The New York Times has published 15 letters from Trump supporters instead of their usual editorials. I’ll outsource commentary on that stupidity to Steve M and Atrios.
This is an honest question, not snark: Why does the Times think they need to do this? The two rational reasons I can imagine are money and reputation. Perhaps the Times thinks they can attract Trump voters as subscribers. Not likely – I’m guessing most of them have no interest in a newspaper of any kind, and the rest won’t subscribe on general principle. Does the Times think these right wing whackjobs will think better of them if they kowtow to their ilk? It’s been demonstrated so many times that this is not the case that I don’t think I need to belabor that point.
I think the irrational reason is that they’ve learned to judge whether they’re being “fair” to both sides by how loud liberals scream. My suggestion is to stop screaming and instead subscribe to another publication. The Times is an important newspaper and, as many of you have pointed out in the comments, there aren’t many (if any) who have their foreign bureaus. I think you can make do with the Post, the Guardian, your local rag (maybe) and some other publications like TPM. I know that none of these are perfect (especially the Post) but they’re not up my ass everyday about how fucking perfect they are, which counts for something.
Let me put it another way: If you live in a one-horse town, I get why you eat at the only restaurant, even if the food is terrible. But when it comes to news, we live in the very opposite of a one-horse town. Let’s stop pretending that the Times is the only diner in town.
Roger Moore
I suspect at least part of it is a response to their mistakes in covering the 2016 election. They know they got the 2016 election wrong by not taking Trump and his supporters seriously enough, and they’ve bought into the narrative of the media being excessively liberal, so they’re bending over backward to pay more attention to Trump supporters.
What they don’t understand is that their real mistake was less about ignoring Trump supporters and more about failing to cover Trump seriously as a candidate. They don’t need to spend more time talking to Trump supporters. They need to spend more time reporting on Trump’s policies as serious policy proposals and seeing how they’re likely to fare in the real world.
debbie
NYT published those letters for the same reason Harper published Hillbilly Elegy: Doing it brought them both attention, and attention can only be good for business.
trollhattan
“Why do you treat me like a worn out shoe?”
Earworm set, darn you!
Everybody giving Those People a column inch or minute of airtime needs to just stop. I don’t need to know one iota more about them.
hueyplong
@trollhattan: My hair’s still curly and my eyes still blue
Try not to think about the song.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I am fascinated by their fascination, as it’s a combination of a condescending romanticism about heartlanders and the gutless refusal of white tote-baggers to admit that voters can be really stupid in a variety of ways, but especially about race. “We know these simple, yet noble, folk didn’t vote for trump out of racism, because none of them used That Word in their letters*, and anyway nothing is ever really about race. So, come, my fellow overwhelmingly pale graduates of Ivy, Public Ivy and Almost-Ivy colleges, my fellow readers of The Atlantic and Slate and The Weekly Standard (you have to admit, sometimes they have a point) let us study their heartfelt, if simple, yet noble words, in an attempt to understand their primitive, yet noble, ways.”
* Will the letters be unedited?
I actually might be interested in letters from soft trump voters, the ones who now wish they could have that vote back.
Yarrow
The Huffington Post said they’d only cover him in the Entertainment section. Massive fail. He was a real candidate and should have been covered as one. All the news orgs were guilty of the same thing, but HuffPo was probably the worst in that regard.
p.a.
‘… a republic, if you can keep it…’
Mike in NC
NY Times just wants to grovel in the finest tradition of Willard M. Romney. Equally pathetic.
maeve
I’m on hold to cancel my subscription- the mere fact that I have to phone to cancel is enough to make me cancel anyway (I didn’t have a phone linked to my subscription so I have to wait for a person but having to phone instead of cancelling online – unacceptable. Reason I don’t have a phone linked – didn’t have a smart phone when I first subscribed in 2013)
Switching to Washington Post (who are elliminating the free .edu subscriptions but that’s okay)
cthulhu
I have to think that the focus on Trump supporters DOES get them a lot of pageviews/eyeballs/whatever in mostly a “let’s gawk at the rubes” way. And that’s a terrible reason to it as well.
zhena gogolia
I wrote to Dean Baquet when they published their appeal to Trump voters to write in, saying I didn’t remember them doing that for Obama voters when he was president. His answer was that, being in Manhattan, they had no trouble hearing from Obama voters.
zhena gogolia
@Mike in NC:
Yep.
Barry
Seek foreign news, too. Even if you don’t have a language other than English, choose two or three foreign papers’ web sites to visit regularly and it will fill in big holes in what you’re getting. It’s eye-opening what starts to come through if you pay attention to what they’re writing in the outland.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Roger Moore: also, they’re doing this instead of hiring a public editor or ombuds, because they still think they’re, basically, infallible.
It’s always funny to watch Haberman, and Thrush when his lawyers let him opine in public, work themselves into full Margaret Dumont umbrage drag when criticized on twitter. “We are the New York Times!” Confessore and a few others do it, too, but probably since they were relatively new hires in ’16, Maggie and Thrush were a little more sensitive.
patroclus
It’s clickbait. Duh. More clicks – more ad revenue. Just like Facebook.
Serious question – should Dems vote for the short-term CR in order to get CHIP back? I’m thinking yes and demand DACA for the next CR.
Barry
Somebody once said about large corporations, ‘They don’t hate their customers, they just find internal politics far more interesting’.
I’ll bet good money that every single MoFo in the top 100 NYTimesmen (and it’ll be 90% male) thinks far more of how the rich think that how the other 90% think.
Emerald
It wasn’t just their failure to cover Twitler seriously. It was their aggressive character assassination of HRC. They drove the email non-story nationally, and even accepted the bogus Clinton Cash book without criticism and tried to push a fake scandal about the Clinton Foundation (which, if their smears had succeeded, would have deprived millions of lifesaving medication). Without that, she’s President today.
I have a sneaking suspicion that they wanted Twitler to win, for the same reasons they wanted the Iraq War. The guy sells newspapers. He bumps ratings.
I think they did it for the money.
Cheryl Rofer
The letters are all very similar to each other, could have been cribbed from Fox chyrons or Trump’s tweets. Not much analysis or even many facts.
The Times experiment gives us a look at the low-information Republican voter. I’d like to see the letters they didn’t include.
Next letters, to give us a better idea of the range of thinking in America:
– From flat-earthers
– From climate deniers
– From Silicon Valley bros concerned about too much diversity
I’ll bet y’all can think of more.
chris
I haven’t looked at the study yet but according to this chart the NYT has a vanishingly small Republican readership. Why do they bother?
Emerald
@chris: Good. The next step is to get them a vanishingly small Democratic readership as well.
331
It’s because they’re in secret negotiations to get bought out by Rupert Murdoch.
Manyakitty
I subscribe to the Washington Post through my Amazon account. I also sponsor Wonkette. Fill in the blanks with the news services (AP, Reuters, McClatchy), Ha’aretz, TPM, Mother Jones, etc. Not much tv.
Manyakitty
@Manyakitty: and the NYT can continue sucking its own dick in the very most Bannonesque fashion.
Amir Khalid
@chris:
Because in these times, paying readers are getting harder to come by; and the business can ill afford to have any subset of its readers vanish.
tobie
The sycophancy this ploy shows is just devastating for the Times. I mean, they’re not even embarrassed to show how much they’re willing to suck up to the administration. It’s sad to see the paper of record in the US destroy itself this way.
mai naem mobile
@patroclus: my inclination is to ask for DACA this time because Dolt45’s assholes are trying to fast track the case to the USSC and you don’t know when and what will happen there.If the USSC refuses to take it fast track then take the CHIP deal but try and stretch it to 8-10 years.
Raoul
The timing of these letters couldn’t be more rich. Scotty Walker is freaking the f’k out about SD10 and what that says about independents and soft Republicans, so let’s have a whole page of letters from diehard Trumpers!
Also saw a chart earlier today of the Knight-Gallup media report. Basically, zero percent of Republicans trust the NYT. These letters will do nothing — absolutely zilch — to change that.
I’m sure we’ll get some clucking bullshit from Maggie and some NYT defenders about how the paper’s ed page wants liberals to ‘understand’ Trumpers, so that we can what, scoff at them again, more deeply, more fully?
The only thing Trump and his fans understand is raw power. An op-ed splash of letters is utter foolishness. Meanwhile, the campaign to drop the NTY back to less than 2M subscribers from their record 2017 2.3M seems to be working! Ugh.
Jager
we had an old guy hockey team practice today we were talking about trump”s weight. (hell we’re all in his age group, we know all about putting on the pounds), the consensus was 239 is total bullshit. One guy piped up “let’s get ol Hillary up on the scales, that would be good for a laugh.” Jesus these people just can’t stop. He’s also the guy who loves the fact that trump isn’t PC. He did get slammed into the boards a couple of times in practice after we got on the ice.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@mai naem mobile:
I think that brings R cosponsors up to 7
patroclus
@mai naem mobile: In my view, insisting on DACA by Friday means a shutdown. They’re just not ready for it yet. I think shortening the CR to just a few weeks and extending CHIP to 10-12 years is the better play. We’ll get back to DACA in three weeks when the next CR is required. I think there will NEVER be an omnibus spending deal this year and only continuing CR’s. With each and every one, we need to extract as many concessions as possible.
Drunkenhausfrau
As a news junkie, I gave up NYTimes years ago. Subscribe to local paper, WaPo, and Guardian. Check regularly with major papers or mags online, and reliable, smart blogs. I highly recommend it.
patroclus
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Good! But if all Dems+Indy’s and those 7 vote for it, that’s just 56. We need 60. I think we’ll get there, but not necessarily before Friday.
Villago Delenda Est
@debbie: DING DING DING DING
MazeDancer
@maeve:
Cancelling NYT and subscribing to WaPo will make you happy.
Felt sorry for the poor cancel call taker to whom I had to vent my reasons why cancelling when I did. (Hiring Climate Change denier was the last straw.) But as I, calmly, explained to poor guy cancelling was the only way I had to impact the paper. And that I had to outline my reasons for him to report. I cited everything from Judith Miller, to Clinton Derangement Syndrome, recalling all the decades I had given NYT my money, but after their supporting Climate Change Denial, simply could withstand no more, Guy was polite.
Have never, ever, ever regretted the cancelling.
Before you subscribe to WaPo, do note that Amazon Prime holders get big primo deal. I paid before realizing that. Though, probably worth it to help continue WaPo.
Still, if you’re not a Amazon Prime holder, it might be worth it for six months to get free vids, shipping, and WaPo deal.
Raoul
To Mix’s larger point, though, we as a household subscribe to three papers. We get the Sunday Times (on paper) and that gives us two full-digital logins.
We get the $99/yr digital WaPo (again, two usernames – I heed to sort out the apps, though, as on my iPad I can’t see some of the blogs).
I just subscribed us to the city daily, the StarTribune. Got a $52/yr premium digital starter-sub. I will probably keep it when the cost goes up 350% in a year. One, because journalism still matters, and costs money. And two: Three personal friends of ours work for the STrib, and I can afford to be a subscriber. My partner had been doing the two browsers, two devices thing for a long time to be able to read up to 40 free articles a month, and that felt skeezy.
Cacti
The Vichy Times is like a codependent battered wife.
kd bart
Dear NY Times, no matter how hard you try, he’s just not into you.
Cheryl Rofer
My local paper, the Santa Fe New Mexican, includes a free online subscription to the Washington Post when you subscribe to the paper New Mexican. If you subscribe to a local paper, you might want to check if electronic subscriptions to other papers are included.
extraordinarily stable mistermix
@Manyakitty: I forgot to mention that I subscribe to Wonkette, too.
PaulWartenberg
Dear New York Democrats, most of whom voted for Hillary Clinton like the majority of Americans:
Drop the New York Times.
Stop buying the newsstand editions.
Leave notes at the NY Times main office saying – politely – you are fucking sick and tired of the constant trump voter fellating and you would like to see the Times invite input more from 65 million Hillary voters who are angry, upset, and afraid of what damage the odious trump administration is doing to our nation.
Thank you.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I got out of the boat. It’s both more boring and worse than I expected. I didn’t do a count but the overwhelming majority of the letters talk about “tax reform” and judicial appointments. A bunch of partisan Republicans voted for the Republican nominee.
Verily, an important journamalistic project
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@patroclus: well, the problem was never really the Senate. This is basically the same problem Boehner faced, and exacerbated by his cowardice, then ran away from. But it was so cute that he sang Zipitty doo dah when he left us his mess
ETA: but if more Senators sign on, or if (more unlikely) some pro-DACA House Rs speak up, it weakens Republicans’ had
schrodingers_cat
Vichy Times is normalizing Nazis, nothing new to see here.
zhena gogolia
I clicked on it just so I could read the outraged comments, but damn — there are no comments! I hate myself for clicking.
maeve
Well, I was on hold for half an hour to cancel so I guess a lot of people are calling about this. The people I talked to were very nice and I let them know it wasn’t their fault but also let them know why I was canceling.
Kay
Instead of a scolding, patronizing lecture on how Trump opponents have to “better understand” Trump supporters, they could instead explain why they published that propaganda from the FBI NY field office the week before the election. Was that just stupidity, that they were fooled, or did someone put them up to it?
I’m not clear on why this is all about feelings. Why not try news, instead?
schrodingers_cat
I stopped reading them last year when their headline of the R nominee’s immigration speech, was the exact opposite of what he actually said.
FlipYrWhig
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Yeah, I don’t get this at all. It’s like going into Tuscaloosa after the Alabama-Auburn game and asking if they still like Alabama. I’m gonna go with “yes.”
Kay
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
It is boring. I suppose giving over the editorial page to Obama supporters would have been boring too. Of course, I don’t know, since no newspaper did that.
Next up! The NYTimes donates the editorial page to Republican voters who tell us why we need to retain a GOP majority in Congress. We probably need to “better understand” their feelings on that, too.
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
1. Advertisers. Most of them are rich and/or reactionary. They exert pressure. They don’t call it the corporate media for nothing.
2. They love Drumpf for foiling Clinton. They’ve suffered from Clinton Derangement Syndrome since 1992, when they manufactured Whitewater out of whole cloth.
Kay
Trump needed a boost and his old friends at the NYTimes were more than happy to give him one.
What’s the haul for the NYTimes on the plutocrat tax law? Must be millions, right? He’s been very, very good to some of us.
Roger Moore
@patroclus:
We need 67. Even more would be better. We need a veto-proof majority so Trump will be too afraid to try vetoing it.
Kay
Part of the reason I want Democrats to change how they spend campaign money is because it’s a good idea and it’s different and we need a different approach, but the it’s also because I don’t know why we funnel tens of millions in small-donor funds to these giant media companies.
They hate you. Ask the Democratic Party to spend your hard-earned 10 dollar donation on something else. Don’t make people who hate you richer. That’s a poor spending decision.
Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady)
@Jager:
I used to tell my students passive voice was useful to hide a doer. Well done!
karensky
@debbie: I agree totally.
Cheryl Rofer
@Kay: The letters are mostly fact-free and don’t seem to feel a need to refer to facts.
Most reporters aren’t comfortable with numbers. Numbers are one way to try to understand the makeup of the United States and its voters for various candidates. But it’s easier to do touchy-feely letters about how Trump voters love them some testosterone.
Who is a typical American voter? I think at this point in our history, you’d have to have several, combining various characteristics of gender, color, and social status. If you don’t understand numbers, you can devolve back to the stereotype of the “authentic” mid-American. And hey, all the folks pictured in the Times piece are white; the names suggest that those not pictured are the same, with the possible exception of one who may be hispanic.
I didn’t realize that until I started writing this comment. Wow.
Baud
Y’all know where I stand on this issue.
raven
@Cheryl Rofer: Well, you know he defeated ISIS.
Roger Moore
@Cheryl Rofer:
So much this. Concocting an image of what a “Real American” looks like is a classic way of ignoring people who look different, which is the real goal.
Frankensteinbeck
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Nailed it. I always look first for the emotional rather than logical explanation. You can explain this just fine by assuming that the NYT, and damn near all of national journalism, are simply positive that white people aren’t racist. Since you’d have to be god damn blind to not see that Trumpism is racism, they’re trying every sack they can stuff their head into until they find one that’s comfortable.
Rich people are just as capable of acting based on prejudice rather than self-interest as poor people, and we have an entire political party that voted blatantly to fuck themselves over just to scratch the minority hating itch.
J R in WV
@schrodingers_cat:
I’ve noticed a lot of that in the NYTimes, headlines that are the direct opposite of the text of the article… very misleading to lie like that in bold large font.
I recommend BBC for world wide news, they have more foreign correspondents than any other news org. Although there is that British slant. But if you’re aware of that…
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: You can compost garbage. Vichy Times is like radioactive waste with a long half life.
Frankensteinbeck
@Cheryl Rofer:
‘Normal’ is defined as white Christian men, yes. That is hugely important for understanding media coverage.
Gelfling 545
@zhena gogolia: So they could therefore be ignored? Does he think the folks out in East Bejesus were hesring from them beyond Fox distortions?
schrodingers_cat
@J R in WV: I do check out BBC along with WashPost.
Adria McDowell
@Barry: Deutsche Welle and France 24 are very good. Followed TeleSur on FB, but that got crazy quickly.
danielx
@Cheryl Rofer:
Moonies and Scientologists. Let’s give a viewpoint to the Klan as well, they’ve been so unfairly portrayed.
ETA: If Dean Baquet/NYT mgmt thinks this gesture is going to
1) increase Republican readership,
2) decrease the cries of “fake news” or
3) expect his readership to take Trump supporters for anything other than the assholes they are…
they are going to be most sadly disappointed.
raven
@J R in WV: Hey, you know I don’t care about topics so. . . I just finished watching “Electraglide In Blue”. It’s got a couple of dudes from my high school who were in a band called Madura and one of them died last week. It begins and ends in Monument Valley and it reminded me of the pics you posted. In the last scene the hippies blow Robert Blake off his cop Harley and he dies on the centerline of the highway with Monument in the background.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Cheryl Rofer: it seems to me they’ve been talking about this for weeks, so I thought they were soliciting or at least curating these letters. I was at least expecting some kind of arguments, some discussion of policy. If anyone put any more effort into this than throwing out the ones that were grossly racist, crazy or written in purple crayon (literal or metaphorical), that intern wasted a lot of time. Our cities were in flames! The economy has turned around! Everyone loves the tax bill! Gorsuch!
Cole raises an interesting point, and I suspect predicts the next couple of days for these people
I’m betting we haven’t heard the last of/about the “testosterone” guy, or the Sheldon Cooperish libertarian hedge fund guy now teaching at a CT college
Yarrow
Apparently Trump is tweeting out the Fake News awards. He included the website for it, which is hosted on gop.com. And it’s not working.
Gelfling 545
@Barry: If you don’t have a language other than English, well, monolingualism can be cured.
Roger Moore
@Frankensteinbeck:
More so, IMO. Poor people are faced with serious consequences for ignoring reality, while rich people can be shielded by their money. The thing that gets me is the casual assumption so many people make that institutions like big corporations can’t be racist because they’re too focused on money. They seem to forget that corporations are run by human beings who take their prejudices to work with them.
danielx
@Baud:
We most certainly do.
Baud!2020
Roger Moore
@danielx:
But watch how they flinch if they’re asked to give a platform to CAIR or BLM.
Kay
@Cheryl Rofer:
Well, it’s because it’s about feelings. All their Trump coverage is like that-his inner thoughts (always somehow better than what he says and does) his feelings, his motivations. They find him utterly fascinating as a person. So bold! So plain-spoken! Such a strong leader!
The problem isn’t innumeracy. The problem is they admire bad people. It’s not about “smart”. It’s about “good.” It doesn’t take a graduate degree to recognize a mean-spirited liar. Some seven year olds can do it. Some seventy year olds can’t.
mike in dc
That Knight Gallup report is depressing. While it superficially suggests a market for “just the news with zero commentary”, in actuality what Republican viewers literally want is to be told only what they want to hear, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. At least 60% of them are objectively a lost cause if they consider Fox News to be objective. That seems pretty close to Trump’s “core” support level.
maeve
@MazeDancer: I get the educational discount for WaPo (and had that for the times)- The WaPo had a free educational subscription until the end of 2017 but just changed it to a 50% discount. I do have Amazon Prime. Just checked again and for Prime its actually free for 6 months then a dollar less than the educational discount so it is the better deal. I just did the WaPo educational discount but if they reject my documentation I’ll switch to Amazon.
I like the Manchester Guardian’s model – they don’t have a firewall and you can either subscribe or just throw some money at them from time to time if you feel guilty (which I have done).
danielx
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Once again…Blazing Saddles.
“You know….morons.”
Manyakitty
@extraordinarily stable mistermix: I’m increasingly convinced that all the best people do.
SiubhanDuinne
@Yarrow:
AHHH HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!
raven
@maeve: Thanks for that.
Doug R
Why the presumption that they don’t read the NYT? A lot of them are older whites and that’s what people did in the old days, read papers. They may steal it off the neighbor’s porch, but they read papers, what news they don’t get from email chains.
Look at any editorial by Krugman or Rich, or any story critical of President Sh*thole-they are EVERYWHERE.
I know I don’t subscribe, when I run out of “free stories” I just open a different browser or close and reopen the browser I’m on. I have my browsers set to delete cookies on exit, pretty sure that’s past the technical expertise of 75% of sh*thole voters.
There was 62 million of them, some of them read papers.
chris
@Kay:
They are the audience for The Apprentice and shows of that sort. The biggest asshole wins and they love it.
cain
@Roger Moore:
Huh.. I just thought that the editors in NYT are all Trumpers and conservatives.
chris
@Doug R: Well, yes, the National Enquirer is a… paper.
zhena gogolia
@cain:
They are perfectly okay with treason and racism as long as there are tax cuts and Wall Street is doing well.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
it’s sad, because it’s almost certainly true
mike in dc
@Doug R: Many more of them don’t actually read the physical paper, but hear about it elsewhere, or read it via an electronic link or an excerpt someone posts on FB, discussion board or wherever. If I mention a Times article, WaPo etc lots of conservatives will reflexively say “Eh, I don’t believe anything they say…”. Instead they watch Fox News, read the NY Post, WSJ, Washington Times, or other conservative rag, view Daily Caller, National Review, Breitbart, World Net Daily, Pajamas Media, or just forward batshit emails back and forth.
Mnemosyne
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
FWIW, “judicial appointments” means they’re anti-abortion and nothing else matters to them. A Republican could slaughter an actual infant on live TV and it wouldn’t matter as long as he votes to ban abortion.
cain
@zhena gogolia:
Pretty much. I seriously think the paper has gone rightward. I find t funny they put these pieces together and their readership tends to be generally anti-Trump. Best way to encourage a course correction is to simply not read them. Get them to start firing some of their editors and omsbudsman and see where it goes from there. It isn’ that we shouldn’t hear about Democratic perfidy, we aren’t Fox News viewers, but reality is clearly is that Republicans have become a toxic brand so, keep revealing the truth.. and occasionally keep the Democratic party honest.
cain
@mike in dc:
I am under the impression that a lot of people get their news from Facebook. That everything is shared there by Fox News watchers, and it is shared all over the place deseminated and forwarded again. They have created their own reality and their own facts. The only way to wrench themselves out of it is a swift kick of reality.
mai naem mobile
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I think you can count on McCain and Flake so that takes it to 58 Rubio? Hatch? Corker?
@patroclus:
I don’t think a shutdown hurts the Dems and ,if anything, I think a shutdown makes the Republicans more desperate for a deal. You can count on Dolt45 screwing up and saying something atupid. I think the fact that they sent Kelly to the House to speak to the Dems show that they need a deal.
J R in WV
@raven:
So… Revenge of Easy Rider kind of thing, huh? I hated the end of that movie.
You could spend a month out there and not know that valley at all, it’s so what it is. Unique as all get out.
raven
@J R in WV: My buddy was the van driver.
J R in WV
The New York Times historically supported the European Leader Adolph Hitler AND supported in their news coverage the American Nazi Party, which was a powerful political party until the moment before the government declared war on the German Nazi Party.
Why would anyone be surprised by their coverage of today’s Republican Nazis? I don’t know how they square their Jewish heritage with their politics, but those are the facts about their news coverage over the past 96 years.
Gozer
Subscribed to the WaPo digital edition a couple weeks ago. I have not been disappointed.
Blue Galangal
Subscribed to TPM last year, cancelled NYT home delivery subscription over the Peter Baker article, and bought a paid subscription to the Washington Post January 1. Since then I have received three separate surveys from NYT asking why I left. I told them. I doubt it’ll do any good. But I’m done with them.
Sherparick
@maeve: If you have Amazon Prime I believe you get the digital WaPo as part of the membership. I still get the NY Times for Kthug. When he goes, I go.
James E. Powell
@Cheryl Rofer:
Gun owners and men’s rights activists would certainly be included in that list.
James E. Powell
@patroclus:
Any deal with Trump or the Republicans is poison. Godammit! When will Democrats learn? Any deal is going to be spun as a pivot, Trump finally becoming president, showing he can work with the opposing party unlike that black guy who used to be in the White House. And then, to top it all off, whatever deal they agree to, whatever they think they’re going to get for anyone is going to be held up, ignored, and fucked with so that the deal with be totally one sided. That is what Trump has done with everyone for his whole life.
Democrats have to do no deals. See you on election day.
Sherparick
@cain: You read it in those letters. The economy, which is growing about the same rate as as it did under Obama (actually added fewer jobs in 2017 then in 2015 & 16). The plan to crush ISiS was Obama’s plan which was being executed before the Orange one became president. But in the Fox & Limbaugh bubble it Springtime for America again. we
cthulhu
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I would bet no money against that prediction.
Brachiator
@cain:
But this just says that the Internet has created a “cut and paste” model which mixes nonsense, gossip and news. I don’t do Facebook at all, but I’ve never heard that they have a news staff or do any original reporting, so they at most function as the social media coomons.
A friend who uses Facebook once sent me a copy of a story she had read and found interesting. I asked her what the source of the story was and she didn’t know. After a search, I found that she had sent a piece of a longer story that had appeared on the online site of New York Magazine.
Sherparick
@chris: I believe that Reublican readership is the Sulzburger family & their hedgefund & private equity friends. David Brooks inanities are aimed directly at them.
DougJ
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
The guy who quoted Taleb was my favorite
Elizabelle
Someone else might have put this up, but WaPost has run a story: strangely, they have it labeled as an “Arts and Entertainment” item:
The New York Times gives its editorial page over to Trump supporters, sparking a debate
Um, the editorial board and the political articles’ headlines and content are quite different. We have noticed that, fucking Vichy NY Times. It’s easy to shout from your editorial page, but look at the shit you put up during the horse race election, and since. We can see you. You enabled this. Maybe on purpose. Maybe because you’re obtuse. Kneepads and mouthwash obtuse. Looking for the moderate Republican daddy, and missing what has actually become of the daddy party.
And we pretty much all agree with the “most liked” reader comment, from “harriet w”:
Other readers are saying, in effect, that the NY Times is letting Trump supporters hang themselves with their own words and fantasies, sunlight is the best disinfectant approach. However, IMHO, what the NY Times is doing is validating the Trumpistas’ opinions by allowing them real estate on prestigious (fake) liberal page. Albeit, better for others to see how banal their ideas. Maybe….
Mostly, I think the NYTimes has contempt for its actual readers and subscribers. Despicable and deplorable of them. Clean house over there.
The WaPost readers are speaking up about the FTF Vichy NYTimes’ role in helping to elect Trump. They did it.
Peter H Desmond
i finally quit the NYT and started subscribing to the Post. the Times sends a survey to everyone who deals with their support desk, but they don’t bother to ask people who cancelled WHY they cancelled. i woulda told them.
monoglot
@maeve:
I cancelled my subscription last November after the election because I could not believe how far the paper had sunk. How impossible it was to tell the language of news from the language of editorials–and how often news contained outright editorial content. I resubscribed this November because I missed certain aspects of the paper. I killed the subscription again after less than a month. In that time I resubscribed, I found so little of interest, and so much of the ongoing problems of election coverage, that I was sorry I wasted any money to re-subscribe. I also wasted 20 minutes on the phone to unsubscribe.
I have read the Post for the last three years. I have seen it improve dramatically. I also subscribe to the Guardian, and read Reuters, Al Jazeera English, and the Texas Tribune (that subscription comes up next pay check).
These are perilous times. We need more than word vomit. Nationalism is easy; patriotism is hard. The Times gave up on the country, so giving up on it is the patriotic* thing to do.
*and not as hard as many patriotic acts
DonL140
The Times has always been “the paper of record.” A hundred years from now, historians will value these letters, even while shaking their heads. The NYT is the only paper that does what it does. Both sides hate it, so it must be doing it right. They will continue to do what they do, as long as they exist, and when the Times no longer exists, it won’t matter. There won’t be anyone left to record for posterity. There will be no one left.