America's Worst Newspaper

That fucking newspaper.

Was up briefly, at least.

Remember this stuff every time they try to lecture you about their sacred journalistic objectivity, or whatever.

Historians

I've written this before, but after I started paying careful attention to news and politics, I gained new respect for what historians do.  It isn't that I thought all they did was read newspapers from 30 years ago and tell us what they said, but I realized how incomplete and misleading that approach would be even as a first pass.

Specifically, would reading the paper of record, that fucking newspaper, really convey any sense of what the Trump era was like to a future historian?  By implication, does it convey much sense of that now?

It is wrong to argue that this because journalists attempt conform to some norm of balance/objectivity.  Those bits - the "straight" news bits - in the New York Times are actually often fine.  

The political reporters and the podcast guys, the ones who narrate the daily story in the way so much of the actual news bits get filtered, are actually off the leash. That leash, at least. Obviously the editors tug one way or another on another leash.

They do a lot of opinion disguised as analysis, and of course the very nature of that kind of reporting does not lend itself to the "straight news" constraints.  They can describe things are they are, or obscure with emphasis and euphemism.  

The people whose job it is to convey the broader nature of things, and not just the facts, have largely manufactured an alternative reality. 

Trump does insane late night postings and racist rants regularly, and very little of that is conveyed.

Things That Don't Enrage Dash Sulzberger

I don’t think that fucking newspaper is omnipotent, but it has not tried to use its agenda powers against this .

America's Worst Newspaper

That fucking newspaper.

One Of The Lads

That fucking newspaper has an editorial board piece that not-quite-endorses Cuomo because they are scared shitless that Mamdani will be the next mayor.

The real issue here isn't even ideology, and given Cuomo's record it certainly isn't perceived competence or ethics.

It is that Mamdani isn't one of the lads and Cuomo is. Mamdani becoming mayor won't lead to full communism or even a tax rate bump.  It might lead to a small reordering of the power structure, with some people seeing their influence wane and their friends and family career plans being slightly curtailed. The seating chart will be altered.

It is mostly about that.  

Who Sent The Memo

It was odd. This was November. The man wasn't president yet!

Politico:

The Resistance Is Not Coming to Save You. It’s Tuning Out.

The first Trump administration sparked waves of public activism and aggressive media coverage. This time, not so much.

Axios:

The Resistance goes quiet

That fucking newspaper:

‘Get Somebody Else to Do It’: Trump Resistance Encounters Fatigue

WaPo

Why the resistance went quiet after Trump’s victory

These are just some examples. There was a huge wave of these pieces, RIGHT AFTER THE ELECTION. Amazing shit.

America's Worst Newspaper

That fucking newspaper.

America's Worst Newspaper

That fucking newspaper.

Misson Accomplished

That fucking newspaper. (paywalled, everything is paywalled).

Once you have decided that there are too many people identifying as trans, you have opened a negotiation with the right wing about how many of them to get rid of, and by what means. The polite, liberal Times position is "get rid of enough of them that I don't have to worry about my child being one" and "by discouraging transitioning." The Trump position is "get rid of all of them" and "by making them illegal." And the Trump position effectively includes the liberal position, though anti-trans liberals don't like to see it that way.

...

On the question of sports participation, the Editorial Board immediately contradicted itself:

The fearmongering is all the more disproportionate, given how few people identify as transgender. They are a minuscule less than 1 percent of the American population. And they are 0.002 percent of college athletes—a population that’s been especially incendiary in the culture wars.

Why should there be room for fierce debate, or conversation, about the participation of 0.002 percent of college athletes in sports? Why should there be room for a 3,000-word front-page New York Times story on the topic? If you call as much attention as you can to how you think there might be a stray nail sticking up somewhere, why would you be shocked when someone shows up swinging a hammer?

America's Worst Newspaper

That fucking newspaper.

That Fucking Newspaper

The generous, benevolent, helping Mr. Smotrich.

Mr. Smotrich has long advocated for helping Gazans who want to leave to depart, and for the Israeli military to remain in the enclave to help pave the way for eventual Jewish settlement there.

"helping Gazans who want to leave [after we turned their world into a hellscape]."

America's Worst Newspaper

That fucking newspaper.

Unsparing Criticism

Says man with big platform dedicated to ruining the lives of trans people. 

Fucking babies at that fucking newspaper.

"Transgender activists" 99% of the time are just trans people, who are labeled "activists" simply for existing by that fucking newspaper.

Speaking Of David Dayen

In that fucking newspaper today.

It’s true that Project 2025 is meticulously focused on eliminating obstacles to far-right policy, and Mr. Trump could deport immigrants in mass quantities. But the narrative that a second Trump term would be more confident and devious than the first neglects what Mr. Trump and friends were good at last time around. They manipulated government like a private-equity firm manipulates a new acquisition, squeezing it for personal benefit. If we expect another Trump term to be better at authoritarianism, it will likely also be better at stealing. The election is a referendum on whether Americans find such con artistry acceptable.

Are Readers Being Informed

I'm not sure under what definition of "accidental" a quote explicitly attributed to Hitler (as it was) can be said to be so (that fucking newspaper, as usual).

The New York Times Defense Force hasn't been trying very hard these days, mostly just asserting that its critics should do something more productive with their time.

Affordable Housing Policies

That fucking newspaper still has the ability to surprise (from The Morning newsletter).

Japanese-American internment was an agricultural land reform policy.

I Am A Failure

The election of Trump in 2016 was a bit of a disappointment, but so was the response by every liberally-leaning engaged person to throw all their money into New York Times subscriptions thinking they were going to save us. The Times ran an opportunistic ad campaign after the election feeding that idea and people responded by opening their wallets. Maggie Haberman thanks you!

I don't think there's one correct model of journalism. Opinion journalism is fine, ideological journalism fine, crusading issue journalism is fine. It can all be good, including the American "balanced" model of journalism that most mainstream publications/outlets claim they aspire to.

However, one problem (there are a few) with the "balanced" model is it's easy to smuggle in an agenda behind it and claim your critics are just mad you aren't supporting THEIR agenda (over 20 years of hearing this). And Dash Sulzberger, the latest failson in the long line of a failed inbreeding experiment, has clearly - more than his predecessor - embraced agenda journalism, pushing specific issues in a "flood the zone" coverage, with little balance in the coverage or concern for maintaining an illusion of appropriate proportionality.

The problem isn't that the paper is doing that, precisely, the problem is that they're doing that while hiding behind their reputation and claimed model of journalism. I mean, they're just lying to you and to critics daily, implicitly and explicitly, about what they are. That's a problem!

tl;dr fuck that fucking newspaper.

PEAK SORKIN

WE HAVE ACHIEVED THE SORKIN SINGULARITY 

In that fucking newspaper, of course.

Mitt does have the advantage of youth.  77!

Editorial Judgment

A good example of how reporting is always subject to profoundly important choices. Include this context or leave it out? That fucking newspaper* left it in this time.

*"That fucking newspaper, which in 2020 published an opinion piece by Tom Cotton that..."

I Become The Joker

That fucking newspaper.

In the decades that Roe v. Wade was the law of the land, abortion rights groups tried to shore up support for it by declaring “Abortion Is Health Care.”

 Only now, two years after the Supreme Court eliminated the constitutional right to abortion, and just six months before the presidential election, has the slogan taken on the force of reality.

Abortion rights groups were prematurely pro-abortion rights, or something. 

There are better ways to say that it seems they had a point after all, that perhaps their views should not have been presented in a "both sides" fashion, at best.

Problems due to restrictions at Catholic hospitals, for example, are not new but something something religious freedom.