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A Requiem for My New York Times Subscription
Why pay $600 a year for home delivery for a partisan opinion magazine available free on the web?
The Times saw its target audience and with its desire to put sensibility over sense decided that instead of a daily newspaper founded around the facts of what happened, it would instead offer its readers a daily magazine.
Magazines are wonderful things. But there is a difference between them and daily newspapers. The newspaper says “this happened today,” and frankly that’s enough to justify the paper’s existence. The magazine, by definition, is an analysis and commentary on events — and for that reason, magazines are weekly or monthly events, not dailies. At their best, magazines are informed opinion — each of those a separate requirement. But they are always a matter of opinion. And that’s what the Times showcased on its front pages. A magazine of opinion.
The problem, from a business model standpoint, is that the Times is not a magazine. It is a daily. In order to price its product as the daily news, however, the Times has very deliberately asserted that its opinions are actually facts. We Pajamas Media reader/media critics tend to think of that as a political move, and it is. But it is also firmly located in the business model of a newspaper turning itself into a magazine — but trying to grapple with daily publication. It promotes itself as offering the facts, and charges for its front-page opinions as thought they were facts.
What’s the pricing issue, then? Facts are expensive. Opinion is cheap. And cocooning your elite audience in its own pre-formed emotional connections is cheapest of all. Facts are expensive to gather, produce, research, report — at least if they are new facts, or facts not already in the stream of discourse. That should have been the Times’ competitive advantage, as Glenn Reynolds and other new media types have said to the deaf MSM ears for years. New facts are worth paying for. By the time facts have entered the stream of written opinion, they have already been discounted to practically zero. Especially in competition with the Web, where so many bloggers write pretty well, thank you, and for free; opinion is not a value added product. Opinionification is commodification, and commodity pricing will not pay the rent in Manhattan.
The Times therefore had sound business reasons, not just political ones, for moving so heavily to try and price its cheap-to-produce, commodified opinions on the front page as “news” for which it could charge a higher price as facts. But in the end, the Web upturned all of that anyway. The Times had become a daily magazine, but it was pricing itself as though it were about the facts. It could market itself nationally because distribution and production costs had fallen — but they could not fall as far as the Internet’s near zero costs of distribution. This should be a wonderful thing, reducing costs of distribution, if the entire newspaper simply went online — except for one thing. What advertisers are willing to pay online is a pittance compared to print ads in the Times, and readers aren’t willing to pay for it directly at all.
The routinely sensible Times’ media columnist, David Carr, notes that more than 90 percent of the newspaper industry’s revenues still “derives from the print product.” A single newspaper ad in the printed newspaper might pay “many thousands of dollars,” whereas the equivalent online ad might bring in a mere “$20 for each 1,000 customers who sees it.” The online advertising revenue stream won’t support the print product, including all the reporters, editors, (supposed) fact checkers, and assorted staff that one might need if producing a newspaper based around facts. The easy conclusion, of course, is that a newspaper that is actually a magazine doesn’t really need all those people, and that is clearly the conclusion that the Times has reached, at least as far as the long term is concerned.
What represents the future of the Times? That’s easy over the long run; look and see what its online edition is doing now. It is doing what the online advertising stream will support — behold, Times blogger Judith Warner. John Podhoretz calls her America’s “most embarrassing online columnist.” I call her purveyor of inanities we might charitably call mommy-feminism-lite. But, considering the business model, it turns out that reaching deep inside yourself on a weekly basis to access your inner Warner-nature as a source of public authority requires little to no factual effort. Witless? Yes, and stupidity proportional to self-regard. But — well, whatever — because Warner is, in the Times’ new business model, remarkably productive.
What she produces is not factual reporting. It’s not really even magazine opinion (in the good sense of informed opinion). Instead, it’s group, indeed class, solidarity. She cocoons, like a nurse-ant tending to the slumbering larvae in their nest. Meanwhile, the Times’ elite national online audience confirm their prejudices and their biases. The Times is virtually transformed into a string of middle-school mean-girl messages texted nationwide to Warner’s posse. This is a nearly flawless harbinger of what the economics of online advertising means for the long term New York Times.
Which means that my family and I are (until tomorrow, that is) subsidizing through our annual print subscription a publication that the Times itself is already moving to discount by reducing the content quality to that of an online publication sustained by the trickle of pennies of digital advertising. The Times has seen the future, and it is not as a newspaper sustained by news nor a magazine sustained by opinion, but online cocooning of its smugly elite audience by “journalists” whose task is not to spend time digging out new, expensive, and quite possibly important facts, but instead to create, care, stroke, tend, and feed little online forums where they interact with readers and create little communities of the like-minded.
Were I a New York Times reporter — and there still are reporters, such as those on the Times’ business pages who have done a genuinely magnificent job reporting on the crisis, so long as it does not involve reporting on Frank, Schumer, Dodd, or Obama — I’d consider slitting my wrists with a rusty spoon rather than cuddle up online for a group hug with my readership. Read Judith Warner and you can see the future of the Times as the Times understands itself. The Times is a facilitator of elite onanism, convener of the elite circle jerk.
So my wife and I are finally going to start treating ourselves the way the Times so clearly sees us. It takes our dollars, but already sees us as readers of the online edition for free, as the Times learns to live under the economics of the Web. It won’t even sell its opinions masquerading as facts any longer. Instead it is moving directly to sell bias-confirming communities. The Times thinks even less of its readers, if that were possible, than I do. But given that it has discounted the content, I may as well discount the price. Water seeks its own level, and we — the Times and I — have found a new equilibrium.
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Kenneth Anderson is professor of law at the Washington College of Law, American University, and a member of the Hoover Institution Task Force on National Security and Law. He blogs at the Law of War and Just War Theory Blog.
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111 Comments
1. canuck:What can one say other than why did it take so long? Readers have to remember the North American version of NYT is not half as biased as the International Herald Review has been….it is essentially an Anti-American propaganda sheet.
Anyone who travels will know that the CNN International follows the same pattern. Yet we continue to condone these institutions by subscribing to their American editions. Most of them understand paychecks and money and entitlement.
Hollywood doesn’t get the message yet, but has lead the way in producing Anti-American financial flops. The assumption that the masses will not and cannot think for themselves is only partially correct.
As the population continues to polarize over these biases however, those with functioning betz cells will prevail but for one fact: the non-thinkers on the left constituencies tend to have not much more than a copulation reflex between their ears and pop out four to five time the offspring as the thinkers that tend to support their own rather than depending on the taxpayer.
Nov 15, 2008 - 3:01 am 2. William Briggs:We live in Manhattan and haven’t subscribed to the Times for over a decade. I have only bought it maybe a dozen times over the same span; the last time was seven years ago.
There is no point paying for and therefore supporting their agenda: it would be like paying to see Rosie O’Donnell rant about government conspiracy. I never directly go to the Times’ web site, either, unless it is linked from some other authority whom I trust.
We miss the recent demise of The Sun, but in the city, at least, there are plenty of choices. Not just the Wall Street Journal, but The Daily News, The Post, Newsday, the dozen or so specialty papers like The Chief, many foreign language dailies, weeklies like The Observer, and of course, we have International Herald Tribune, the real Times of London, Le Monde, Financial Times/em>, and many others. Plus, as you say, everything the internet has to offer.
Their is, therefore, no reason to read the Times, nor to suffer because of it.
Unless you worry about coming to work, usually on a Monday, when some colleague will say, “You saw the article about Such-and-Such yesterday…”, to which they invariably refer to the Times’ Sunday magazine. Strangely, I have never had anybody quote Krugman or any of the other gaseous entities from the daily opinion page. That is to say, they might quote from them (I usually have no way of knowing), but they do not mention the source.
My point, however, is that there is no reason to feel left out about not reading the Times. Just say you don’t read the paper with a you-must-be-kidding look and you will soon be left alone about it.
Nov 15, 2008 - 3:42 am 3. Gudrun Eussner:Dear Mr. Anderson, exactly this I have done with “Le Figaro”. They have reported, and still do, worse than NYTimes, WaPo etc. I have bought the paper every day, on weekdays 1,20 Euro, on Saturday 4,50 Euro. It’s adding up to 450 Euro/year.
If you read French, watch the internet page on USA 2008, please:
The subjects are:
Hillary Clinton Secretary of State?
French (!) readers may offer their condolences to Barack Obama concerning the death of his grandmother.
Who is the President of the USA just now, a contribution by Jonathan Mann, CNN, who probably doesn’t know the Constitution.
Followed by two articles biased against McCain/Palin etc. etc.
I hope the MSM will be sent down the river asap.
Nov 15, 2008 - 3:45 am 4. Van Wallach:I’m the in the pleasant position of being able to read the print Times on weekdays, not pay a dime for it, and feel gloriously carbon-neutral. How do I pull off that triple play? Simple. I commute to Grand Central and simply pick up one of the hundreds of copies of the Times left on the train along with coffee cups and donut wrappers. I keep up with the MSM, get free entertainment, and make life a micron easier for the hardworking train maintenance staff. And then I recycle the paper.
Nov 15, 2008 - 4:53 am 5. Steve Bourg:Dear Ken,
Nov 15, 2008 - 5:35 am 6. Louis:Thanks, wow, great article! I thought I was insightful about NYT page A1 and its obvious purpose. You took your analysis to fascinating depths, and seem to have nailed it. I didn’t fathom that it also was cheaper for them to rant on A1 with so many opinions and non-news adjectives promoting their Leftist, Dem-good, Repub-bad, mantra. It makes sense now that you described it — that it’s cheaper than really digging for more facts and real news to put on A1. But the Sulzberger vs Editor debate over the last decade or so must’ve been interesting: “Should we stick to hard, important, issues of substance on A1 and therefore have a chance of keeping our right-leaning Buyers, or should we go to the hard-core and somewhat obvious Dem-good, Repub-bad A1 strategy, to keep our Leftist majority-in-New Englanders happy and Buying for as long as possible?” I wonder how that debate played out, or how often? We know which position won, and that was long ago.
It is not merely a magazine; in this past election cycle it clearly became a Fan magazine, striving to have the maximum number of Obama-headlined stories on the front page, top. I emailed the editor, advising them to revert to their former, wider page size, to enable stories of other happenings along with news about their candidate.
Nov 15, 2008 - 5:44 am 7. Rick:What a timely article. Today is my last day of receiving the Miami Herald, Florida’s fast-sinking liberal rag.
Nov 15, 2008 - 5:49 am 8. Maggie:Thanks for your article. I love your observation, “Facts are expensive. Opinion is cheap.” It leads me to wonder how the facts will be discovered and shared with the public. How can we support true investigative reporting on important issues? What is the best way to share information? I have always liked the model of advertising to support journalism. It has puzzled me why so many businesses support media with anti-business content. I hope to see more businesses support quality online journalism.
Nov 15, 2008 - 6:35 am 9. nzuckerman:the paper may not agree with your pre-dispositions politically but there is ALWAYS lots of stuff on art, music, events, people and on and on that I enjoy and I still prefer paying a little and reading print than the “look i get it free on line” notion. The comments here suggest the paper is horrible but it is ok if you read it free. what an idiotic thing to suggest.
Nov 15, 2008 - 6:42 am 10. TexEd:Ken-
Nov 15, 2008 - 6:55 am 11. Susan:I believe you have misrepresented the facts by failing to include a comment about one of the few valuable aspects of the “paper” NYT, the daily crossword puzzle. It is published in many other papers (I get mine in the Dallas Morning News) but I doubt that you can copy it from their site.
Further, the death (at least until the union bailout) spiral of the NYT will also be a good time to subscribe; while Obama (PBUH) is Lord, there will be no bad news on the front page.
Regards, Ed
I have done the same thing on a much smaller scale. I cancelled my local paper after they heaped glowing praise on Obama and barely mentioned McCain during the election cycle. I live in a relatively small midwestern town (pop. 100,000 give or take) and after cancelling my subscription and receiving offers of a free 3 month subscription which then turned into a free 6 month subscription (both of which I declined) I know I’ve hit them where it hurts. When did “news”papers turn into propaganda machines or have I just realized it when faced with such a stomach-turning choice in this election?
Nov 15, 2008 - 7:23 am 12. John:We’re New Yorker’s that moved to Kansas City nine years ago. We had given up on the daily NYT two years ago but still buy the sunday edition. I think more out of habit. We now find, with the exception of the business, travel,book review and entertainment sections, it is becoming unreadable. I think we’re about ready to give up Sunday too……
Nov 15, 2008 - 7:24 am 13. Mark:Was 79 this month, had read the Times pretty much daily from age 20, quit two years ago, may quit Sunday soon. Do not bother with online.
Nov 15, 2008 - 7:34 am 14. franko:I grew up on the NYT when it was a good newspaper. Now, to give them even $1 would make me feel I am contributing to a left-wing attempt to destroy the country I love. What I would contribute to is a fund set up so that every dollar contributed would lead to a loss of revenue for the MSM, the better to hasten its demise. Can anyone think of a way to structure such a fund?
Nov 15, 2008 - 7:36 am 15. It's Me!:What would my wife use for potato and carrot peelings?
Nov 15, 2008 - 7:44 am 16. Kempermanx:Your points are well taken. The Economist, the ONLY news magazine growing, has real facts. Not just AP wire stories rehashed, like Time and Newsweek.
I am willing to pay for unique knowledge, the Times use to offer that. They don’t anymore, so why read it?
Kemp
Nov 15, 2008 - 7:49 am 17. Mike O:Other papers have cut back by merely turning themselves into a reprinting of selections from the NYT, WaPo and LaT. This includes our area’s ‘big’ newspaper, the Dallas Morning News, which I canceled last year for that very reason. I can get better local content on the TV.
Doing so reduced the amount of stuff in my my recycling bin by almost half; going paperless is the ‘green’ way to go, which really bends the minds of defenders of the print press.
Nov 15, 2008 - 7:53 am 18. Bill Aston:I’ve been reading the NYT on and off for over 70 years. I’ve seen its descent into mediocrity. The most recent political bias is the last straw. Unfortunately, many otherwise decent newspapers in my neck of the woods share the virus. I’m about to innoculate myself by cancelling subscriptions to MIAMI HERALD and FORT LAUDERDALE SUN-SENTINEL. They all seem to be dying. WSJ still does a great job for me.
Nov 15, 2008 - 8:04 am 19. Mitchieville » Blog Archive » All the Opinions Fit to Share:[...] will support — behold, Times blogger Judith Warner. John Podhoretz calls her America’s “most embarrassing online columnist.” I call her purveyor of inanities we might charitably call mommy-feminism-lite. But, considering [...]
Nov 15, 2008 - 8:36 am 20. JVD:I was an early dis-adopter. A decade ago, I was working on environmental policy and I realized that every NYT story I read in the area was twisted. This got me worrying about what I might be absorbing on topics on which I lacked the knowledge to be my own truth squad, so I stopped reading it completely. Thereafter,a colleague would occasionally come in ranting about some NYT travesty, and I would urge him to follow my action for the sake of his health.
Nov 15, 2008 - 8:56 am 21. qpro4inc:Bravo! In its colossal arrogance, the NYT has brought you its front page as a demand that you see the world its unique elite way.
I kicked the Times habit about 5 years ago after having subscribed for over 40 years. I even kept the Sunday only for another year before kicking it altogether.
Many will join me in dancing at its funeral in the not too distant future.
Nov 15, 2008 - 9:04 am 22. John-2:Aside from the magazine concept, the Times’ big problem — one they had fought off to some extent in the past but embraced wholeheartedly since Pinch took over control of the paper — is advocacy journalism.
Lots of staffers at The Times over the years wanted to be The Village Voice, i.e. free to be unabashedly liberal in their story slant in order to point the readers in the “proper” direction. That’s one of the reasons why The Voice (and other alternative papers) were founded in the first place, because while the Times’ op-ed page has always been liberal, the paper in the old days was not a writer’s paper. The editors controlled the content and strained the descriptiveness out of the news reports.
That made for some bland reading, but it also meant the worst of the bias didn’t make it into hot type. For the past 15-plus years, that hasn’t been the case; as The Times tries to lure young readers by becoming more “exciting” in its copy, that was mixed with the PC/diversity/pet cause issues the left loves to tout and the envy many at the paper had towards writers at places like The Voice or magazines like The Nation. As a result “livelier” copy meant stories that did nothing to hide the writer’s bias anymore, and if the writer’s political beliefs were simpatico with his or her assignment editor, even better.
What you end up with is a New York Times that very much pleases the people at The New York Times in terms of tone and subject matter, but one that doesn’t please very many others outside of a corps of true believers. The Voice ended up with a similar problems, and eventually went to offering themselves up for free, with the sex ads in the back of the paper subsidizing the publishing costs; a few years from now the way things are going, the Times might be considering the same thing, though I think Craig’s List already beat them to the online sex ads market.
Nov 15, 2008 - 9:15 am 23. Jim:Are you kidding me?! You are JUST NOW quitting the New York Times? While it’s all well and good, you sir are still a moron for JUST NOW deciding to cancel the subscription. Every newspaper in the country, and every major news network has been worse than useless for the past 20 years.
Nov 15, 2008 - 9:27 am 24. mytralman:When I lived in Toronto in 1979 I walked 2miles every day to get a copy of the Times. Journalism in Canada then, as now , was totally parochial. The Times was a great source of real information. I then subscribed to it for 20 years. But around the time of the Clintons it drifted off into a kind of left wing mania that reminded me of my college newspaper. It soon had similar credibility. I dumped it. It has no policies, or promotes none I should say, that are in my interests. Why pay someone to knife you every day? To play cross word puzzles? I used to enjoy their repeated phone calls to get me to subscribe again. Now I just hang up. Withdrawing one’s economic support, no matter how puny, is the only weapon available to the average guy in dealing with the Times. I hope more people will do it.
Nov 15, 2008 - 10:05 am 25. David Thomson:“Are you kidding me?! You are JUST NOW quitting the New York Times?”
Amen. You took the words right out of my mouth. I personally cancelled my daily subscription about seven years ago. If nothing else, why should I fund my enemy? The New York Times also did not become worthless a year go. No, It has been a rag for the minimum of the last five. I can’t imagine currently anyone wasting precious hours reading it. Isn’t Kenneth Anderson aware that there are countless blog with so much more to offer? The odds, however, are that the author is something of a snob—and that’s why it took him so long to come to his senses. “Hip and with it” elites are supposed to read the Times. In back of his mind, Mr. Anderson realizes that he will soon no longer be invited to the best cocktail parties.
Nov 15, 2008 - 10:31 am 26. Peter:I agree. The only semi-good thing about the paper is the crossword puzzle, and I get that for free by xeroxing it from a public copy.
The editorial page had been unreadable for years. Now the op-ed page is unbearable with Dowd et al drooling over Obama and going unhinged over Palin.
The rest of the paper is now essentially one large editorial page. Why give them a cent?
Nov 15, 2008 - 10:35 am 27. exDemocrat:Why even read its lying propaganda for free on the Web?
I canceled my WaPoo 5 years ago when it started sabotaging our troops in Iraq (I was a decades-long subscriber at the time): greatest…feeling…evah.
And don’t stop there: cancel those anti-American TIMEs, Newsweaks, et al.
The truth sells, so they deserve to die.
Let’s roll America….NObama.
Nov 15, 2008 - 10:45 am 28. Owen Glendower:Replace “New York Times” with ABC, NBC, or CBS and this article reads just as well.
We had nearly sworn off of any network evening news broadcasts 2 years ago, but the 2008 election coverage was the last straw. Now we just switch away. As I said to my wife, “You get more accurate information on the shopping channels.”
Nov 15, 2008 - 11:06 am 29. JohninLondon:Here in London I am lucky. I don’t have to accept everything the BBC says – even though we are all forced by law to pay the BBC licence fee and support its $5 billion a year bias. The London press caters for all tastes and opinions- and still mainly focusses on hard news, with opinion clearly marked as such.
After this travesty of an election, with most of the US media shilling shamelessly for Obama, the best move the right could make is to cancel every liberal rag, and stop watching leftie trash on TV. Bankrupt the newspapers – there is not much farther to go to kill them – and cut the ratings of the TV pundits.
Watch out for Rupert Murdoch. He is a consummate newspaperman. Now he owns the WSJ, he could re-badge it, re-orient it – and turn it into the NEWS paper for NYC as well as the financial news. Taking the centre ground. For instance – he could simply change the name to “New York Journal” – keeping the Journal cachet. Buy the NYJ instead of the NYT ?
Nov 15, 2008 - 11:14 am 30. SAF:Here is my abridged version of the NY Times for all editions going forward:
1. Everything republicans say or do is wrong
2. Socialism is the best system
3. Businessmen suck
4. Pacifism is the only way
repeat as required.
The crossword puzzle is fun though.
Nov 15, 2008 - 11:45 am 31. Jason S:It would be a great shame if the New York Times went under – their letters page is a gem in itself; a daily barometer of woolly-minded left wing group-think; a patchwork quilt of liberal bromide; a comedic reminder that the word “progressive” is a curious one to describe ideas that should have really been laid to rest in the 70’s.
I could wallpaper my bathroom with the number of letters to the Times over the last 4 years which contain the words “Bush,” “shredded” and “Constitution.”
Paul Krugman’s column is another jewel – a daily reminder of just how low the Nobel prize committee has sunk over the past 50 years.
I’m sure if you plotted graphs of the decline in journalistic standards and objectivity of the New York Times and the BBC, the two would be indistinguishable from each other. Both of them look set to become a thing of the past over the next ten years which is a shame because there are a million and one Jayson Blairs just itching to start their careers.
Nov 15, 2008 - 11:59 am 32. NJDave:In 30 years commuting into NYC on the train I typically read 2-3 newspapers each day (as well as the usual magazines).
About 5 years ago I cancelled my free NY Times online account and started paying for the WSJ.com, at about $100 for a year’s subscription it’s well worth it and I can get it on my Blackberry.
Just my .02$
Nov 15, 2008 - 11:59 am 33. Fred Pennsylvania:Your comments mirror my own sentiments regarding The New Yorker, which our family had taken all the way back to the glory days of Harold Ross and the Algonquin Round Table. After years of enjoying the reviews, cartoons and features, its post-Nixon descent into foaming liberal monomania, capped by its pride as the offical East Coast distributor of Bush Derangement Syndrome, caused me in 2005 to cancel a subscription that had for all practical purposes began during the Coolidge Administration.
Multiple entreaties begging me to renew at vastly discounted “professional courtesy” rates were all politely answered with notes pointing out that when the magazine stopped regularly smearing our troops and telling lies about our president and our country each week, I’d be delighted to renew at the regular cost. Those entreaties have now ceased, as I sincerely hope soon will publication of the weekly itself, along with the Times. Make no mistake: they are genuine, talented, remorseless enemies of this nation. Having a good crossword puzzle and clever cartoons do not change that fact.
Nov 15, 2008 - 12:04 pm 34. Chester White:Welcome to the party, pal.
Nov 15, 2008 - 12:05 pm 35. Old Coot:I quit them when my parakeet (who favors her right wing) announced that it wasn’t even fit to poop on.
Nov 15, 2008 - 12:12 pm 36. Vinny F.:You know what I find hilarious. Newspapers like the NY Times scream about the free press, government openness, etc. Yet, they cover up for every Democrat they can. Plus, does anyone actually think that secret internal memos from the Obama administration will all of a sudden start appearing on page 1? Of course not.
Newspapers are dead. When it comes time for the NY Times to write its own obituary, it’ll say something like, “We are just more victims of Bush and Republicans” (even if it is 2025 when it happens) when it should read” “cause of death:slow suicide.”
Nov 15, 2008 - 12:13 pm 37. Moody Deep Thinker:I quit even reading the online NYT. It was useful for some research but one day I noticed that in many stories that appeared to be somewhat factual there were occasionally single, almost disconnected, sentences that stated some purported fact that was really just either wrong or mere opinion and still probably wrong. Then I noticed the paper had the audacity to refer to those single sentence inserts as if they were fact simply because they appeared in the NYT. I started seeing other sources referring to those single line inserts for credibility as well. That ended my use of the Times for anything except following the occasional link from some other reliable source. And of course mentally removing the inserts that had nothing to do with the essence of the article.
Nov 15, 2008 - 12:28 pm 38. SAF:Fred Pennsylvania:
Yes remorseless enemies indeed.
I used to work at a client during the first gulf war in the Boston area and some of the employees would bring the Boston Globe to work. To read their reporting of the war was an amazing voyage into a non-existent alternate reality. According to the Globe we were going to get hammered real soon and there would be tens of thousands of body bags etc. After a while it became apparent how wrong they were. I kept harping on the guys who bought the paper as to how wrong they were.
They asked “how can they be so wrong?” My answer: “Because of you, you keep buying it.”
Nov 15, 2008 - 12:30 pm 39. tom of the missouri:As a three decade subscriber I quit them during the latest Iraq war when they clearly took the side of the enemy endangering the lives of our young soldiers and likely contributing to the death of many by prolonging the war by encouraging the enemy to keep up the fight, etc. etc. Even though I greatly enjoyed the non political parts of the times, I simply could not justify supporting them ever again with my money. How I wonder did the author here justify his continued subscription when this was going on? Was it only after they helped defeat McCain that this became an issue? When I called the subscription dept. to cancel I told them why. She did not seem suprised. It would be interesting to see if they kept statistics about similar cancellations. It would also be interesting to know how Mr. Schulsberger (sp?) justified this to his stockholders.
The sad thing is that I think the Wall Street Journal will be next on my cancellation list. Have you read their new guy Thomas Frank or Peggy Noonen lateley?
Nov 15, 2008 - 12:33 pm 40. Newcomb Carlton:I canceled my subscription a couple of months ago because I didn’t think I should be paying for Obama campaign literature. Besides the obvious bias in it, I would also like to cite its childishness. Where there was once Anthony Lewis and Tom Wicker to represent the left on the op-ed pages, now there are Maureen Dowd and Frank Rich. Their arguments are too puerile even to consider. I also find, contrary to several other commenters, that the entertainment sections are now directed at people who are probably too young to read a newspaper. It had been a long time since I’d taken Sunday’s Arts & Leisure section seriously.
Nov 15, 2008 - 12:33 pm 41. dualdiagnosis:There is no good reason for a newspaper. Information moves much too fast, the news is stale before it’s even made it to the printer.
Nov 15, 2008 - 12:36 pm 42. Tom:Whether it is printed or online, the NYT is a leftist rag and has been for years. I remember a Financial Analyst at my company in Fremont, CA back in the early 90’s talking about it and how great it was. A friend of mine and I just looked at each other smiling because we had just found the inoffice lunatic.
$56 per month for that waste of trees just blows my mind. Incredible.
Leftist NYT wasting trees vs. environmentalists?
A LIBERAL DILEMMA!
Nov 15, 2008 - 12:45 pm 43. Tom:People wonder why FoxNews does so well.
It’s pretty simple. When issues come, report them, and when doing commentary have both sides. Bingo, massive ratings.
FoxNews kicks butt because there literally is no other news source out there in the MSM that is not leftist.
Look at CNN. David Gergen is their version of a conservative? You’ve got to kidding me. Ed Rollins? WTF?
Give us objective news sources and we’ll read it. We get enough propaganda.
Nov 15, 2008 - 12:50 pm 44. Tom:NYT: EchoChamber of the Ages.
Nov 15, 2008 - 12:51 pm 45. happyfeet:Keep an eye also I think to who co-brands with these losers… Starbucks and NPR come to mind. How long before the New York Times becomes a liability so obvious even these guys take a step away? That’ll be instructive I think.
Nov 15, 2008 - 12:53 pm 46. susan:There is on the web version an editorial that trashes sarah palin.
If you go there and read the 90+ comments, 85 are disgusting and shamelessly insulting.
There was a time when I felt genuinely sorry for what happened on 9-11. After reading how “nice” and “lovely” the people of NY are, I’ll keep my grievance for someone else.
Nov 15, 2008 - 12:59 pm 47. Mitchieville » Blog Archive » Keyser Can’t Decide Whether to Vomit or Punch Dick Cavett in the Face:[...] these elites sought nationwide was not so much information as attitude. They wanted confirmation of who they were, not merely news of the day,” and the comments to the Cavett piece absolutely confirm this. [...]
Nov 15, 2008 - 1:11 pm 48. sestamibi:Superb take. I grew up in NYC with the Times, but vowed never to buy it again after reading an editorial there in 1994 titled “In Praise of the Counterculture”. I have kept that vow.
When I lived in San Francisco in 1981-83, I was always amused by the intellectualoids there who made it a point to read the NYT quite conspicuously while doing Sunday brunch at al fresco cafes. I guess part of that involved showing off your status at being able to afford the paper, which was probably around $4 at the time.
My response was to get a copy discarded from my office’s subscription and read THAT conspicuously instead. No one ever came up to check the date of publication.
Nov 15, 2008 - 1:14 pm 49. RR Ryan:Fred raises an interesting point. My family had subscribed to the New Yorker for ages; heck , my grandmother knew most of those people. We quit in the seventies. The long-winded articles on middle Asian something-or-other were fun, but when it became long-winded articles on evil republicans, that was it. The same thing happened with the Times. And when my boyfriend and I moved in the early nineties, we cancelled out LATimes subscription as well. The Journal serves our needs just fine and we were early adopters of the internet, so, really, who need the rest?
Nov 15, 2008 - 1:16 pm 50. Dori Devereux:The LA Times’ failure to release the Rashid Kahlidi tape was the last straw for me…should have dumped them years ago.
I like what Tom says…report the issues and then give us both sides…the NYT’s immediate conviction of our Marines, in Haditha, comes to mind…they ran 88 front page stories on this.
Nov 15, 2008 - 1:17 pm 51. AnonymousPatriot:The same thing happened over here on the Left Coast with the Los Angeles Times. The paper had become such a joke locally that even my middle-of-the-road (politically speaking) friends and colleagues stopped reading it. Their subscriptions dropped something like 75% over the last five years.
Unfortunately, “News” has morphed into opinion/entertainment/POV/PC motivated storytelling, which is dangerous territory.
Jack Webb’s Dragnet character Sgt. Friday had it right with his “Just the fact’s ma’am” demeanor. Today’s journalists wouldn’t know a fact if it hit them in the face and incontrovertible facts simply cannot exist with these elitists.
Let’s face it; the olde newspaper print shoppe business model is dead- R.I.P.
Nov 15, 2008 - 1:20 pm 52. Joe Y:We still get the weekend NYT’s, because my wife insists. Her main reason, and this, I believe is why the NYT is still holding on, is simply because it is socially required to know what the top 2 or 3 articles in the Sunday NYT were about.
How about a contest for most embarrassing columnist? My vote is for Deborah Solomon. She has a true genius for being unable to ask an interesting question to the most interesting people in the country. The comprehensive grasp of superficial truisms combines with the complete lack of knowledge is breathtaking.
Nov 15, 2008 - 1:24 pm 53. Insufficiently Sensitive:The Economist, the ONLY news magazine growing, has real facts. Not just AP wire stories rehashed, like Time and Newsweek.
What? The Economist has steadily slanted toward the NYT viewpoint for the last decade or so, and its reactive anti-Palin and anti-Bush articles are every bit as bad. It may be due to a common bias among journalists, who know instinctively what the elite viewpoint is supposed to be (’progressive’, of course).
Its articles on Obama in the last couple of issues are embarrassingly partisan and fawning, and it’s painful to see the glossing over of his strikingly radical past and sleazy associates in their joy for a future of ‘change’ – which they assume will be simply mahvellous, and in which US powers to combat worldwide terror and a resurgent Marxist axis will be greatly reduced. Beginning with the abandonment of Guantanamo, and progressing through greater support of the corrupt UN and its undemocratic member governments – including the EU. And the ‘engaged’ Mr. Obama will use his glibidity to smoothly convince the Iranians to abandon their nukes and join the party.
Nov 15, 2008 - 1:25 pm 54. MikeO:I have given up virtually all print media and it is not because I can get it on the net.
The local rag here in Orlando -The Sentinel, commonly called the Slantinel will always run gay and transgender articles in a cloying manner and they do it often – why should I pay for propoganda? Their treatment of our troops and George Bush is incredibly slanted- anti-God. anti-christian, anti-American values and pro ACLU and all things left.
Nov 15, 2008 - 1:33 pm 55. QuickRob:What ever happened to straight news – thank God for the blogs,
The New York Times has a clear slant. I’m glad that the media’s behavior during this campaign is creating a discussion about media bias.
The NYT having a liberal bias is not so much a big deal. The real problem is that they present their biased articles as being facts. Like the fake turkey (http://www.quickrob.com/weblog/?p=1414), the NYT’s record as least accurate paper (http://www.slate.com/id/2084685/), getting dissed by Times of London (http://timesonline.typepad.com/comment/2008/01/an-open-letter.html), when the NYT blew the top secret investigation into terror financing (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/25/business/media/25keller-letter.html?_r=1&oref=slogin), literally consorted with the enemy during combat (http://www.quickrob.com/weblog/?p=895), and on and on…
Nov 15, 2008 - 1:38 pm 56. Martge:That is the whole reason that most of the main newspapers are failing this year. They rammed obama and michelle down our throats day after day after day. Even those who were dems and would vote for obama got sick of it. Between crumbums like matthews and olberman getting electric shocks down their leg about obama they all became laughing stocks. And sites like kos, du and raw story were so suck up obama we gave them up also. People complain about the way bush was reported during his time, obama hasn’t even slid into the white house yet and we are sick of him.
Nov 15, 2008 - 1:39 pm 57. thegr8_1:Put that dinosaur out of it’s misery. Stop buying it stop buying from their advertisers sell your stock if you have any. We can choose what we want to read.
Nov 15, 2008 - 1:42 pm 58. kcom:David Thomson, NJDave, Tom of the Missouri, Newcomb Carlton and all those others who have quit feeding the New York Times monster, you are my heroes. We should put signs up all over the place like there are at the zoo, “Please don’t feed the animals.” It only makes them aggressive.
Congrats to those who have used the same general principle to reduce the revenue stream of The New Yorker, Time, Newsweek and any other publication that has lost touch with its basic journalistic responsibilities and is trying to feed us propaganda disguised as objective news. Telling them why you’re cancelling is essentail, of course. Growing up, we always had TIME magazine coming to our house and I read it religiously. I thought I would probably be a regular subscriber for the rest of my life. But I got fed up with it a number of years ago and let my (discounted) subscription lapse. They tried to get me back but I told them why I’d quit and said when they changed I would consider changing. I don’t see either happening, though.
One would hope publishers of those publications would start to think twice about their direction after losing the business of numerous multi-decade subscribers due to bad and biased journalism. If not, at least they’ll know why they’re dying.
Nov 15, 2008 - 1:43 pm 59. Cat:Great article. About 40 years ago the NYT wrote a great article on my father for the Sunday paper. I was always proud that it was written by the NYT. Of course it has been years and years that I have seen this paper to the left and I doubt that they would have something kind to say about him today if he was still alive as he was a conservative. Everytime someone mentions the NYT it translates automatically to the NOT YET TRUE (NYT). When I see someone that I know who is reading the paper I do ask them if they like the NOT YET TRUE. They just look at me and I give them a big smile. Not that I expect the left to understand what this means. I hope more and more people will go in the same direction with Mr. Anderson and others. I have also stopped reading my cities paper (the Houston Chronicle)
Nov 15, 2008 - 1:50 pm 60. Bob's Kid:I gave up the Sacramento Bee years ago too. Nowhere the influence of the NYT, but I just couldn’t take it any more. Now if I need local news I’ll go online and browse the headlines.
The Bee just last week stopped its NIE program, which distributes free papers to the schools. I see that as a very bad time for the Bee looming not so far over the horizon.
Nov 15, 2008 - 1:50 pm 61. kevin c:90% OF YOUR NEWSPAPER RAGS ARE COMMIELIB. 90% OF YOUR “JORNALISTS” ARE COMMIELIB. 90% OF YOUR “SPORTS MEDIA” ARE COMMIE LIB.95% OF THE COMMIEOBAMIS WHITE MALE VOTE CAME FROM WALL STREET,ACADEMIA,MEDIA OR POLITICS. AND THEN WE WONDER HOW WE END UP WITH THE LIKES OF A HANK PAULSEN AS SEC/TRES OR THE LIKES OF A ROBERT RUBIN. LAZY,GROSS INCOMPETENCE ON THE PART OF OUR “JOURNALISM” SCHOOLS AND THE REST OF ACADEMIA. TOO BAD NY SLIMES. EVEN YOU MESSIAH CANT MAKE ANY OF YOUR CUSTOMERS PURCHASE YOUR COMMIE RAG. ASK THE DIXIE CLUCKS ABOUT IT. NO ONE BUYS THERE “MUSIC” ANYMORE EITHER.
Nov 15, 2008 - 1:54 pm 62. Sydney:There was a time when I looked forward to Sundays spent with the New York Times, a bagel, and good coffee, but I stopped reading it several months ago. My husband still buys it, but I haven’t even been tempted to pick it up. I lost interest in the “news” section over a year ago for the very reasons you cite – too much opinion. I used to look forward to the Book Review but that, too, has become a disappointment. Their reviews slant toward political books, little fiction and practically no history. (And the history tends to be of a leftist persuasion.)
If I had a couple of million bucks to burn, I’d start my own newspaper and devote it to factual news and topics of interest across the idealogical spectrum. I think there’s a market for it, if only someone could step up to the plate and think outside the industry box.
Nov 15, 2008 - 1:56 pm 63. Bernie:Thanks for your insightful commentary.
My only question is what took so long.
I used to read the Times seven days a week. I live in the New York area, so when home I bought it evey day – for nearly 40 years. When I travelled, I found it somewhere, somehow. I made sure to locate the one or two local stores in Florida, or California, or wherever, that carried the Times and dutifully bought it every day.
About five years ago, I gave up. Since that time I have not spend one penny supporting the Times. They are a propogandist rag that has alienated tens (or hundreds) of thousands of former readers.
They deserve their financial fate, no matter what that may be.
Nov 15, 2008 - 2:04 pm 64. Johnny from NYC:Wait, there’s one more consideration in the Times favor: it makes the best firestarter of all the NYC area papers. I’ve always suspected that’s because it is the most evil!
Nov 15, 2008 - 2:10 pm 65. msp:Objective journalism has been long lost in this country.
The New York Times, much like the left, has become nothing more than a mouth piece for people that hate my country.
As far as I’m concerned, FREE is still more than I’m willing to pay for anything other than the crossword puzzle and they’ve even managed to interject political bias there.
Nov 15, 2008 - 2:11 pm 66. Войска ПВО:(Sorry for the “Me Too” post, but I lost the internet for a bit. I was to have posted this much earlier.)
Susan writes:
“I have done the same thing on a much smaller scale. I cancelled my local paper after they heaped glowing praise on Obama and barely mentioned McCain during the election cycle.”
As did Susan, my rebellion was also with my local paper. But my actions were precipitated by The Orange County (California) Register’s more circuitous slide. For years, the Register’s small-L libertarian stance provided a respite from the odious and appallingly left-wing rantings of the Los Angeles Times, also dying a slow death.
However, as their tone towards President Bush got more strident and their typical aloof, holier-than-thou haughty libertarian position took them into the arena of advocating for Obama and Democrats just for the sake of change, I did the math and reviewed my informational needs.
Since the Register (a.k.a, the “Ragister”) only offered me only indifferent coverage of UCLA sports (it is pro-USC), Thomas Sowell, Mark Steyn, and a few other columnists worth reading — and I had to wade through the insufferable bleating of Steven Greenhut and Alan (”I haven’t voted in years”) Bockman to get to them, I jettisoned my subscription.
I now enjoy my Sunday mornings, PJM, and on-line links to Steyn, Sowell, et al, and have $360 more per year with which to buy guns, ammo, and pork and beans for the bomb shelter pantry.
Nov 15, 2008 - 2:15 pm 67. Fred Grau:Below is a 10-08-08 cancellation notice to McClatchy newspaper The Centre Daily Times (CDT) in State College, PA. Note that McClatchy YTD stock is down 84.1% as of Friday, Nov. 14, 2008. There must be some like-minded folks in Miami, State College, and other McClatchy strongholds.
The letter is long and addresses some local and Penn State issues, but the last two paragraphs might be of general interest – using the biased media itself to arm our kids before they enter the real world.
To: The Centre Daily Times
From: Fred Grau
Cc: McClatchy Newspapers
Blind Fwds: Over Sixty Folks on My List
Dear Sirs:
Please cancel my subscription to The Centre Daily Times – effective immediately – and return the unused portion of the annual subscription ($162.24) mailed to you on 6/23/08. Also, please thank my excellent (but unknown) delivery person for his/her promptness and perfect, silent placement of the CDT at my front door. I gave the young lady a cash tip the other morning and thanked her with regrets that due to no fault of her own, she would no longer be delivering at my door.
If the CDT or McClatchy are interested in the reasons for this cancellation, please continue below the signature line.
Sincerely,
Fred Grau
Bellefonte, PA
## ## ## ##
Dear CDT:
As a lifelong print newspaper addict and long-time Centre Daily Times (CDT) subscriber, I don’t know if you can -or indeed, want to – comprehend the personal significance of my subscription cancellation. Although the internet, cable news and talk radio have become a part of my information sources, they still could never totally replace a print newspaper unless there were serious problems at that paper. At age 62, habits are hard to break.
It is hard to determine when the CDT became noticeably biased and/or irresponsible in its news reporting. Surely, it was gradual. My memory of it during the days of the Aikins Family ownership is fuzzy and perhaps it was biased then, although that is not my recollection. But certainly within the last ten to fifteen years it has been aggravating to open the pages every morning to be greeted by incomplete, slanted reporting and an increasingly one-sided, arrogant editorial page. It was the hope of many that the combination of front office changes and the shift from Gannett to McClatchy would be an improvement. In fact, it became worse.
The Editorial Section deserves wide berth from readers of all stripes. It has been my opinion for a long time that more genuine knowledge (as opposed to an updating of current events) can be obtained from the Op-Ed Section than the paper as a whole. It is there that two (or more) sides can duke it out in view of truly engaged readers, provided that: 1) the writers give factual backing for his/her arguments and 2) the editorial board itself allows the best of both sides to be heard. Both are missing from the CDT.
When Ann Coulter was “fired” for being too hateful, we were almost immediately greeted by her replacement, Molly Ivins, who was as genuinely hateful as anyone on America’s editorial pages. At least Coulter provided factual information to back her admittedly sharp pen, regardless of political party. Ivins, on the other hand, was merely a mindless Bush/Republican basher who rarely included information in her rants. So much for CDT logic. So much for the CDT’s oft-opined hate speech agenda. This blatant hypocrisy exposed the CDT’s political agenda for all Centre Countians to see.
Leonard Pitts is a current example of the disdain the CDT seems to have for its readers. Being greeted almost every Sunday morning with rambling, subjective lectures on what racists (conscious or latent) we all are if we don’t agree with Pitts and his traditional mantra on race is not only boring, but downright insulting. His race-badgering is broken only by the occasional fact-deficient Bush-bashing, especially now that we are in the heat of the political season. The column-inches ensconced for Pitts is wasted on me and others who welcome insightful discussions about race or politics, but have long since tired of being told (quite incorrectly) how we think. Sowell, Williams, Steele and other Black thinkers deal with the same issues, but do their arguing with enlightening facts and reason, not sophomoric lecturing.
But the Pitts columns are just part of the decline in the CDT’s Editorial Page. In recent years, the full opinion pieces come straight from the one-sidedness of big-city Liberal Think from the Philadelphia Inquirer, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, ad nauseam or, occasionally from radical environmental groups such as the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). Often these syndicated columns are regurgitated by the CDT’s own column down the left-hand side. Many days, the only counterbalance to this massive assault is a short letter to the editor (LTE) by a local citizen. The message? See, the CDT is fair. We publish LTE’s from all walks, but just look at the overwhelming opinions of the experts.
Speaking of the CDT’s own editorials, two examples demonstrate the elitist arrogance of our once-respected newspaper. The first is the recent (but ongoing) lecturing about: 1) civility v hate speech and 2) the (fact-deficient) Global Warming (GW) issue. In the same edition, yea, on the same page we rubes were simultaneously told that being sharp in our rebuttal of your issues was uncivil (or even hate speech), yet we were “Neanderthals” (your word) for not hopping on the bandwagon of human-caused Global Warming, a truly ballot box science.
This example is all the more laughable because if anyone at the CDT (or McClatchy or the AP) had even bothered to read The Skeptical Environmentalist (Lomborg), articles by MIT’s Richard Lindzen, University of Virginia’s Fred Singer, or a host of other actual climatologists (not politicians, bureaucrats and grant-driven “environmentalists”), they would know that there is no compelling evidence within statistical significance that shows humans are the cause of the current warming cycle.
The second example is from the Thursday, September 25 edition titled Courage and the lack of it. To say that Kerry Benninghoff lacks courage because he, for whatever reason, didn’t fill out some silly, arbitrary form that your people demanded flies in the face of Benninghoff’s long record in Harrisburg. Not only does this editorial expose the CDT’s double standard on civility and hate speech, it totally ignores the fact that Benninghoff (like Sarah Palin in Alaska) has consistently taken on the corrupt powers within his own party, voted his conscience and, quite recently, has taken a stand on the Rockview scam that guarantees the enmity of an all-powerful Penn State that dominates his District. Did it ever occur to the CDT why Benninghoff isn’t a wealthy chairman of a powerful committee after all his years in Harrisburg? Did the CDT read his most recent newsletter where he gives a complete analysis of the wheres and whys of his stance on issues?
The antonym of courage is cowardice – your implied invective of Benninghoff. The term is accurate, however, when applied to the CDT. Has there ever been an expose of the sleazy shenanigans at Penn State, a revered Pennsylvania institution that now careens out of control due to lack of any discernable oversight? Could it be that the CDT can credit its circulation with thousands of copies daily from the Penn State Readership Program through which other people’s money supplies copies “free” to anyone with an I.D. Card?
Moving to sections other than the Op-Ed, “journalistic corruption” sums up what the CDT, the AP, and McClatchy exhibit on a daily basis. To begin, readers are treated regularly to press releases by radical environmental groups that are disguised as original articles – often the agenda-driven pieces on the back page by the AP’s Seth Borenstein or others. Before you dismiss this, please know that I have been following the “environmental” movement for well over a decade, including the websites and press releases by such non-governmental organizations (NGOs) such as The Nature Conservancy, the Union of Concerned Scientists, the Center for Biological Diversity and even “our own” Clearwater Conservancy. Grants, jobs and power, rather than true environmental health drive these organizations and it is unknown here if the CDT and its media sources are in bed with these NGOs or if it is a case of hopeless naïveté. In either case, the CDT reader is mislead at best and lied to at worst.
Or take the case of the full-page spread (McClatchy) titled: “How We Got Into This Mess” (CDT, 10/01/08), supposedly a comprehensive analysis of the mortgage crisis. Nowhere in the article or its graphs is there the slightest reference to the role of a corrupt Congress, led by contribution-bribed committee chairmen, in ignoring reform pleas by Greenspan and others that the system was on the verge of collapse and the subsequent blockage of reform bills by these Democrat (hmmm…Democrat) chairmen? ACORN’s role? Franklin Raines? Not a word.
But true to CDT form, the headline above the article about the McCain-Obama debate reliably slanted: “McCain misstates some facts in debate.”
I had a long list of additional specific items, but this has gone on on long enough. The point is that the CDT reader is actually “more ignorant” after having read your paper than he/she was before. There is no longer much of any news value to your daily editions considering your editorial twisting and omissions of fact. At a time when we need more than ever to keep an eye on corrupt politicians, mainstream newspapers have failed us.
About the only good thing that has come from recent years of the CDT is the educational value for my son (now in high school). Over the years I have pointed out the modern media’s journalistic corruption to the point where he was becoming exasperated. But I knew that the CDT and I had succeeded in arming him with the tools he will need as an adult when, in your 9/10/08 edition, he himself pointed out that Bush’s announcement of troop withdrawal (8,000 by February) from Iraq was presented by the CDT’s top-of-the-fold headline: “Iraq troop levels to stay steady.” He also pointed to the byline under the small photo of GWB: “President Bush is withdrawing fewer troops from Iraq than expected.” No matter where one stands on Bush or the Iraq War, the CDT/McClatchy agenda was clear.
Ultimately, my decision to break my lifelong habit of reading a daily, local, print newspaper became a matter of ethics (or morality). Why should one who believes in telling the truth, individual responsibility and limited government actually subsidize (at $162.24 per year) a media outlet that deceptively edits, omits and editorializes to polar opposite beliefs? In the interest of those whose standards are similar to mine, I am forwarding this message to over 60 people on my list of contacts, many of whom live in Centre County.
Sincerely,
Fred V. Grau, Jr.
Nov 15, 2008 - 2:36 pm 68. MarkJ:Bellefonte, PA
Memo for the New York Times:
Call a meeting with your editorial staff and tell them to hold off on demanding tax increases since, if they’re passed, people will be less able and willing to pay for subscriptions to newspapers like…the New York Times.
Nov 15, 2008 - 2:40 pm 69. Mister Snitch!:“It’s expensive: $56 a month, which is over $600 a year in what are soon to be scarcer post-tax Obama dollars.”
Nonsense! There will be PLENTY of post-tax Obama bucks! They’re printing them day and night, even as we speak!
Nov 15, 2008 - 2:56 pm 70. aloysiusmiller:My despair is knowing where the facts will come from. The news pages of the WSJ are increasingly left leaning, my local news is nearly as bad as the NYT and WaPo. The wire services are in the tank.
I will pay for facts but who should I pay?
The Left has impoverished us of facts.
Nov 15, 2008 - 3:01 pm 71. glenny:Why are we even discussing the NYT? I propose a NYT-free week, month, maybe a year. No mention, no discussion, no links, nothing. glenny
Nov 15, 2008 - 3:15 pm 72. Terry:The Times can still break big news stories (at least on a local level) such as Medicaid fraud and LIRR Disability fraud. The rest of the paper is useless. I get my business news from the WSJ, local news from the NYP and the rest from the web. I pick up the Sunday Times because I hope that somewhere inside I will find something interesting. The magazine is is a joke(is black the only color they know?)I agree with those who fear that buying a newspaper would fuel the idea that readers support the editorial slant.
Nov 15, 2008 - 3:34 pm 73. Ellen:I canceled my subscription to the Minneapolis Star-Tribune several years ago. I simply was getting tired of outrage – theirs at self-reliance and responsibility, and mine at their scoffing and sniping.
I got the regular “please sign back up with us” phone calls. I explained that I didn’t like their slant. The person on the phone said, “You know, we ARE a liberal paper”. I said that was the slant I didn’t like.
He sighed, and allowed as he’d gotten a lot of that, lately.
Nov 15, 2008 - 3:37 pm 74. Dave Moeling:The facts will come from the tabloids! When I dropped my Hartford Courant subscription we replaced it with the print NY Post, on-line comics from Daily Inc, and for a while the on-line NY Sun. The Post always makes me smile in the morning, unlike the dour PC Courant. But they also will pursue a story, and often it starts as a modest story of a pol out with someone who’s not his or her spouse. The National Enquirer brought John Edwards down.
If you could staff an on-line/print paper with a team of tough Mickey Spillane type private investigators people would buy. They want to know why there were five cruisers parked down the street, or what’s really up with the local big employer. People love real news, you just need to have newspapers that love it too.
Nov 15, 2008 - 3:39 pm 75. Allie:here is an email i wrote to (the late lamented) jude wannisks – pre 9/11. mr. anderson – what took you so long?
Jude Wanniski
05/24/2001 01:55 PM
Subject: Re: grey lady
At 01:51 PM 5/24/01 -0400, you wrote:
Nov 15, 2008 - 3:52 pm 76. Larry Miller:>hi mr wanniski
>
>you’re way off base about the times
>it’s on the downhill slope and has been for some time
>when the kids were little i made sure my wife didn’t throw away the sunday >magazine, so i could read it on the train the next day. now it is hardly >worth
>looking at.
>and the editorial page is a joke; aside from safire or the occasional guest commentary there is nothing serious there (and why on earth anyone pays any attention to maureen dowd is completely beyond me – she is a total
>lightweight)
>
>sure, for pure news coverage it’s the best, but the best of what (what’s left anymore?);
>and of course the special sections (e.g. “science times”) are very good.
>but the national coverage is hopelessly slanted and thereby tainted.
>
>i think you’re being too nice to howell raines.
>
>best regards
>ray martin
>
>
>
I wouldn’t wrap a dead fish in the NY Times …. it would be an insult to the life of the fish.
The NY Times is “one of” the publishing arms of the Democratic National Committee (The Washington Post, LA Times, Newsweek, TIme etc) …. if I need to know what any Democrat thinks I’ll simply flip-on MSNBC, and that will never, ever happen.
Nov 15, 2008 - 4:37 pm 77. Judy, NYC:i actually mourned the passing of the real nytimes. the moment the democratic primaries began, it became clear the nytimes i knew, was dead. too bad it wasn’t buried, because it really began to stink and the stench has only become worse. i don’t read it at all anymore (i read it my whole life – at fifteen i carried it with me on the subway going to my first job). the latest pandering is to the pro-arab, pro-hamas and hezbollah crowd who are arabs with faux american names. in the grand tradition of acorn and its paid comments that were so ignorant and vile, they must have been written from prisons by lifers. i never even go to the site anymore, and i really wonder about the people who do. anyway, this organization only retained the name, nytimes, it bears no resemblance to what once was.
Nov 15, 2008 - 5:04 pm 78. Bill:Our NYT Sunday edition just went to $27 per month here in Chicago. I will be cancelling too. For many years I felt it was important to read their Business section and also enjoyed the Book, Magazine, Week in Review etc but there are just too many alternatives now to pay almost $7 a week for something I can read for free.
I truly believe they did a disservice to the country in the recent election. Neither candidate was given the hard scrutiny needed at such a critical time.
Nov 15, 2008 - 5:10 pm 79. booley:If you want to read a more objective newspaper, subscribe to the Washington Times which has a conservative viewpoint, although it presents other arguments. In fact, an old time newsman on their staff recently wrote an article describing the very phenomenon you describe and how it differs from what he and I learned as journalists. As for The New Yorker, someone on this or another blog recently described it as a “mind-numbing rag” good only for lying around dentists’ offices. As far back as the ’50s I could not understand how anyone could wade through those endless essays. Around 1970 some of my liberal colleagues excitedly referred to an idiotic article in it by some guy describing the New Age we had entered and how his bell-bottoms gave him a new sense of freedom! Some of the cartoons are even boring, although I always liked Charles Addams.
Nov 15, 2008 - 5:17 pm 80. JamesJ:Alas, the New York Daily News is falling into the same sinkhole. Liberally bland opinion, gossip, fluff, and oversized pictures mark its coverage. In short, it’s become a megaphone for Mayor Bloomberg and President-elect Obama. (Since the election of BHO, his picture has consistently graced the front page.) It’s in a race with the NYT for obsolescence.
Nov 15, 2008 - 5:45 pm 81. Huan:I have decided to boycott some of the more liberally biased media. I will no longer post any link or follow any link to the NYT, LAT, or CNBC/NBC. I am contemplating CNN, FN, and WaPo as well. Everytime anyone goes to one of their web page, they gain in ad revenues. I cannot support that. I encourage all of you to boycott them as well.
Since they have no idea whether I am watching their TV network, this naturally does not affect that medium.
Nov 15, 2008 - 5:59 pm 82. David:A devastating critique of a once-great newspaper that has devastated itself.
Nov 15, 2008 - 6:00 pm 83. NeoCon Don:I cancelled my daily and Sunday Los Angeles Times and my Sunday NYT the day after the election. I should have done it a year before. Why subsidize Democrat propaganda that mocks me for being a Republican. I hope they go bankrupt if they don’t become objective and broad based outside the editorial page.
Nov 15, 2008 - 7:03 pm 84. Peg C.:I grew up on the LAT and L.A. Herald-Examiner. Jack Smith was the only thing worth reading in the LAT. Of course the truly witless and useless LAT remained while the Her-Ex went out of business in the 80s – a great paper, sharp, witty and balanced. Now in NY I have on rare occasions bought the NYT print version but subscribe to no papers or newsmagazines of any sort – they are all an insult to the intelligence. I refuse to pay for that tripe.
Ditto to the comments about The Economist. It’s become unreadable for its consistent anti-American slant, and the quality of the writing is generally poor.
I don’t know where news is going, but we watch no TV news in our house and for us newspapers cannot die fast enough. We get everything we need online – contrary to the stereotype of babyboomers and older folks who supposedly are wedded to their TVs and newspapers. NOT so.
As for being in a social set where having read the 2 or 3 top pieces in the Sunday NYT is the basis on which you are judged and accepted – pity doesn’t begin to describe my reaction towards people like that.
Nov 15, 2008 - 7:09 pm 85. Bleepless:You try something. It fails. You try it again. It fails. You decide the problem was that you did not do enough, so you double down. It fails. Ultimately, you just keep at it because you know that it will succeed. The ideology says so.
Nov 15, 2008 - 7:11 pm 86. renminbi:NYT stock closed 11/14 at 7.30 down over 80% in the last six years.
Nov 15, 2008 - 7:27 pm 87. Richard in Houston:I am an educated, active reader of news. I turn first to blogs. When I then turn to my city’s major paper (online) I am struck by the emphasis on murder and mayhem. The editors seem to think the most important things happening in the city are shootings, stabbings, arson, rape, child abuse, and the last words of murderers being executed by the state. I sometimes skip reading the local paper because it is such a downer.
Nov 15, 2008 - 7:40 pm 88. angry white dude:Anyone who pays $600 for a NYT subscription has more money than sense! I wouldn’t read it if it was free. Haven’t subscribed to ANY newspaper in over 10 years because I can’t stand their liberal slant. I get my news from the internet and sometimes Fox.
Nov 15, 2008 - 7:47 pm 89. David P:12 x $25 = $300 not $600, but I agree even that is too much, I’m going to have her cancel it right now, thank you
Nov 15, 2008 - 9:23 pm 90. Войска ПВО:Fred Grau writes:
“When Ann Coulter was “fired” for being too hateful, we were almost immediately greeted by her replacement, Molly Ivins, who was as genuinely hateful as anyone on America’s editorial pages.”
Fred, great letter. Too bad the mindless gorts at your local paper did not read and heed.
..the best thing that can be said for the poisonous Molly Ivins is that she is now dead.
Nov 15, 2008 - 9:28 pm 91. Horace Wells:Wow, someone noticed that old fashioned newspapers were dying off since the days of TV so the NY Times changed their approach, how earth shattering. Better get an NY Post subscription so you can get your marching orders.
Nov 15, 2008 - 9:39 pm 92. Jason S:The Post is the only decent paper in New York now. The Sun was OK but now it’s gone. The Daily News is liberal tediousness from start to finish. The New York Times has become a parody of itself.
Liberals whip themselves up into a frenzy over Fox News, but at least it allows opposing viewpoints to be heard. When, for example, have you ever read an economic opinion in the Times that wasn’t Keynesian, socialist or outright Marxist? Ever since the economic crisis started it’s done nothing but parrot the “free market ideology is dead” nonsense as if no other opinion was possible. The last Paul Krugman column I read was an astoundingly irrational argument in favor of more public spending to get us out of the crisis. I vowed, no more – I simply cannot take it. I have George Reisman’s epic tome on economics at home and one paragraph makes more sense than a thousand Krugman columns.
Likewise you can go to mises.org and read more economic sense in one article than you’ll see in a thousand issues of the Times. Yet Reisman and all other free market economists are banned outright from that paper, as if their viewpoints simply don’t exist. Liberals call this “fair and balanced.”
The older I get the more I come to realize that the left is just one huge evasion.
Nov 15, 2008 - 11:10 pm 93. Kulak-in-Chief:I like your observation that facts cost money but opinion is cheap. It makes a great argument, too.
I’ve never had much success with the bias claim because the liberals I know either agree with the paper or they think it doesn’t go far enough but this line of attack should work. By definition, the thing that an elitist New York Times reader hates the most is to look dumb.
I can’t wait to start calling them suckers.
Nov 16, 2008 - 12:28 am 94. TomJW:Only 3 reasons left to get any newspaper: You own birds, you like to fish, or for coupons.
Nov 16, 2008 - 6:13 am 95. Jim K.:I wouldn’t wrap a dead fish in the NY Times …. it would be an insult to the life of the fish.
No it belongs in the Outhouse.. Not sure it could do a very good job there either…
Nov 16, 2008 - 6:26 am 96. Alex Bensky:I could add what has happened over the last two decades to The Sporting News, but I guess that’s another letter.
The problem is, I like a morning paper and our local excuse for one, the Detroit Free Press, is dreadful. Worse, it’s relentlessly trivial. Occasionally they do something special; they were instrumental in bringing down our thoroughly corrupt mayor. But on a day to day basis it’s pretty bad.
Two examples of many: A couple of years ago some high school kids played a nasty prank on an overweight classmate and got her elected homecoming queen. She handled it well and had a good time. The Free Press had six–six!–articles on it, incuding two major front page stories.
And not too long ago there was a rumor that Eminem, who is local, was going to retire. It was just a rumor and the paper had half the front page and two full pages inside on the story.
It has lots of pictures, wide margins, and simple language. I finally realized they were producing a newspaper for people who don’t like to read. They also managed to pretty much ruin what used to be a good comics section.
I get the Sunday paper because it costs a buck, it has a tv listings booklet, and with the coupons I usually make my money back. Otherwise, I can find the features anjd comics I like on-line and the on-line edition has what little actual local news they offer.
Nevertheless, the Free Press continues to lose readers. I assume they have marketing information I don’t, but sometimes I think perhaps they should try putting out a product that covers the news
As to the New Yorker, a friend in another town saves her copies for me and I dont’ care if they’re six months old. I’m not interested in the current political reporting anyway.
I do get the Sunday NY Times. You could win bar bets betting that no matter what topic Frank Rich is pretending to write about, he will bring in the evil of George Bush, just like Mr. Dick and Kind Charles’s head in David Copperfield.
As to Maureen Dowd, I’m surprised no one has caught on. There is no “Maureen Dowd,” the construct is a practical joke the Times editorial staff is playing on its readers, a caricature of the “woman writer” with the breeziness, constant pop-culture references, and the self-absorption. I do offer kudos to the actress who plays her on the Sunday morning talk shows–she combines the undoubted intelligence with the thoroughgoing ditziness that we always see in “Maureen Dowd’s” columns.
Nov 16, 2008 - 6:37 am 97. Save the GOP » Blog Archive » The MSM is Dying:[...] doubt it, the Times is first and foremost an ideological enterprise and Kenneth Anderson knows why: because it makes economic sense for them to be so. Wait, I thought they were losing money? Yes, but they would be losing money anyway here is how [...]
Nov 16, 2008 - 8:31 am 98. B Dubya:Cancelling subscriptions is not the way to even bring the NYT, faded whore that she is, to heel. For any newspaper to be viable, it must generate revenue from advertisers. In turn advertisers hope to generate sales from the newspaper readers who are not pissed off at the advertizer because of the juxtaposition of its name and logo against the viral crap published in the news and OpEd sections of the paper.
Go after their advertisers. Convince them that anything they put in the NYT costs them business, at least your potential business. RightThink is a powerful concept, but businessmen who spend stockholder capital to lose money got sacked.
Money alays talks to the US “free” press. Always has. Even Pinch would get the message if he lost his last big whale. (I admit that the Sulzburgers history of being copperheads and traitors goes way back, so it may be genetic, but I think appeals to personal greed is still the best method.)
So..don’t write your congress critter, write to Proctor and Gamble, Chrysler, Ford, Nissan, GE, et al, and tell them that as long as they advertise in the NYT you aren’t buying any. Of theirs.
Nov 16, 2008 - 10:30 am 99. Nearly 1,000 readers cancel subscriptions to Washington Post « Moody’s Pen:[...] University Law Professor Kenneth Anderson writes why he dropped his subscription to the New York Times after decades of faithful readership. I wouldn’t drop $600 a year [...]
Nov 16, 2008 - 11:34 am 100. Docjohn52:RIP
Never cross my doorstep again…
Don’t remorse, they dug thier own holes. Plenty of local ad sheets and whatnot for fishwrap and birdcages.
I will not miss them at all!
Nov 16, 2008 - 12:34 pm 101. Fred Grau:The boycott concept is good but historically rarely works. However, what we’re seeing here is a quasi-boycott by like-minded individuals who at some point realize that they are actually subsidizing their philosophical and political enemies.
Another cancellation I’ve made (but without a scolding letter) is National Geographic. Although still technically excellent, it contains at least one article every month right out of the radical environmentalist’s playbook.
Nov 16, 2008 - 12:39 pm 102. liberty4usa:Nothing feels better than connecting with a pitch and nailing it right on the “sweet spot”.
The crowd is on their feet cheering loudly and watching a magnificent and mammoth home run blasted far over the wall! Mighty Anderson did not disappoint!
I especially like the term you coined as “bias-confirming communities” which could also be known as emotion-affirming clubs!
The big problem for America is the lack of foresight by these media owners has been a betrayal to America of a very important aspect of our system. The media always acted as an important check to the abuses and distortions perpetuated by those in power.
Now it seems one party has insulated themselves from fact finding scrutiny and we are left without a watch dog for a very corrupt section of town!
Nov 16, 2008 - 1:10 pm 103. ALD:I’m fortysomething, and I’ve read the NYT maybe five times in my life. My Subscription to the Wall Street Journal however, has been ongoing for decades, and online media, such this one, have kept me better informed than any of my colleagues, they’re the ones usually asking me for the links and copies of articles where I derive my information. Let the NYT fail; a better organization will rise from its ashes.
Nov 16, 2008 - 3:30 pm 104. Brightfame:Mr. Anderson, thank you for sharing that great message with us election-weary voters. The New York Times has betrayed the American public with its biased coverage during this election season, and I certainly hope to see it print its “final” edition VERY, VERY SOON.
We shouldn’t stop with just The Times. General Electric Corporation acquired NBC (home to the famous Obama-worshipper Andrea Mitchell) in 1986. NBC and Microsoft jointly own MSNBC, the cable channel despised by conservatives for the extreme, shameless pro-Obama coverage of Chris Matthews and Keith Olberman during the past nine months. If there were ever a time to send NBC, MSNBC, and its disgusting parent GE a message, it’s this Christmas. When you’re out shopping this year, why not just skip over the GE refrigerators, electric ranges, dishwashers, washers, dryers, microwaves, digital cameras, cordless phones, water purifiers, and lighting products? There are many, many competitors that offer excellent alternatives to EVERY product GE makes — and you’ll have the satisfaction of knowing that not one red-white-and-blue cent of your wealth will be spread to support GE’s socialist propaganda outlets, NBC and MSNBC!
Nov 16, 2008 - 4:08 pm 105. roger:I’m a journalist and can pass along this telling NYT anecdote:
Some years ago a friend with whom I had worked at the NY Daily News “ascended” to a desk job at the Times, as the person who hired him described the appointment. He was in his early 40s at the time, single and lived in Chelsea. On his second day on the job a fellow approached his desk and introduced himself thus:
“Hi! You must be our new hire!”
My friend avowed that he was indeed a new hire, but his interlocutor’s tone led him to believe there was some deeper meaning to the “our” part of the sentence.
A little verbal dancing elicited the fact that my friend had been profiled as gay (single, Chelsea etc) when interviewed and, presumably, presented as such to other gay folks in the newsroom. Like Jayson Blair, he had been hired not for his talents but for his symbolic value.
My pal explained that he was about to marry (a female), attended Mass regularly and, while he had no animosity toward homosexuals, would prefer to be regarded as simply one more competent editor.
His questioner then flounced off in a huff. “Well,” he fumed, “they owe us another one then!”
If you want to know why the Times has fallen into such a deep pit of editorial and financial trouble, that hire-by-numbers policy is a big part of the answer.
The other part is the arrogance implicit in the assumption that simple readers are best served not with the straight truth but with the subjective truths of the interest groups, cliques and claques that represent the Times’ editorial operation.
As a journo, it’s sad to see a once fine paper fall to pieces. As a media Darwinist, however, I’m loving every downward tick in the stock price.
Nov 16, 2008 - 5:12 pm 106. Dr. Lumplevin:I object to the article’s incendary and intolerant use of bigotted terminolgy and references. I refer to the words:
“The Times is a facilitator of elite onanism, convener of the elite circle jerk.”
Egosexualism is a legitimate lifestyle as well as a cruelly oppressed sexual minority. We demand that this type of language be expunged from decent journalism. The NYT, speaking on their behalf, would never use such hate speech. Indeed egosexuality is more and more evident in their employee representation as well as in their opinion pieces.
Nov 17, 2008 - 1:00 pm 107. MylesJ:I consider the NYT to be a right wing rag. It and the Post and the formerly neutral Christian Science Monitor have all been right wing rags since 9/11.
So there are people who have personal views far to the left of the NYT who read pajamas. There are even a few comments in this thread which convey information rather than rigidity and invective. That is the reason to read the blog. If the rest of you who are still in echo mode would stop reverberating, maybe more progress could be made.
Nov 18, 2008 - 4:24 pm 108. Craig:“I consider the NYT to be a right wing rag.”
BWAHAHAHAHHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAAHA!!!!!
Nov 19, 2008 - 7:41 am 109. MylesJ:I read pajamas regularly. I posted for the first time yesterday because someone made a comment that people who don’t agree with the pajamas line of thought don’t read pajamas, which is demonstrably false.
The only reply is to be laughed at for being honest. Do you like losing elections? If you want your intellectual positions to be respected please show respect to the positions of other people who have a brain that is wired differently than yours.
Nov 19, 2008 - 10:30 am 110. Village Voice gets a clue, quotes docweaselblog « docweaselblog:[...] blogs: PJM: End of NYT Subscription Alicublog: VV post blogads for the opinion makers Goodnight Pajamas [...]
Feb 2, 2009 - 2:57 pm 111. Bert Martinez:One thing that has amazed me recently over the last few years is how the GOP will jettison or will not acknowledge credibility on larger newspapers like the NY Times, Washington Post etc. simply becuse it does not please their right wingled agendas. It’s as if all the Pulitzer prize winners over the years don’t amount to anything. It is a sad state in this country when people will stop reading an institution because things aren’t going their way. No wonder the GOP is dying…just like the Klan did.
Apr 30, 2009 - 5:36 am