This has been reported on, I'm not just speculating. AG Sulzberger, the Times publisher has been pissed at PoJo for four years because he wouldn't sit down for an interview. "Every president since FDR has..." he has said over and over again to the White House. The White House got their backs up. The Times felt "entitled" as the legacy "newspaper of record" and the White House refused.
Kamala sat down with them. There were, no lie, like 35 Times journalists present. Sulzberger was present. He spent the first 3-4 mins asking Kamala why PoJo wouldn't sit down with them. "Every president since FDR..." She was pissed after she left, muttering to aides that AG had wasted 3-4 mins of the scheduled time. Now SHE won't sit down with them as Dem nominee and Sulzberger is furious. He has his toady Bret Stephens challenging her, all but saying, "no sit down, no favorable coverage." She gave an interview instead to whoever it was, ABC, CNN. I am as sure as I can be without hearing AG telling me directly that that is a large part of what has been going on there "for the last couple of years" in their opinion page and their reporting. So whatever the constellation of reasons consists, this is coming from the top down, from AG Sulzberger to his editors, to the reporters.
When I was writing about the Times, because I was reading it, I wrote many times that there is a code to reading them. There's a rule for how long columnists' pieces can be. Gail Collins wrote in 2016 that it "about 800 words". I swear I read that it was a very precise number, like 638. Whatever, there's a fixed rule. Friedman would often surround the critical point of his columns with chaff. And to give another instance of the extent of editorial control, the layout of the front page, traditionally the hard copy had the most important stories above the fold. Obvious enough. But they had an additional internal rule, so announced years ago, whether it is still, idk, that the most important of the most important was in the right hand column of the front page above the fold. Hebrew influence? Hebrew is read right to left. English is left to right. Whatever the reason, you had to know that. What the Times editors deemed the most important story was in the right hand column, however small, at top, above the fold.
This elitist, encoded, entitled crap is exactly what NYT has always been known for. Now, all of these editorial influences have become vindictive. The "nation's agenda" is no longer made in the Times editorial room (ANOTHER thing that an editor told to a new hiree, pointing to "that room" with smug pride.) I don't know, I honestly don't know because I don't read it anymore, what agenda or agendas they are pushing now, but it is not the nation's agenda.
