The proximate cause was a pro-fascist op-ed by Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR) on June 3. But Times publisher, A.G. Sulzberger, alluded to other things:
Last week we saw a significant breakdown in our editing processes, not the first we’ve experienced in recent years.
Bennet is the brother of Senator Michael Bennet (D-CO) who ran for president (yeah, this year) and James recused himself from the ed board's discussions of whom to "recommend," i.e. endorse, as the Democrats' nominee. The result was the infamous two-headed Warren/Klobuchar monster, neither of whom got within a country mile of the nomination. Don't know of course if that was one of the other "breakdowns" Sulzberger had in mind but if it wasn't it should have been.
James Bennet had been ed board editor since March, 2016. So yeah, he was there during the last presidential election, too. The Times (like everyone else, honestly) didn't see the Catastrophe coming. The day-after editorial began something very close to, "America has been through worse than Donald Trump." I wasn't that impressed, lol.
The Times also had a Public Editor at the time, some Columbia Journalism School woman who chided Times reporters for missing the Catastrophe for not talking enough to real Trump voters. She herself, whatever her name was, introduced Times reporters and readers to a half dozen women from South Carolina or some other place like that that must be destroyed. I was insulted for Times reporters. That was the last we heard from that Public Editor as the position itself was eliminated lolol. In fact, Times reporters had heard a shit load of what the Low Lifes had to say, quite a bit of it uncensored and candidly recorded at Trump's klan rallies. (One in Ohio, I think Cleveland, at the airport: Trump mentioned Obama's name. A (white, of course) Low Life shouted loudly "Fuck that Nigger!") The PubEd was not under Bennet, she reported directly to Sulzberger but that was certainly a "breakdown."
The Times has gotten all fancy shmansy under A.G. Sulzberger. Their coverage of topics is often led with "What you need to know." Thank you for telling me what I need to know. It's obnoxious. They video and audio recorded all of their interviews of the candidates this year. It was then that I got my first and only look at the editorial board, who were all pictured in a photo. I was shocked at how big it was. From memory, two, maybe three rows, ten across maybe, I think it was like 36, in excess of 30. My first reaction: "How you gonna get a consensus out of that?" I think I even wrote at the time that the editorial board was "unwieldy." Ergo, the two-headed monster. I had the impression that the editorial board of a major national newspaper like the Times or the Washington Post was like Ben Bradlee and three other veterans he used as sounding boards--in other words that it was essentially one guy, or woman. A former Times staffer wrote last year that when he was brought on board he was taken around by one of the gray eminences who pointed to the editorial board room and said, "The agenda for the nation is set in that room." There is no national agenda setting in that room, or enclosed stadium, now.
The Times ed board is, in that photograph I saw, as diverse as the stereotypical McDonald's commercial, heavily young, and, I remember reading the bio blurbs of each one of them, maybe a third? a half? had no background whatsoever with the Times. Look: The New York Times has been in the Ochs-Sulzberger family for like five generations. How can such an institution not speak primarily through one voice? What is it doing with an editorial board twice the size of an NBA roster? It seemed to me that the ghost of that last Public Editor had haunted Sulzberger, that he thought, "We didn't talk to enough people! We're too insular!" (Well, duh! After five gens in the same family you sorta get that way; you're a patriarchy (the Ochs branch has been cut off); you're famously secretive (Michelle Goldberg this week: "The Times discourages intramural squabbling.")) "We need other voices!" And so Bennet, I guess, was tasked with going out and bringing back a quarter pounder, a Big Mac, a chicken sandwich, an apple pie--one of everything on the menu. He picked up some Cotton too.
There was another thing. And this one Bennet was responsible for because he made it public himself. In ill-fated genuflection to "transparency" Bennet revealed that Sulzberger had given the ed board some guidance on their recommendation. It was like Mao's little red book, the Thoughts of Chairman Sulzberger. One of them was a commitment to capitalism, fair, progressive, democratic, whatever the modifiers were, Capitalism. It was the Bernie Sanders exclusionary rule. That motherfucker disappeared from the website in a New York minute. I laughed.
The New York Times editorial page has lost its way under A.G. Sulzberger. Bennet made it worse. The Times used to have like three columnists, remember? Tom Wicker, Anthony Lewis (reporting on the shining path lit by the Khmer Rouge), Russell Baker and, in an earlier nod to opinion inclusiveness, William Safire, Agnew's speech writer ("nattering nabobs of negativism," that gem was Safire's (pun intended)), James Reston. Lewis was the resident communist, Baker specialized in laughs, Safire "On Language" (which Safire excelled at, it was the only time I read him). Times columnists have always had near unfettered freedom to write about whatever they damn well want to write about, so you get specialization, almost hobbies. The current columnists have continued this Times tradition of hobby specialists. Nicholas Kristof is God's gift to women; he is their champion and protector; women speak through one voice, a man's. Paul Krugman, economics, of course. Roger Cohen, grandfathers hiding under beds in Lithuania, Thomas L. Friedman is the Israeli voice. Maureen Dowd has been a Times columnist a long time and writes on all manner of things as I recall. David Brooks is excellent and, as I recall, was the designated pinch hitter for Safire when the latter passed on. They have added the excellent Charles Blow, the cloyingly righteous Catholic Ross Douthat, another conservative (with a bit of controversy in his past at the Wall Street Journal)...what the fuck is his name? Bret Stephens? Yes, Bret Stephens. Stephens writes well. Michelle Goldberg, excellent. I just checked, they have sixteen columnists, sixteen! Too many. Unwieldy. But at least they are not intended to speak in one voice, precisely the opposite. NONE OF WHOM sit on the ed. board, none of whom have any input whatsoever on editorials. To be a New York Times columnist is to have reached the absolute apex of journalism. Many readers read the Times solely for their favorite columnist. It's like tuning in to your favorite TV series. Monday, Friedman and Kristof or whomever, I just pulled those two names out; Tuesday, Krugman and Cohen, say; Wednesday whomever and whomever, so you know if you're a Tom Friedman fan, every Monday and Friday, your favorite longest running TV series in history is on. They set the agenda for the nation if anybody at the Times does, not the ed. board. Neither do Times reporters, the equal of and perhaps superior to, any anywhere on earth have any seat on the editorial board. So, Maggie Haberman, no. The New York Times is a warren of pigeon holes: reporter, columnist, editorial board, publisher, and they are purposely hermetically sealed off from each other. I don't know if all that still works under this new Sulzberger. It didn't work too good under Bennet.
I made the decision not to have the Times as my go-to news source a few weeks ago. I wrote then that they just annoy me. I honestly thought I'd probably go around the block once and run right back. I haven't. I hardly read it, hardly even check it anymore, and don't miss it. There was no final straw. The things I've mentioned above were contributors, but just to general annoyance, that's all. It does seem to me that the Times as an institution has lost its way a bit, but these are damned disorienting times (pun? yes). As A.G. Sulzberger gets older maybe he'll find his way better. But listen, you are the New York Times. Speak confidently in one voice. You do not need a diversity of voices. The New York Times is enough.
Last week we saw a significant breakdown in our editing processes, not the first we’ve experienced in recent years.
Bennet is the brother of Senator Michael Bennet (D-CO) who ran for president (yeah, this year) and James recused himself from the ed board's discussions of whom to "recommend," i.e. endorse, as the Democrats' nominee. The result was the infamous two-headed Warren/Klobuchar monster, neither of whom got within a country mile of the nomination. Don't know of course if that was one of the other "breakdowns" Sulzberger had in mind but if it wasn't it should have been.
James Bennet had been ed board editor since March, 2016. So yeah, he was there during the last presidential election, too. The Times (like everyone else, honestly) didn't see the Catastrophe coming. The day-after editorial began something very close to, "America has been through worse than Donald Trump." I wasn't that impressed, lol.
The Times also had a Public Editor at the time, some Columbia Journalism School woman who chided Times reporters for missing the Catastrophe for not talking enough to real Trump voters. She herself, whatever her name was, introduced Times reporters and readers to a half dozen women from South Carolina or some other place like that that must be destroyed. I was insulted for Times reporters. That was the last we heard from that Public Editor as the position itself was eliminated lolol. In fact, Times reporters had heard a shit load of what the Low Lifes had to say, quite a bit of it uncensored and candidly recorded at Trump's klan rallies. (One in Ohio, I think Cleveland, at the airport: Trump mentioned Obama's name. A (white, of course) Low Life shouted loudly "Fuck that Nigger!") The PubEd was not under Bennet, she reported directly to Sulzberger but that was certainly a "breakdown."
The Times has gotten all fancy shmansy under A.G. Sulzberger. Their coverage of topics is often led with "What you need to know." Thank you for telling me what I need to know. It's obnoxious. They video and audio recorded all of their interviews of the candidates this year. It was then that I got my first and only look at the editorial board, who were all pictured in a photo. I was shocked at how big it was. From memory, two, maybe three rows, ten across maybe, I think it was like 36, in excess of 30. My first reaction: "How you gonna get a consensus out of that?" I think I even wrote at the time that the editorial board was "unwieldy." Ergo, the two-headed monster. I had the impression that the editorial board of a major national newspaper like the Times or the Washington Post was like Ben Bradlee and three other veterans he used as sounding boards--in other words that it was essentially one guy, or woman. A former Times staffer wrote last year that when he was brought on board he was taken around by one of the gray eminences who pointed to the editorial board room and said, "The agenda for the nation is set in that room." There is no national agenda setting in that room, or enclosed stadium, now.
The Times ed board is, in that photograph I saw, as diverse as the stereotypical McDonald's commercial, heavily young, and, I remember reading the bio blurbs of each one of them, maybe a third? a half? had no background whatsoever with the Times. Look: The New York Times has been in the Ochs-Sulzberger family for like five generations. How can such an institution not speak primarily through one voice? What is it doing with an editorial board twice the size of an NBA roster? It seemed to me that the ghost of that last Public Editor had haunted Sulzberger, that he thought, "We didn't talk to enough people! We're too insular!" (Well, duh! After five gens in the same family you sorta get that way; you're a patriarchy (the Ochs branch has been cut off); you're famously secretive (Michelle Goldberg this week: "The Times discourages intramural squabbling.")) "We need other voices!" And so Bennet, I guess, was tasked with going out and bringing back a quarter pounder, a Big Mac, a chicken sandwich, an apple pie--one of everything on the menu. He picked up some Cotton too.
There was another thing. And this one Bennet was responsible for because he made it public himself. In ill-fated genuflection to "transparency" Bennet revealed that Sulzberger had given the ed board some guidance on their recommendation. It was like Mao's little red book, the Thoughts of Chairman Sulzberger. One of them was a commitment to capitalism, fair, progressive, democratic, whatever the modifiers were, Capitalism. It was the Bernie Sanders exclusionary rule. That motherfucker disappeared from the website in a New York minute. I laughed.
The New York Times editorial page has lost its way under A.G. Sulzberger. Bennet made it worse. The Times used to have like three columnists, remember? Tom Wicker, Anthony Lewis (reporting on the shining path lit by the Khmer Rouge), Russell Baker and, in an earlier nod to opinion inclusiveness, William Safire, Agnew's speech writer ("nattering nabobs of negativism," that gem was Safire's (pun intended)), James Reston. Lewis was the resident communist, Baker specialized in laughs, Safire "On Language" (which Safire excelled at, it was the only time I read him). Times columnists have always had near unfettered freedom to write about whatever they damn well want to write about, so you get specialization, almost hobbies. The current columnists have continued this Times tradition of hobby specialists. Nicholas Kristof is God's gift to women; he is their champion and protector; women speak through one voice, a man's. Paul Krugman, economics, of course. Roger Cohen, grandfathers hiding under beds in Lithuania, Thomas L. Friedman is the Israeli voice. Maureen Dowd has been a Times columnist a long time and writes on all manner of things as I recall. David Brooks is excellent and, as I recall, was the designated pinch hitter for Safire when the latter passed on. They have added the excellent Charles Blow, the cloyingly righteous Catholic Ross Douthat, another conservative (with a bit of controversy in his past at the Wall Street Journal)...what the fuck is his name? Bret Stephens? Yes, Bret Stephens. Stephens writes well. Michelle Goldberg, excellent. I just checked, they have sixteen columnists, sixteen! Too many. Unwieldy. But at least they are not intended to speak in one voice, precisely the opposite. NONE OF WHOM sit on the ed. board, none of whom have any input whatsoever on editorials. To be a New York Times columnist is to have reached the absolute apex of journalism. Many readers read the Times solely for their favorite columnist. It's like tuning in to your favorite TV series. Monday, Friedman and Kristof or whomever, I just pulled those two names out; Tuesday, Krugman and Cohen, say; Wednesday whomever and whomever, so you know if you're a Tom Friedman fan, every Monday and Friday, your favorite longest running TV series in history is on. They set the agenda for the nation if anybody at the Times does, not the ed. board. Neither do Times reporters, the equal of and perhaps superior to, any anywhere on earth have any seat on the editorial board. So, Maggie Haberman, no. The New York Times is a warren of pigeon holes: reporter, columnist, editorial board, publisher, and they are purposely hermetically sealed off from each other. I don't know if all that still works under this new Sulzberger. It didn't work too good under Bennet.
I made the decision not to have the Times as my go-to news source a few weeks ago. I wrote then that they just annoy me. I honestly thought I'd probably go around the block once and run right back. I haven't. I hardly read it, hardly even check it anymore, and don't miss it. There was no final straw. The things I've mentioned above were contributors, but just to general annoyance, that's all. It does seem to me that the Times as an institution has lost its way a bit, but these are damned disorienting times (pun? yes). As A.G. Sulzberger gets older maybe he'll find his way better. But listen, you are the New York Times. Speak confidently in one voice. You do not need a diversity of voices. The New York Times is enough.
