"People complain about the NYT because that’s life. But anyone who’s halfway honest with themselves has to admit that it’s a stellar product. People who don’t like “woke” stuff are mad about the 1619 Project (which certainly had its flaws) but the sheer extent of attention it garnered makes it just about the single most successful special issue of a magazine ever."
This part of your piece was hard for me to swallow. The quoted section above equates lots of attention with success. But I think that gets the order of operations wrong for the newspaper of record. The order of operations should be: first, get it right, and then worry about getting attention. The 1619 project saga, in my view, hurt the credibility of the New York Times. Sean Wilentz's account of the episode is damning. See here: https://www.opera-historica.com/pdfs/oph/2021/01/05.pdf
Although the New York Times has become unreadable in its woke politics permeating almost everything on the page, I don't see that as the crucible of the media problem.
The young, educated big city weirdos writing their infantile bits are generally cute and harmless. It is the consolidation of ownership of media and the resulting degradation of what were independent news sources that should raise our hackles.
Even local TV and print news just regurgitate the common AP-wire feed.
Everything is owned by a group of 80 or so multi-billionaires... Blackrock, Vanguard, State Street... etc. We have no independent and free press. Hopefully Stubstack owners are not operating with an exit strategy to also become owned by this billionaire boys club.
Tangentially related question: What's the deal with Megan McArdle's weird take on the GOP's current coup attempt? She keeps saying this would all go away if Democrats would just admit that Stacey Abrama had some goofy rhetoric about conceding in 2018. That seems obviously ridiculous, right?
So, Matt, can you suggest some outlets we can read that are trying to resist this tendency to groupthink and the limitation of freedom of inquiry and expression practiced by the cultural left? I don't see myself canceling my subscription to the NYT but I think I can survive without Slate and Vox.
The Washington Post has a great local DMV section, and I subscribe mostly for that. If conservatives or right-curious people all cancel their subscriptions, the ONLY audience left is progressives, and I don't think that helps either.
On the economics of the media industry, surely the declining job fortunes of young writers should tilt the balance of power towards less work older editors and masthead owners?
If the NYT leadership wanted to be take a different then surely they could change their hiring practices to achieve it. Obviously this does not cover tech workers who produce their apps, but in journalism it's a buyers market.
Matt I greatly enjoy your writing and usual subject matter but this post was weak and the arguments contradictory. Rather than make my comment it’s own blog post sandbox can you clarify?
“…the more that would-be disruptors are in a precarious position, the more tightly people working in the industry cling to ideological fads and groupthink because their employers can’t offer stable career paths or distinct identities."
Isn’t this contradicted by the NY Times hires you cite? Folks who were hired away from successful disruptors (last I heard Vox was doing well) because of the “distinct identities” they had developed there? Is it because (maybe) being associated with an outlet with as broad as the Times is causing a reverse migration/return to scale rather than some cultural argument?
"we’re left with a giant that’s incapable of self-scrutiny, because that might lead to implosion, paired with a set of institutions that increasingly all reflect the same worldview and do so in very strange ways."
Doesn’t the controversy over the Cotton editorial (an effort by the Op editor to be norm both-sidesy) contradict the idea that there is a lack of “self-scrutiny” you derive from the existence of the Clinton EMAILS headline? Not saying that the Clinton emails coverage wasn’t dumb but jumping around to point at different controversies indicates there’s less evidence of a unified theory of overly-lefty myopia than you imply.
And lastly
"...we’re left with a giant that’s incapable of self-scrutiny, because that might lead to implosion, paired with a set of institutions that increasingly all reflect the same worldview and do so in very strange ways."
And so starting a pay-walled newsletter is a noble way to combat that? Better to be a hermit navel-gazing than a “giant that’s incapable of self-scrutiny” I guess.
The one thing that I keep thinking back on in that article about the division at the NYT is that a significant percentage of those Left / Lestist folks at the NYT talk up their decision to leave Facebook / Uber / Google because of some ethical mission to do right by the world (ask this happening under Trump largely)... But the vast majority of them work at The Wirecutter which, while great, is basically just Silicon Valley VC Capitalism laundered through the NYT masthead and prestige... Those folks still figuring out how to best get folks to click and buy things.
2016 really seems to have convinced a lot of well meaning smart people who code that Facebook / Google changed on them and that they had to "do something" to cleanse themselves of their sins. Unfortunately, I'm not sure there is really much difference at a granular level of day of day job duties. Gawker used to epitomize this model, where you take turns shilling literal clickbait to fund journalism (and it worked for a while until Theil), at the NYT the clickbait is no longer just think pieces in the op-ed section, it's shilling upscale washers and dryers to readers to subsidize what they just paid Ben Smith.
As someone with a chronic illness pre ACA, I never was allowed to understand what it was like to dream to have a job that "made the world a better place" or "fulfilled me" such that the HR BS about company Mission Statements made me do anything but roll my eyes in the way Facebook / Google (and all others sell) to their employees,...so it's always seemed odd how many very smart people struggle / long for a job like that given their relative position in the economy. Watching countless folks talk on record for Social Delimma, it felt like some weird flex penance that no one really asked for from individual employees at Facebook, and it seemed pretty clear they were embellishing it up to some degree the same way a child would if finding themselves in a quasi bad situation with friends who they are about to "sell out" to the adult who caught them. And I get a sense that it's given a lot of those folks a *bit* of a complex...
Someone on Twitter mentioned that "The Social Delimma" was Reefer Madness for upper class professionals with kids and to some degree, I think that's hitting on something. Social media worst offense is that it's a tool that has made it much more efficient to harass and torment folks. It is not the root cause of any of these problems, much like Trump is a symptom not a cause of America's ills. But it's a confident scapegoat for folks that eventually found better jobs don't pretty much the same thing at the NYT.
Curious how you think other aspects of the new creator economy (Twitch, Cameo, etc.) potentially serve to accent/exacerbate potential siloing, or if these different mediums may serve to disrupt in similar ways to the spiritual predecessors
One aspect that hasn't been directly addressed is how trend has been affected by the economics of the media industry.
Given the industries relative decline I would have thought this would shift more relative power towards the older hands in editorial positions & the owners of famous mastheads. Conversely, younger writers face a paucity of opportunities. Surely this should tilt the marketplace towards the formers less woke views?
If younger writers want to stoke rebellion within a newsrooms slack that goes against managers interests why aren't they replaced or passed over in the first place?
One thing I think that is also important is that the young elite college grads that dominate media don't normally have any training in statistics. This is really unfortunate since evidence in the social sciences is increasingly statistical. As a result, whenever there's a hot button issue, we get journalists completely ignoring evidence from the social sciences, cherry picking evidence in order to validate their views, misinterpreting evidence, etc. It feels like I'm getting Shakespeare explained to me by people who never bothered to learn how to read.
It's also curious that the guy who wrote the Kotaku piece on the PS5 didn't just observe his surroundings at a fairly basic level. If a lot of people 'simply won't be able to buy a PS5', then why is it basically impossible to get your hands on one?
Lot's of interesting stuff here, I'd love to hear more on NYT. I knew they were doing very well but the idea that they have market-shaping dominance was new to me.
Maybe "wokeness" seems particularly salient to people because it's how the increase in "far-left weirdness" due to polarization and demographic change manifests outside digital media. I work in health-care tech with lots of well-educated left-wing techies. But no one is leveraging their position to advocate for Medicare For All (we make money from providers and pharma). We're not publishing articles so there is little opportunity for anyone to push radical opinions about other topics. What is left for people to argue about is a) the diversity of the team and b) the language people use.
"People complain about the NYT because that’s life. But anyone who’s halfway honest with themselves has to admit that it’s a stellar product. People who don’t like “woke” stuff are mad about the 1619 Project (which certainly had its flaws) but the sheer extent of attention it garnered makes it just about the single most successful special issue of a magazine ever."
This part of your piece was hard for me to swallow. The quoted section above equates lots of attention with success. But I think that gets the order of operations wrong for the newspaper of record. The order of operations should be: first, get it right, and then worry about getting attention. The 1619 project saga, in my view, hurt the credibility of the New York Times. Sean Wilentz's account of the episode is damning. See here: https://www.opera-historica.com/pdfs/oph/2021/01/05.pdf
Although the New York Times has become unreadable in its woke politics permeating almost everything on the page, I don't see that as the crucible of the media problem.
The young, educated big city weirdos writing their infantile bits are generally cute and harmless. It is the consolidation of ownership of media and the resulting degradation of what were independent news sources that should raise our hackles.
Even local TV and print news just regurgitate the common AP-wire feed.
Everything is owned by a group of 80 or so multi-billionaires... Blackrock, Vanguard, State Street... etc. We have no independent and free press. Hopefully Stubstack owners are not operating with an exit strategy to also become owned by this billionaire boys club.
Just curious, what software do you use to create graphics like the shift in mean example? Or is that just a stock image?
Tangentially related question: What's the deal with Megan McArdle's weird take on the GOP's current coup attempt? She keeps saying this would all go away if Democrats would just admit that Stacey Abrama had some goofy rhetoric about conceding in 2018. That seems obviously ridiculous, right?
Seems relevant to this conversation:
https://www.nytco.com/press/ezra-klein-joins-times-opinion-as-columnist-and-podcast-host/
So, Matt, can you suggest some outlets we can read that are trying to resist this tendency to groupthink and the limitation of freedom of inquiry and expression practiced by the cultural left? I don't see myself canceling my subscription to the NYT but I think I can survive without Slate and Vox.
NYTimes newspaper presses go brrr: https://twitter.com/ezraklein/status/1329853360258748416
Damn it, you beat me to it!
The Washington Post has a great local DMV section, and I subscribe mostly for that. If conservatives or right-curious people all cancel their subscriptions, the ONLY audience left is progressives, and I don't think that helps either.
On the economics of the media industry, surely the declining job fortunes of young writers should tilt the balance of power towards less work older editors and masthead owners?
If the NYT leadership wanted to be take a different then surely they could change their hiring practices to achieve it. Obviously this does not cover tech workers who produce their apps, but in journalism it's a buyers market.
Matt I greatly enjoy your writing and usual subject matter but this post was weak and the arguments contradictory. Rather than make my comment it’s own blog post sandbox can you clarify?
“…the more that would-be disruptors are in a precarious position, the more tightly people working in the industry cling to ideological fads and groupthink because their employers can’t offer stable career paths or distinct identities."
Isn’t this contradicted by the NY Times hires you cite? Folks who were hired away from successful disruptors (last I heard Vox was doing well) because of the “distinct identities” they had developed there? Is it because (maybe) being associated with an outlet with as broad as the Times is causing a reverse migration/return to scale rather than some cultural argument?
"we’re left with a giant that’s incapable of self-scrutiny, because that might lead to implosion, paired with a set of institutions that increasingly all reflect the same worldview and do so in very strange ways."
Doesn’t the controversy over the Cotton editorial (an effort by the Op editor to be norm both-sidesy) contradict the idea that there is a lack of “self-scrutiny” you derive from the existence of the Clinton EMAILS headline? Not saying that the Clinton emails coverage wasn’t dumb but jumping around to point at different controversies indicates there’s less evidence of a unified theory of overly-lefty myopia than you imply.
And lastly
"...we’re left with a giant that’s incapable of self-scrutiny, because that might lead to implosion, paired with a set of institutions that increasingly all reflect the same worldview and do so in very strange ways."
And so starting a pay-walled newsletter is a noble way to combat that? Better to be a hermit navel-gazing than a “giant that’s incapable of self-scrutiny” I guess.
Matt has a huge platform to talk about these issues, maybe even moreso now that he’s independent. Why does leaving Vox make him a hermit?
hermit was a playful choice of words :) but a blog behind a paywall < huge platform?
The one thing that I keep thinking back on in that article about the division at the NYT is that a significant percentage of those Left / Lestist folks at the NYT talk up their decision to leave Facebook / Uber / Google because of some ethical mission to do right by the world (ask this happening under Trump largely)... But the vast majority of them work at The Wirecutter which, while great, is basically just Silicon Valley VC Capitalism laundered through the NYT masthead and prestige... Those folks still figuring out how to best get folks to click and buy things.
2016 really seems to have convinced a lot of well meaning smart people who code that Facebook / Google changed on them and that they had to "do something" to cleanse themselves of their sins. Unfortunately, I'm not sure there is really much difference at a granular level of day of day job duties. Gawker used to epitomize this model, where you take turns shilling literal clickbait to fund journalism (and it worked for a while until Theil), at the NYT the clickbait is no longer just think pieces in the op-ed section, it's shilling upscale washers and dryers to readers to subsidize what they just paid Ben Smith.
As someone with a chronic illness pre ACA, I never was allowed to understand what it was like to dream to have a job that "made the world a better place" or "fulfilled me" such that the HR BS about company Mission Statements made me do anything but roll my eyes in the way Facebook / Google (and all others sell) to their employees,...so it's always seemed odd how many very smart people struggle / long for a job like that given their relative position in the economy. Watching countless folks talk on record for Social Delimma, it felt like some weird flex penance that no one really asked for from individual employees at Facebook, and it seemed pretty clear they were embellishing it up to some degree the same way a child would if finding themselves in a quasi bad situation with friends who they are about to "sell out" to the adult who caught them. And I get a sense that it's given a lot of those folks a *bit* of a complex...
Someone on Twitter mentioned that "The Social Delimma" was Reefer Madness for upper class professionals with kids and to some degree, I think that's hitting on something. Social media worst offense is that it's a tool that has made it much more efficient to harass and torment folks. It is not the root cause of any of these problems, much like Trump is a symptom not a cause of America's ills. But it's a confident scapegoat for folks that eventually found better jobs don't pretty much the same thing at the NYT.
Curious how you think other aspects of the new creator economy (Twitch, Cameo, etc.) potentially serve to accent/exacerbate potential siloing, or if these different mediums may serve to disrupt in similar ways to the spiritual predecessors
One aspect that hasn't been directly addressed is how trend has been affected by the economics of the media industry.
Given the industries relative decline I would have thought this would shift more relative power towards the older hands in editorial positions & the owners of famous mastheads. Conversely, younger writers face a paucity of opportunities. Surely this should tilt the marketplace towards the formers less woke views?
If younger writers want to stoke rebellion within a newsrooms slack that goes against managers interests why aren't they replaced or passed over in the first place?
One thing I think that is also important is that the young elite college grads that dominate media don't normally have any training in statistics. This is really unfortunate since evidence in the social sciences is increasingly statistical. As a result, whenever there's a hot button issue, we get journalists completely ignoring evidence from the social sciences, cherry picking evidence in order to validate their views, misinterpreting evidence, etc. It feels like I'm getting Shakespeare explained to me by people who never bothered to learn how to read.
It's also curious that the guy who wrote the Kotaku piece on the PS5 didn't just observe his surroundings at a fairly basic level. If a lot of people 'simply won't be able to buy a PS5', then why is it basically impossible to get your hands on one?
Lot's of interesting stuff here, I'd love to hear more on NYT. I knew they were doing very well but the idea that they have market-shaping dominance was new to me.
Maybe "wokeness" seems particularly salient to people because it's how the increase in "far-left weirdness" due to polarization and demographic change manifests outside digital media. I work in health-care tech with lots of well-educated left-wing techies. But no one is leveraging their position to advocate for Medicare For All (we make money from providers and pharma). We're not publishing articles so there is little opportunity for anyone to push radical opinions about other topics. What is left for people to argue about is a) the diversity of the team and b) the language people use.