In the 90s, the Times bet that it could become the general newspaper of elites across the United States - become in the category of a general newspaper what the Wall Street Journal had already become as a national business paper. Falling printing costs and new forms of communication brought the costs of distributing the paper nationwide down sufficiently far that regional production and distribution were within striking distance of costs of the metropolitan NYC paper. Combined with a rising urban elite in many city centers, the national newspaper strategy was not a mad dream. I certainly thought it a smart strategy at the time. Elite regional papers, such as the Los Angeles Times, were justifiably frightened; the Washington Post Company did the smartest thing of all and diversified a few years later out of media and into the Kaplan test prep cash machine.
Content was already shifting. The Wall Street Journal, by contrast, always had to remain anchored in the core presentation of semi-specialized facts and data to satisfy a hard nosed business audience, but it wrapped that staid, fact-oriented newspaper around a conservative, polemical editorial page, while keeping them emphatically separate, and so got two national audiences for one paper. The Times could not do that. It correctly understood that its new, national target audience was what David Brooks famously called the Bobos, the market oriented yet professional, bourgeois yet bohemian, affluent and self-regarding, self-involved elites of the major cities. They didn't seek facts as such from the New York Times. They already had the ones that really mattered from other, more specialized sources. The only factual area where the Times retained an edge was in foreign reporting, but years of shutting down foreign bureaus and cutting correspondents had largely depleted that competitive advantage, to the extent that this new readership cared about it.
What the Bobos sought instead from the Times was a cultural attitude, confirmation of who they were. The Times, for them, was less about sense than sensibility. The tendency of contemporary baby boomer journalism to narration, reportorial self-expression, and Dickensian sentimentalizing was already pronounced; call it the Long March of the New Journalism through the Institutions. The result was a New York Times that gradually began turning its news pages, and especially the front page, into a magazine.
Magazines are good things. At their best, they are 'informed opinion' - each of those, however, a separate qualification. But magazines are not driven by a fundamental, baseline assumption that a story, or a front page, or a newspaper is worth reading each and every day just because the facts are the facts and you need to know what's going on. A caricature, of course; every newspaper understands that it needs a certain amount of sensation beyond the straight facts. Still, the ultimate justification of a daily paper is "this happened." A good magazine, by contrast, is not about the value of contemporaneous facts as such, but instead some form of post-hoc analysis - sometimes deep and sometimes not and sometimes pure entertainment - but always something that draws you in beyond the bare fact that the facts are the facts. (As for television "news" - the nature of the medium is visceral imagery, not facts; it is finally just about shocking sensibilities, including via the ubiquitous talking heads, whose principal function is to appear to talk - their mouths move, sounds come out - but actually merely to emote: sensibility, once again, not sense.)
In the Times's new business model for content, the newspaper is really a magazine and opinion is the draw. Value is supposedly added by publishing stories that are carefully calibrated to the pre-held sensibilities of the consumer-reader. And yet, in order to preserve the idea that this is still a newspaper, the opinions are presented not as a magazine would, but as a daily newspaper does - as verisimilitude. Confirmation bias reigns; this is true at conservative as well as liberal media outlets, of course, but the difference is political dominance of the mainstream media oligopoly, as Noam Chomsky might say. The New York Times as facilitator of elite onanism; high-gravitas journalism as convenor of the elite circle jerk. Opinion as news, offered daily as fact. Readers are no doubt yawning at this 'discovery'; tell me something I don't know.
To which he replied:
Oh big surprise - another conservative on the offensive against the NYT. And, once again, another conservative tries to rationalize my tendencies toward the moderate/liberal end of the political spectrum. Seriously, the patronization and condescension (redundant?) had gotten old long, long ago.
Let me address one issue at the outset. There is a difference between elite and elitism. I am elite. You are elite. Most of the folks we encounter on a daily basis are "elite." There it is. By way of example, let me present a short version of my biography - I attended a fairly-elite private university, I have an advanced degree, I spend far too many hours working at a job that pays an above average salary. I pride myself on being well-informed, well read, ambitious in my family, social, and professional endeavors, and I understand that intellect is only half or a third or maybe even an irrelevant factor on the ethical-successful continuum of life. So there you have it, I am elite, guilty as charged, and unashamedly so.
However, elite, as a word, is frequently confused by conservatives with "elitism." Kinda like the distinction between Democrat and Democratic: two different things altogether that have been willfully and intentionally confused in order to distract the audience. If you read my description of "elite," I'd wager it is similar or nearly identical to many conservatives, like Ken Anderson, who use the word with such contempt. Mr. Anderson himself, by virtue of his education and position, is an elite. There is nothing inherently wrong with being elite. There is, however, much wrong with elitism. Elitism is as nasty as Mr. Anderson would have it sound - it represents exclusivity, simple-mindedness (ironic, when you think of it; note I did not say close-mindedness), and bigotry of another sort. It is a nasty thing indeed.
Now that I got that out of the way, I'll address the substance of Mr. Anderson's comments. At the same time I do and I don't agree with him. As with most conservatives, he confuses the slant of the NYTimes editorial page with the newsroom. Therefore I would disagree that the news is biased - it is no more biased than the WSJ's newsroom. The reporting is, in my opinion, high quality and the quality of the writing is generally on par with the reporting. The extensive treatment of news, particularly in the Sunday edition, is beyond rival. Mr. Anderson's statement that the news offering are magazine-like or merely informed opinion is a stretch. Opinion exists everywhere, and it is nearly impossible to remove from reporters. Still, I don't find that the writers' opinions get in the way of the news any more than they do at Reuters or the WSJ (both of which I consult at least weekly). Furthermore, bias exists in the eye of the beholder. So you're guaranteed to find bias if you set about to find it. And Mr. Anderson has found his mark. The NYT is not, for example, the Huffington Post or the DailyKos.
Certainly, part of the attraction to the NYTimes is the cultural offerings which simply aren't available in any single daily as they are in the NYT. The Times travel section, arts section and Sunday Styles treat these frivolities with the same level of quality as the national and world news. And, as a musician, a lover of the arts, and a traveler, it makes perfect sense that I would be drawn to the NYT. If the WSJ has similar offerings, I'd read it more frequently.
I can't say that I've noticed the quality has suffered in the 4 years that I've been a subscriber or the 8 years since I began using NYTimes.com as my primary online news resource. I have, on occasion found errors, and frequently wish news items received greater attention.
Anderson's true issue is with the opinion page, and he's not exactly alone in that position. Moderates, progressives, and liberals have opinions just as conservatives do, and the NYT opinion desk tilts in the direction of liberal. However, the NYT doesn't contend otherwise - it competes directly with the WSJ, and so it makes perfect sense that the opinion desk would, in general, be the contrapositive of the WSJ
Now why do I, an unashamed elite, read the NYTimes? Three reasons:
1. the depth and breadth of the reporting
2. my own world view tends to align with the majority of its opinion writers (specifically Krugman, Cohen, Friedman, and Kristof)
3. New York is the modern day Rome, and even uniformed Romans in the outer regions of the empire were affected by the events in Rome. Whether you like it or not, NYC is like no other city in the world, and I have a love-hate relationship with the City. Which is why I read the NYT with equal parts contempt and rapt fascination. Not because I want confirmation of my elite status or because I want to feed my ego or because I am an elitist. My spare time is both limited and valuable; therefore, I choose carefully what I take time to read.
And to which, I responded:
- "Oh big surprise - another conservative tries to rationalize my tendencies toward the moderate/liberal end of the political spectrum." Considering that you are in political minority in our common circle of friends, I can see how this probably does get tiresome. It works both ways, however, as conservatives are often rationalized as some combination of backwoods redneck, fundie Bible thumper, warmongerer, and/or corporate elitist.
- "I understand that intellect is only half or a third or maybe even an irrelevant factor on the ethical-successful continuum of life." I agree with you on this, but I would argue you to be in the minority of the "elites" in this regard. Elites exist across the political spectrum, but very few have the humility to see the truth of your statement. It is human nature for everyone to feel they could fix the world if only they were king for a day, and elites have more ego, power, education, and money to encourage them. My perhaps overly cynical view is that elected officials are controlled by the elitists (per your distinction) in their camp trying to live out their "king for a day" vision for society.
- I defer to your analysis of the NYT's news reporting, as I am guilty of ignorance, and mostly only read the NYT’s editorials. The same is true of the WSJ. I only read straight news if it catches my interest when browsing the headlines on iGoogle.
- Sidenote: I love/hate the term Bobos. It both describes me and also the people I most enjoy mocking. It is a terrible hypocrisy that I am working my way through. Perhaps that is what you meant by "I read the NYT with equal parts contempt and rapt fascination."
-I like the NY as Rome analogy.
- The editorials are what they are, and the NYT should not have to apologize to anyone for their opinions. In my opinion, those that attack the paper as a whole because of the tilt of their editorials do nothing but reveal their own insecurities and fears of being invalidated.
- I just started reading the NYT editorials regularly fairly recently, but I am familiar with Krugman's work and Friedman's writing outside the pages of the NYT. Following are my impressions, if you care.
- I don't often agree with Krugman. The guy won the Nobel Prize for economics, and I stayed at a Holiday Inn Express last night, so I fully realize I have little weight in how history judges him. His research and modeling skills, particularly in trade theory, may be off the charts, but he is a Keynesian through and through, and I VERY humbly reject Keynesian philosophy as heavy-handed, unnecessary, and harmful government manipulation of the market.
- Friedman is tough. He has an amazing mind and writing skill, but I simply disagree with his conclusions. I was against war with Iraq because I don't believe in exporting democracy or pushing for the “modernization” of Arab states. I believe sovereign states should reign in corporate power instead of the other way around, and I am also less "free trade" than Friedman, at least in the sense that the term is used to denote free trade agreements.
- I like what I have read of Cohen, and particularly enjoyed his Pan Am article a couple weeks ago. He is probably my favorite of the group. I like what I have read of Kristof also, and have found myself in agreement.
Thanks again for your response. As fascinated I am with friends who have different opinions from me, I will try my best to always be respectful, and never “marginalize or rationalize” your tendencies.
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