascism in their coverage.  The next Charlottesville Tiki March will have the FTFNYT front page praising the Tiki carriers.

  18. 18.

    mrmoshpotato

    @dr. bloor: In Illinois, we understand their mission – trashing liberals and paying David Fucking Brooks a ton of money to write the same bullshit week after week.

  22. 22.

    Redshift

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):

    No joke. Annual newspaper subscriptions and home deliveries tend to be hundreds of dollars. It ain’t cheap 

    They’re not going for home deliveries across the country. Those exist, but it’s not going to be an expanding market. They mean digital subscriptions (which also aren’t cheap for lower-income people, but it’s not as ludicrous a prospect.)

  24. 24.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @Roger Moore: yes, this. As far just data goes on any given the topic the NYT is just the best in the MSM, yet when it comes to politics it goes out of it’s way to ignore it’s own reporting.

    The whole “we want to appeal outside our bubble” is also strange because presumably not-crazies in the Midwest want news of what’s going on outside their communities.  Sounds like they are trying to reach the unreachable.

  27. 27.

    Ohio Mom

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):

    There’s lots of local coverage in the Times, everything from the city’s politics to human interest to local restaurant reviews, but generally the front pages are reserved for what’s deemed the most significant news.

    One of the questions I rue not asking the oldsters in my Jewish New York family, all loyal Times readers and now all gone, is what they made of the Times reporting on Hitler’s Germany. The Times is rather famous for playing down those um, events.

  28. 28.

    bbleh

    So now the Paper of Record, whose record and reputation speaks for itself, needs a PR team?

    Verily, the Gray Lady doth protest too much.

  29. 29.

    Redshift

    It does make you wonder how much more “trust” they’d have from all of these audiences if they could manage to cover politics in a straight-news form, no horse race and who’s up/down speculation, no cletus safaris, etc. I’d be happier if they dumped all their regular politics columnists (I’m sure Krugman wouldn’t have any trouble getting published somewhere else), but if all that was clearly opinion and didn’t have any influence on the news coverage, it would be more ignorable.

  30. 30.

    Kristine

    When I unsubscribed, I wrote that I had hung on as long as I could for the sake of the science reporting but that the political journalism sank them. That said, the price jump didn’t help. $17/month is steep, especially when WaPo is only $9.99.

  33. 33.

    Jeffro

    This all makes perfect sense…IF you’re an NYT editor/business manager/whomever that feels the following are all true:

    • many people beyond our current subscriber base are willing and able to afford our product
    • we have a LOT to offer the world, our reporting is ‘the bomb’, and that includes political reporting
    • we just need to let them know we’re here and doing a good job (gosh darn it) ;)

    I see at least 6 maybe 7 problems within those 3 short statements.  Good luck, NYT!

  34. 34.

    Redshift

    “Across political lines” is really the tell. In a sane world, the way to deal with that would be to report the truth as best as you’re able, and if there are people who say it’s political because they don’t like the truth, fuckem.

    But saying you’ll try to appeal “across political lines” means once again trying the hopeless task of trying to say things just right so that people whose tribe tells them you’re politically biased liars who look down on them and are trying to destroy the country will decide to trust you, and if that means both-sidesing the truth and pissing off the people who are inclined to trust you, well, where else are they gonna go?

  35. 35.

    eddie blake

    @PsiFighter37:  i dunno what makes you think nyc is a “highly liberal” city. we’ve got liberal sections and liberal people, but every borough has deep red area codes, queens is conservative as fuck, staten island is cop land and we’re the city of wall street

  36. 36.

    Jeffro

    @Kristine: wow.

    as far as I can tell, my subscription is still something like $4/month (academic rate).  No recipes but I do get the rest of it.

    If it was any higher, I’d bolt in a heartbeat.

  37. 37.

    James E Powell

    The NYT is looking at the Trump hordes willing to die in order to own the libs and they want that kind of loyalty in their readers. Everybody panders to the right-wing, racist assholes because they are fanatically loyal.

  38. 38.

    Jeffro

    @Redshift:But saying you’ll try to appeal “across political lines” means once again trying the hopeless task of trying to say things just right

    Exactly, great point.

  39. 39.

    PsiFighter37

    @Major Major Major Major: NY Post doesn’t count, NY Daily News isn’t much better, and Newsday is for B&Ters from Long Island. Don’t even mention the NY Sun or whatever rag that dumbshit Jared Kushner owned (NY Observer?). The NYT is the paper of NYC.

  40. 40.

    Jeffro

    @James E Powell:The NYT is looking at the Trump hordes willing to die in order to own the libs and they want that kind of loyalty in their readers

    Now THERE is a mental image: someone willing to guzzle ivermectin once the NYT gives the go-ahead.

    A Venn diagram that looks like a blank sheet of paper.  =)

  43. 43.

    pajaro

    Agree with the rest of you.  Obviously, most of this is to maximize revenue, but, I’m afraid to say, some of it seems to be positioning the newspaper to be able to be relevant if “you know who” comes back into power.  They really are failing us.  It’s pathetic that we will increasingly need to rely on the paper of record owned by the world’s richest man (or one of the world’s richest men), but we are where we are.

  45. 45.

    Geminid

     

    @FlyingToaster: The organizer of the August 11, 2017 tiki torch march faces a civil trial in Charlottesville next month. Richard Spencer and other white nationalists have been sued by victims of that nights violence and the horrible car attack the next day. After years of footdragging and obstruction by defendents, Sines v. Kessler will be tried in a federal court October 25-November 19.

  46. 46.

    Another Scott

    “The NYTimes is garbage.” – Baud.

    Meanwhile, … Wonkette:

    South Dakota GOP Gov. Kristi Noem isn’t one for subtlety. Just days after her daughter Kassidy Peters was denied a real estate appraisers license by the state’s Department of Labor and Regulation, Noem hauled Sherry Bren, the manager of the Appraiser Certification Program, her direct supervisor, and state Secretary of Labor Marcia Hultman into her office for a meeting to discuss “appraiser certification procedures.”

    In case that wasn’t clear enough, Noem’s daughter was in the room, too.

    And there’s even more.

    Totally normal, I’m sure.

    Grrr….

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  47. 47.

    TriassicSands

    @sdhays:

    It’s worth subscribing for the non-political content. Then, maybe it will still exist if and when it s political coverage improves.

  51. 51.

    Redshift

    The thing is, I don’t begrudge them the effort to expand their subscriber base. I know something about what the newspaper business is like these days, and subscribers are what everyone’s going for, because the crap revenue digital ads pay is not enough to keep the business going and pay decent salaries to the people who produce even the non-sucky parts.

    But the description of this initiative suggests they still think the people away from the coasts are exotic and mysterious, requiring special handling, which is the same mentality that produced the cletus safari. There’s no way that attitude is going to produce a result that’s good for anyone. The post-mortem analyzing why it failed almost writes itself.

  52. 52.

    Lacuna Synecdoche

    Vanity Fair via Anne Laurie @ Top:

    The announcement raised eyebrows in media circles … with boilerplate such as “developing innovative ways of deepening our audience’s trust in our mission and in the credibility of our journalism, no matter where it is encountered.” What does that mean?

    It means: “Finding new ways to bullshit people.”

  56. 56.

    Geminid

    @Another Scott: Noem could be riding for a fall. In 2018, she beat Democrat Billie Sutton by less than 12,000 out of 339,000 votes cast. Noem has already caught flack for the way she misuses state airplanes. Between Noem’s abuse of power and her self-promotion, South Dakotans might decide next year to elect a Governor who isn’t using them as stepping stones.

  57. 57.

    Lacuna Synecdoche

    Anne Laurie @ Top:

    The company still has some of the best, most experienced actual reporters in the world, a deep reserve of trust …

    Does it?

    My trust in the NY Times, pretty high in the early 90’s, started declining with Whitewater and the 2000 campaign, then fell pretty fast in the run-up to invading Iraq, and became fully depleted during the 2016 Presidential campaign.

    I have nothing left for the Times, no reserve of trust at all. I live in Manhattan, and my go-to paper anymore is WaPo – not the Times.​

    I’m sure I’m not the only one who feels this way about The NY Times now.​

  58. 58.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Ohio Mom:

    One of the questions I rue not asking the oldsters in my Jewish New York family, all loyal Times readers and now all gone, is what they made of the Times reporting on Hitler’s Germany. The Times is rather famous for playing down those um, events.

    Seriously. The parodies people were posting of the Times lavishing praise on Hitler a few days ago were not an exaggeration. 1930s NYT reporters just wanted to visit Hitler’s mountaintop castle

  60. 60.

    Geminid

    @Major Major Major Major: I thought it interesting that Congressmen Jeffries and Meeks both endorsed Maya Wiley as first choice, and Eric Adams as second. I don’t really know what that means, but it was interesting, and might have made a difference in such a close election.

  61. 61.

    James E Powell

    @Lacuna Synecdoche:

    I’m sure I’m not the only one who feels this way about The NY Times now.​

    I followed the same path as you. I did not understand then and I do not understand now the vendetta against the Clintons, but that’s when I started losing any trust in their reporting.

  63. 63.

    divF

    @Jeffro:

    “I was reading a sign high on the wall behind the bar:

    ONLY GENUINE PRE-WAR AMERICAN AND
    BRITISH WHISKEYS SERVED HERE

    I was trying to count how many lies could be found in those nine words, and had reached four, with promise of more.”

    – Continental Op (Dashiell Hammett)

  64. 64.

    Geminid

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): I think McAuliffe will win by 5 points or more. But that’s just my gut feeling, based on the last few statewide election outcomes. Virginia has been under Democratic Governors for over seven years now, and is doing well economically, so I don’t think there is too much discontent among voters.

  65. 65.

    scav

    Judging from the quantity of bejargoned buzzed-action-meme-plans, I think they’ve got a parasitic infestation of MBA-motivational-consultants.

  69. 69.

    Poe Larity

    Blogs who fired their ombudsmen shouldn’t cast stones.

    What if Baud used a top 10000 blog to overthrow Democracy? Who would stand in the way?

  70. 70.

    eddie blake

    @Lacuna Synecdoche: yup, totally agree. i’m in brooklyn. i wouldn’t use the times to line my litter boxes. wapo all the way. true, they step on their dicks every once in a while, but the times has made stepping on their own dicks their mission-statement.

  73. 73.

    Geminid

    @Major Major Major Major: Gothamist magazine put out an article a few days after the election, describing the relative strength of the top candidates in different neighborhoods and Boroughs. They said Adams ran strong in Black and Latino neighborhoods in Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx, and Garcia was strongest in Manhattan.

  75. 75.

    TriassicSands

    “The NYTimes is garbage.” – Baud.

    The Times political coverage is generally poor. But there is a lot to read in the Times that is excellent. If all one is after is political reporting, then skip the Times. But political coverage is not the entirety of life, and there is so much more to read about than Joe and Mitch. I think it’s worth noting that outside of the B-J bubble many, possibly even most, Democrats agree with the Times approach. That disappoints, even sickens me, but this is not a progressive country in any meaningful sense of the word. The “average” Democrat, who certainly doesn’t read the Times, is far too poorly informed to be reliably progressive.

    If I were the Post’s fact checker, I’d give the quoted sentence 3 Pinocchios.

    If the Times still exists when Sulzberger and the execrable Dean Baquet are gone, perhaps their successors will get behind better political coverage. If the paper no longer exists, it will be a significant net loss.

  76. 76.

    a thousand flouncing lurkers was fidelio

    @James E Powell: It’s one thing to go on a Cletus safari, but Cletus had no business being elected to the presidency and bringing his bossy wife and her cankles, and all his hillbilly crew with him to the White House!

    They didn’t much like Jimmy Carter either. And you’ll recall their reaction to Al Gore. The outlander Ford was tolerated, as he was a good Republican spear carrier.

  77. 77.

    Sure Lurkalot

    I couldn’t take anymore and quit in 2019 after 25 years. I must be a slow learner. At one time I got digital plus the Sunday paper and it got up to $600 per year.

    I miss the crossword, Cooking and magazine. They’ve offered a half price deal for Cooking and I’ve thought about it just to download a bunch but I can’t bring myself to give them more money.

  81. 81.

    piratedan

    Hi! NYT Management here!   Listen, we’d really like you all to like us once again, but you know, deep in our hearts of hearts, we’re really just financial prostitutes who like to cover all of the bases because EVERYONE has money and to ensure that we maximize our efforts, we’ll suck up to anyone who has the cash to make it lucrative to do so.. if you middle class and educated people weren’t so adept at finding other sources, you’d like us just fine and you know its true; why let a little thing like fascism get in the way of your crossword puzzle?

  82. 82.

    Anoniminous

    @Lacuna Synecdoche: ​
    It really means the Times plans to collaboratively engineer leading-edge value, monotonectally foster multidisciplinary infrastructures, and continually incentivize cutting-edge information services.

    And they did it all through the magic of The Corporate B.S. Generator. A necessary tool in today’s high pace synergistic Business ecology to proactively morph high-payoff portals.

  83. 83.

    Ms. Deranged in AZ

    Instead of interviewing Covidiots in diners the Times should be talking to people like me. My ex died last night and my poor son is in shock.  How about paying attention to the millions of voters who rejected TFG and are survivors of this horrible pandemic.  That’s the reality for a significant portion of the US. Appealing across the aisle, coddling people like my ex, is  ridiculous and not a worthy goal of a news source who wishes to inspire trust.

  84. 84.

    Another Scott

    @TriassicSands: They have had some really bad reporting outside of politics too – in economics, science and technology, foreign coverage, etc., but my brain isn’t coughing up specific examples.  We’ve talked about them here in the last year or so.  An organization that covers US politics so badly has deep issues that show up in everything it touches.

    My $0.02.

    Cheers,

    Scott.

  86. 86.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Roger Moore:

    They’re trying to prove they aren’t just a provincial paper interested only in the coastal elite. Of course they’re mostly interested in the midwestern elite rather than the run-of-the-mill midwesterner

    AKA Poujadist, petit bourgeoisie, the Fascist base.  One-truck contractors, two-restaurant chain owners, car dealership owners, etc.  Joe Bageant (_Deer Hunting with Jesus_) had their number.

  91. 91.

    Another Scott

    https://reut.rs/3uhymlI

    WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. consumer and public interest groups on Monday kept up the pressure on Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell to impose stricter ethics rules on Fed officials, after two Fed bank presidents resigned because of controversial investing activity last year.

    As Powell looks to be appointed to a second four-year term, “The Federal Reserve from Powell on down is desperate to end this scrutiny without looking into whether there should be legal repercussions,” for Dallas Federal Reserve president Robert Kaplan and Boston Fed president Eric Rosengren, said Jeff Hauser, head of the progressive Revolving Door Project.

    Biden may have an important opportunity to change the thinking and culture at that important institution…

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  94. 94.

    Anne Laurie

    @phdesmond: they’ve wasted money in their day — buying and selling the boston globe.

    It was explicitly reported when they bought the Globe that they did so to ‘kill the competition’ — so that the NYTimes would become the must-read paper for Boston / New England residents who wouldn’t buy the Boston Herald to wrap fish, much less read.  They succeeded in ‘breaking’ the Globe’s home delivery services, but they couldn’t convince us Hub dwellers that Seventh Avenue was the center of the intellectual universe.

  99. 99.

    Steeplejack (phone)

    Get your rage gland prepped for the morning!

    As Democrats try to nail down the final details of their climate and social policy bill, @SenatorSinema will hold a 45-minute fundraiser on Tuesday afternoon with five business PACs, representing organizations fiercely opposing the bill.
    https://t.co/392IX60Yyh

    — Jonathan Weisman (@jonathanweisman) September 27, 2021

  100. 100.

    JWR

    Haven’t finished up the last thread, and haven’t seen this mentioned yet, but hooray for us now permanent CA mail-in ballot voters!

    California will now mail ballots to voters in all elections, extending a practice temporarily adopted during the COVID-19 pandemic to prevent the spread of the virus at polling locations.

    Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom on Monday signed Assembly Bill 37, authored by Assemblyman Marc Berman, D-Menlo Park, which requires county elections officials to mail a ballot to every active registered voter for all elections, whether they request it or not. Voters can still choose to vote at physical polling locations, if they prefer.

    The new law will also permanently extend the time mail ballots have to arrive at elections offices from three days to seven days after an election, a practice adopted in 2020.

  105. 105.

    Mary G

    I’m psyched for this book:

    NAPERVILLE, IL — Former Secretary of State and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton will appear Oct. 18 for a virtual event hosted by Anderson’s Bookshops to promote “State of Terror,” the novel she co-wrote with Louise Penny.

    Attendees who buy the first 100 tickets will get a signed copy of “State of Terror.”

    The novel follows the career of a new White House administration made up of a Secretary of State and President who were formerly political nemeses, according to the Anderson’s Bookshops website. The stakes are raised after a foreign service officer gets a “hastily coded warning” that unleashes terrorist attacks and a nuclear arms race that are part of an elaborate conspiracy, the website said.

    “State of Terror” marks the eighth book Clinton has penned for Simon and Schuster. Louise Penny is a “New York Times” best-selling author who is based in Montreal.

    Tickets to the virtual book tour are $34 for attendees who opt to pick up their book copy, $44 for those who opt for U.S. shipping and $65 for those who opt for shipping to Canada.

  106. 106.

    prostratedragon

    @Another Scott:  That will be interesting to watch, considering that Biden’s Treasury Secretary is a former BOG Chair. Powell, a lawyer and not an economist, was expected to be more of a  conservative drag on Yellen’s board than he came around to being during her tenure, which included the aftermath of the housing bubble bursting.

  107. 107.

    prostratedragon

    @Sure Lurkalot:  I just got it in firefox with AdB+ and also noscript, NYT untrusted. Those are my defaults for NYT, and I get all pure text, but no interactives or external illustrations like maps. Noscript is the first add-on I install to a new firefox.

  109. 109.

    Gvg

    I get the NYT digital for free, paid for by my employer the University of Florida. The NYTs has always pushed to get itself noticed by students too. I get Wall Street journal too. If you are a student, chances are you need it for writing papers. I have to pay for WaPo, which I do.

    When I was a student, the big Florida cities also gave away paper copies free on campus, trying to earn the trust of future readers, so I could read Orlando, Tampa, and Jacksonville news. I don’t remember if Miami did it too. Now that is gone and the newspaper racks are unused. The papers have gotten worse. The local paper is thin and useless. They don’t seem to have staff to cover much, don’t do it well and are really expensive.

    What I object to on electronic papers is the lack of a table of content. I get a selection of headlines which make it hard to find what I would be interested in, so most of it is wasted reporting. They could do that if they wanted, but seem to want to steer me rather than let me see. I won’t fill out interest surveys though because businesses always sell that kind of info.

  110. 110.

    Platonicspoof

    @Another Scott:

    Thanks.

    Last December Wonkette also had an article on Noem and the death of her 98 year old grandmother:

     

    Noem’s office said Arnold (Noem’s grandmother) had tested negative for COVID-19, although as the Daily Beast points out, her exact cause of death wasn’t released. But she died during a cluster of COVID-19 deaths at her nursing home, Estelline Nursing and Care Center in Estelline, South Dakota. Of the 13 residents who have died in the past two weeks, nursing home administrator Mike Ward said 12 have been “COVID-related.”

     

    But golly, aren’t we mean to be talking about all this in relation to Noem’s grandmother, who very responsibly died of something else?

     

    Still very speculative that the grandmother actually died of COVID, but it’s now important that we know Noem will use her office to interfere in bureaucratic decisions about her family, and possibly her political future.

  112. 112.

    Barry

    “@James E Powell: 
    “I followed the same path as you. I did not understand then and I do not understand now the vendetta against the Clintons, but that’s when I started losing any trust in their reporting.”

    The Clintons were hicks from Flyover country.

  114. 114.

    debbie

    Sorry I missed this last night, but it seems ironic to me that the NYT’s plan to improve confidence in their journalism focuses on doing more of what cost them their reputation to begin with.

  115. 115.

    different-church-lady

    …newly acquired former Politico executive editor Paul Volpe, veteran media reporter Edmund Lee, and senior Culture editor Susanna Timmons—plus staffers from product, design, marketing, and audience insights.

    When your head is that far up your own ass everything looks like a colon.

  116. 116.

    different-church-lady

    @TriassicSands:

    It’s worth subscribing for the non-political content.

    Like the lovely feature articles about wealthy Manhattan power mommies and their high-end addiction problems?

  118. 118.

    Capri

    As a liberal resident of a very red state, I think there is a market for the NYT. In states that are 60-40 red/blue that’s 40% of the population that might be interested in national news reported by an honest broker.  The 40% is a forgotten minority – instead all flyover citizens are portrayed as drooling MAGA racists. Up to this point, the NYT has pandered to the 60% who are never going to subscribe rather than cultivating the 40% who could be persuaded.

    That’s why I have a digital subscription to the Washington Post.

  119. 119.

    J R in WV

    @Ms. Deranged in AZ: ​
    Ms Deranged in AZ… so sorry for your son’s loss and the effect that is having on him. So glad he still has a mom with common sense to rely on going forward. Take care!!

  120. 120.

    Lacuna Synecdoche

    @frosty: ​

    I’m a Baltimore exile and thus hate everything about DC but now rely on the WaPo.

    I feel your pain. It’s a shame our high bar is so middling, but right now WaPo is the best we’ve got in the way of a mainstream paper of record.

  121. 121.

    Lacuna Synecdoche

    @prostratedragon:

    Noscript is the first add-on I install to a new firefox.

    You and me both. NoScript, Privacy Badger, HTTPS Everywhere, Dark Reader, and my VPN’s add-on, then change the default search engine to DuckDuckGo.

    I wish I felt comfortable recommending NoScript to others, but, for most people, it just requires more interaction than they’re comfortable with to keep it setup correctly.

    I don’t use uBlock much myself, but I hear it’s probably the best option for people who are technically disinclined.

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