It gives me no satisfaction to say this — indeed it fills me with trepidation for the nation — but The Times is broken.
I know some of you are thinking, “You only now realize this?” No, I’m only now saying it. I have been criticizing The Times for its willful credulity in the face of rising fascism and its bothsidesism, but also because it is the biggest and was the best we had and I wished it to be better. Now I come to wonder whether it can be.
The final straw is not just Politico’s report that Times Chairman and Publisher A.G. Sulzberger thinks he is entitled by birthright to interview the President of the United States — and, deprived of the privilege, allegedly and petulantly encouraged use of news columns to criticize Joe Biden. “It’s A.G.,” Politico quoted an unnamed journalist saying. “He’s the one who is pissed [that] Biden hasn’t done any interviews and quietly encourages all the tough reporting on his age.” That is what we call a buried lede.
No, the final straw for me came with The Times’ response to Politico’s reporting from an unnamed spokesperson. Did the paper and its leadership use this as an opportunity for self-reflection, to finally ask what it might be doing wrong? No. The institution doubled down on entitlement and complaint, cloaking its hissy fit in condescension and the sacred language of the press: “For anyone who understands the role of the free press in a democracy, it should be troubling that President Biden has so actively and effectively avoided questions from independent journalists during his term.”
At about the same time, Times Executive Editor Joe Kahn was addressing an industry conference and said the obvious part out loud (qouted by an attendee): “Our commitment to independent journalism is a commitment to make many of our readers unhappy most of the times.”
Sulzberger, too, talks often about “independence.” But independence from whom? Not the official sources and the powerful from whom they seek access. Often not the right-wing that manipulates them. No, they want to prove they are independent of liberals and their own readers — who happen to be the same people. The Times equates independence with making us unhappy. Jay Rosen spotted that dynamic years ago. That — and petulance — is what drives The Times to #ButHerEmails and now #ButHisAge.
I was struck reading former Washington Post Executive Editor Marty Baron’s book, Collision of Power, when he said that “by the fall of 2018, the percentage of our digital subscribers who considered themselves somewhat or very conservative was in the single digits, with slightly more than 80 percent ‘very’ or ‘somewhat’ liberal.”
For Baron, that seems a lamentation. He, like The Times and most of journalism in the age of mass media, think it is their job to serve everyone the same. That is the unspoken form of bothsidesism that rules the institution. It is a business imperative as much as a mission; monopoly newspapers want the largest possible audience: everyone.
In truth, I say that Baron should have seen the paper’s apparent ideological imbalance as a blessing: Now you know who your audience is. It is a community of commonality. You should then understand how better to serve them. You could equip them with the facts, perspective, history, and intellgectual honesty necessary to win arguments with their misinformed Uncle Jim. But these papers think it is their challenge to serve Uncle Jim who never reads these papers because he’s happy watching Fox News.
The Post, under Baron, used to be better in my opinion; I thought it had surpassed The Times. But his replacement, Sally Buzbee, is bringing to the paper her anodyne ambitions from the Associated Press — the telegraphed voice from no one that Neil Postman, James Carey, and Jay Rosen warn of. In my view, The Post’s news judgment has been getting worse and worse. Meanwhile, The Wall Street Journal is, make no mistake about it, Rupert Murdoch’s creature.
These three newspapers, which in the winners-take-most market of media today capture two thirds of subscription revenue, each have wonderful journalists doing good and important work. But they are betrayed by their institutions, which are losing trust and refuse to ask why.
Meanwhile, of course, the rest of the legacy newspaper industry is in dire condition, most of its big chains now owned by hedge funds that cut them to the marrow, copy each other, do not innovate. The one thing they still invest in is lobbying, with their trade association, the News/Media Alliance, writing and Xeroxing bills for legislators from Washington to Springfield to Sacramento to benefit old newspapers at the expense of Black, Latino, community, digital, and startup news media.
I have come to the belief that the status of legacy American newspapers is no longer the measure of the health of the country’s news and information ecosystem. It is time to separate them and to concentrate on the future of the ecosystem as a whole. That is where foundations and policymakers must turn their attention.
As I was writing this, I saw that Howard Stern had interviewed Joe Biden. I stopped and listened and came away with a better sense of Biden’s character and soul than from any interview or press conference held by political reporters or publishers ever. Their conversation was illuminating, revealing, touching, human, and meaningful. I hope Stern and Sirius make it public for all to hear.
Take that, A.G.
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