Media wrap: NJ.com goes print-silent, more LAT censorship

First, how does the largest paper, in the most densely populated state in the US, go print-silent? (And, other than possible gloating or to pick up readers and advertisers, why does the New York Times have its story about the New Jersey Star-Ledger paywall-unlocked?)

That said, seeing it unlocked is an eye-opener about the entire chain:

Its sister publication, The Jersey Journal, one of the earliest holdings in the Newhouse media family’s now-vast empire, will cease to exist in print or online, leaving Hudson County, N.J. — a hotbed for political corruption — without a daily newspaper. Three other affiliated papers, The Times of Trenton, The South Jersey Times and The Hunterdon County Democrat, will stop printing and offer only digital news.

Incredible.

But, not surprising.

The NYT goes on to note that the Star-Ledger's parent company is the Newhouse family's Advance, as one could guess from the online name of "NJ dot com." It references what it did in Alabama. And we know what it also did in NOLA, where Baton Rouge, under different ownership, wound up kicking the Times-Picayune ass and forcing a sale-merger.

On the other hand, this may have been inevitable:

In 2005, nearly 600,000 households bought The Ledger on Sundays, according to the Alliance for Audited Media. By 2023, Sunday circulation had plummeted to roughly 86,000. When it announced two months ago that it planned to stop printing on Feb. 2, the company noted that its circulation had dropped by an additional 21 percent last year.

There you are.

And, with all those papers going online, what happens with state requirements on legal notices? Erm, this!

The Legislature adopted a temporary fix that permits communities with a defunct newspaper to purchase legal ads through the paper’s online news site. Lawmakers are expected to try to craft a more permanent solution this month. Lobbyists for counties, school boards and the state’s nearly 600 cities and towns are pressing for permission to publish legal ads on their own websites — a step that would deprive news organizations of a longstanding source of revenue.

And, yeah, I expect legiscritters will allow local governmental entities to publish. First, given New Jersey's state government reputation. Second, given how one company has so dominated one state's print media at the larger newspaper level, the NJ Lege may just want to say fuck you to the Newhouses.

==

And part 2 of the header?

It's becoming clearer by the day that the Los Angeles Times "doctor daddy" owner, Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, is determined to kiss Trump's ass. His daughter may be right that a Kamala Harris endorsement editorial was spiked in part over Gaza. But, no more than in part, and surely a smaller part than she'd like to claim.

The latest? Doctor Daddy had a column, not a house editorial, critical of Brainworm Bobby, heavily edited, including changing the headline. Worse yet? It was an outsider's submitted column.

David Folkenflik notes that Doctor Daddy has gone Musk-y on his Tweeting for Brainworm Bobby, too.

Since I posted this last week? Doctor Daddy is also doing at least a bit of flirtation with the COVID antivaxxer world.

The NYT can't stand the internal Gaza blowback

 It probably also doesn't like the external media scrutiny from another media powerhouse, in this case, the Wall Street Journal training guns on the Old Gray Lady, but, given how often the Times has done exactly this to places like the Washington Post, turnabout is fair play.

As a lot of us know, a lot of the NYT's reporting on Israel-Gaza is shaky at best. (That's why happens when you hire someone with no previous journalism experience, Anat Schwartz, apparently for hasbara-related reasons, and what she and the team with her report doesn't have solid support even in terms of hasbara as journalism.)

So, besides outside pushback, over this and other things, the Slimes (like the Dallas Snooze, Fort Worth StartleGram, etc.) is also getting blowback internally.

And, in a word, from the top down — the top being Executive Editor Joe Kahn, as Pinch Sulzburger keeps himself out of the picture or else the WSJ doesn't rope him in — the brass hats are pissed:

“The idea that someone dips into that process in the middle, and finds something that they considered might be interesting or damaging to the story under way, and then provides that to people outside, felt to me and my colleagues like a breakdown in the sort of trust and collaboration that’s necessary in the editorial process,” Executive Editor Joe Kahn said in an interview. “I haven’t seen that happen before.”

Beyond that "pisses," there's a stereotypical hypocritical airing of grievances.

“Young adults who are coming up through the education system are less accustomed to this sort of open debate, this sort of robust exchange of views around issues they feel strongly about than may have been the case in the past,” he said, adding that the onus is on the Times to instill values like independence in its employees.

Hey Joe, just maybe? Just maybe it's people like you who have that problem.

Seriously, to me, that's exactly what this reads like. You're in the journalism version of a stereotypical ivory tower, a stereotypical part of the "Establishment," you've long been in bed with what I call the Nat-Sec Nutsacks™ on foreign policy (Judith Miller ring a bell?) and now, you're finding out that younger hires aren't so much.

And so no, looking just like the US government in similar situations (remember the Dobbs leak?) rather than looking at how and why you published hasbara, you're looking for leakers. And, of course, this gives Kahn the perfect opportunity to sideline a promised internal investigation as to how this got run in the first place.

And, that all said, the WSJ participates in the hasbara. Re the story at issue, it says it was written by "Jeffrey Gettleman and two freelancers." Anat Schwartz, Ms. Hasbara 2024, isn't even mentioned by name.

Top 10 of 2020

 So, what did readers like on my blog during the past year? Let's take a look. (Top 10 is as of Jan. 4, 2021.)

Note: These were not all written in 2020 (and I don't know if Blogger can be set to do that), just the 10 most read in the last year.

No 1, in fact comes from six years ago. Long before Craphouse bought the Austin Stateless, I blogged about newspapers dying in Austin, at least by adhole.

No. 2 was Warren Buffett's decision a year ago to bail on newspaper ownership. I guess the man who took a chainsaw to the Buffalo News long, long ago realized that he couldn't pull that at smaller papers without an even cruder chainsaw.

No. 3 was about Southern Newspapers appearing to make some false claims about printing presses it allegedly owned.

No. 4 was about the Rio Rancho Observer, ethically challenged a decade ago, semi-biting the dust. (I wrote a few weeks earlier, and it's linked within, about the differently ethically challenged Los Alamos Monitor fully biting the dust.)

No. 5 was my hot take on ABC suspending David Wright for telling the truth about corporate media.

No. 6 was from 2018, telling potential applicants to take a pass on working at Wick Communications. Maybe it went even further downhill after that?

No. 7, interestingly, was from that same month. Sadly, newspaper publishers and owners who need to read this truth probably won't — newspaper magazines are NOT "the answer" to what ails you.

No. 8 was rhetorical. I asked readers if they would pay more for NYT subscriptions after the Old Gray Lady announced last February that it would start increasing their cost.

No. 9? In September, I blogged about the Times again, wondering if its change in CEOs meant "sponsored verticals" were around the corner.

No. 10? I told fellow small-town Texas editors to get a fucking life and stop thinking they had to be the omnipotent god of small town high school football statistics.

Surprisingly, none of these were about CNHI or any of its individual newspapers.

NYT bigfooting media religious coverage

On my primary blog, I recently discussed a New York Times story about President Donald Trump's continued support among the religious right, especially in rural heartland areas.

Here, I'm going to shift that focus more to the New York Times' coverage of religious issues and how it bigfoots other media and shows some arrogance as part of that.

There's an old joke off the Old Gray Lady's masthead of "All the news that's fit to print," that runs: "It's not news until the New York Times prints it."

And, on the Religious Right's willing, individual-believers wedding with Donald Trump, in a piece a month ago, the Old Gray Lady would have you think so on this issue as well.

"Christianity will have power"? Yes, Trump said it. But, many other sites have done reporting on various angles of individual believers, and not just nameplate pastors like Robert Jeffress, lining up for Trump. So, did the Times really roll the ball forward?

Its top editorial staff would have you think so.

First, two of their marketing Tweets and my responses:

Understanding religion requires reading @elizabethjdias, one of the best religion reporters in the business. She spent months on this piece explaining Donald Trump's support among white evangelical Christians and it shows. https://t.co/7VJissul9R

— Marc Lacey (@marclacey) August 9, 2020

Uhh, no. I don't "need" anyone.

Actually, no, I don't need Elizabeth Dias at all for "understanding religion." I'm an atheist with a graduate divinity degree from a seminary far more rigorous than Religious Right bible colleges, the type of person the Religious Right hates.

— Nagasaki 75: Remember the FULL STORY 🚩🌻 (@AFCC_Esq) August 9, 2020

There you are, Mr. NYT National Editor Marc Lacey.

Then this:

If you have found yourself baffled by white evangelical support for Trump, this extraordinary piece by @elizabethjdias is for you. This is journalism as translation, requiring literacy in multiple cultures.https://t.co/vxL3VmfNoM

— Jia Lynn Yang (@jialynnyang) August 9, 2020

Sorry, but no translator needed, Ms. Deputy National Editor Yang.

Here you are:

Nope, not baffled. But?! Elizabeth Dias left stuff on the table, like not delving into the "martyr" mentality held by much of the Religious Right. (It's not quite as deep as Jehovah's Witnesses martyr mentality, but it's deep enough.) https://t.co/qrQLFPYHkq

— Nagasaki 75: Remember the FULL STORY 🚩🌻 (@AFCC_Esq) August 9, 2020

Just what did Dias leave off the table?

First, why Trump instead of Ted Cruz? That speech was in January 2016, before the Iowa caucus vote. On paper, Dominionist Ted Cruz and his Seven Mountains daddy were the ideal candidates for the Religious Right to back. So, why didn't they? Pew notes that, in polling, the most devout among the evangelicals DID tilt Cruz, even though, overall, the Religious Right tilted Trump. Obvious deduction? Lots of these people may be sincere in their belief claims but don't go to church that often!

Related? One other thing Dias left on the table (well, there's yet more, but this covers the basics):

Cliff Notes "Christianity will have power" part 4
8. One other big issue Elisabeth Dias left on the table is the issue before the Religious Right backing Trump vs. Democrats; it's the 2016 primaries issue of the #ReligiousRight backing Trump vs. other Republicans. 4/x

— Nagasaki 75: Remember the FULL STORY 🚩🌻 (@AFCC_Esq) August 9, 2020

Remember, Trump's speech was in Iowa, January 2016, before the Iowa caucuses.

Did she ask any of the people interviewed whether Trump was their first choice or not? Did she ask about the frequency of their attendance? Or, since this was reported over that long of a period, did she hang out a few Sundays to check for herself?

If you're going to have someone with a graduate religious degree from Princeton work on this story for, I presume, several weeks, and you can't answer that? The story comes off as election-year pandering, in my book. True, you would still want the focus on Trump, but if you can't explain why him, not Cruz, then you can't fully explain "why still him" today, can you?

Second is Dias claiming that this is all new:

The Trump era has revealed the complete fusion of evangelical Christianity and conservative politics, even as white evangelical Christianity continues to decline as a share of the national population.

In reality, with data research sites like Pew having written about this for three or four years straight now, the "Rise of the Nones" (which is a broader issue than just the decline of conservative evangelical Xianity, and blogged about me three years ago, as well as last year) is yesterday's news. Indeed, the piece of mine three years ago noted that, by this year, per Pew estimates, "nones" would equal Catholics in the American population.

The problem is not just that the NYT is behind the curve on Nones. It's that a lot of people who might fall into "Nones" territory may not know this if they get much of their religious news from the Times, or from outfits following its lead. This ties to how politicians think their constituents are, overall, even more conservative than is true.  

As for the "complete fusion" issue? Forty years ago, the Religious Right backed for president a man who had expanded abortion access while governor of California, who never went to church and who consulted astrologers. (Ronnie turned Nancy on to that, not the other way around.)

In other words, I don't see anything beyond the idea that the politer, mainline Protestant rural versions of the Religious Right were, in their own way, thinking they'd "own the libs" with Trump as president. Per my take on sociology of religion issues within the Religious Right, that's not new to me, either.

Indeed, I mentioned that in my first tweet in a thread after my responses to the editorial marketers.

Cliff Notes "Christianity will have power"
1. White #ReligiousRight Xns used to be able to bully America as Trump bullied tenants
2. SCOTUS has #FirstAmendment rulings
2A. America changed
3. So, Rel Right became #snowflakes
4. Trump came as bully-saviorhttps://t.co/HG0FV7gHeL

— Nagasaki 75: Remember the FULL STORY 🚩🌻 (@AFCC_Esq) August 9, 2020

See, that "bully" part is important. Per "The Rise of the Nones" issues, the Religious Right has been losing power for some time. Rather than sidle up to Hillary Clinton and her conservative DC prayer circle warrior background with The Fellowship, though, because she was pro-choice, and ignoring that Trump long had been so, they backed Trump.

The bullying? Bullying and shaming people into expression of religious belief in small town America, even in blue states (Galloway vs Town of Greece) was and still is a real thing. Remember, most members of the Religious Right hate atheists even more than gays, and may hate non-Christians, especially Mooslims, almost as much.

OK, next:

Cliff Notes "Christianity will have power" part 2
5. #ReligiousRight has long been hypocrites
5A. Being #snowflakes w/ back-of-hand-to-forehead martyrdom was used 2 justify doubling down on hypocrisy
6. Trump's sense of faux martyrdom was flame 2 moths 2/xhttps://t.co/HG0FV7gHeL

— Nagasaki 75: Remember the FULL STORY 🚩🌻 (@AFCC_Esq) August 9, 2020

Trump has played the faux-martyr role to a T since HUD sued him and his dad 50 years ago for racism in apartment renting. He knows how to play an audience like a cheap fiddle.

More sociology of religion that was missed.

And, I haven't even touched on the issue of possible political framing being involved with how the story was crafted.

So, for folks at places like CJR who say the New York Times has no competition? That's kind of the problem. For folks like Jay Rosen who have said in the past that papers shouldn't be competing with one another for angles on the same story? In cases like this, yeah, maybe they should.

So, is the NYT going to give us sponsored verticals next?

A month ago I blogged about the departure of outgoing New York Times CEO Mark Thompson.

Now, via Digiday, I look at his successor, Meredith Kopit Levien.

And, no, the header is not a total joke, given that she introduced to Forbes its "controversial sponsored content unit," called Brandvoice. Given that Forbes also at this time became the first major biz magazine to expand the quantity, though not the quality, of its online "content" with biz-celebrity columns galore, Forbes has kind of sucked ass on the editorial side for some time.

The piece praises Levien for working to uphold the editorial-advertising wall during her time as ad director there. BUT ... it also notes she brought over from Forbes a penchant for native advertising. or advertorial, as I still call it here.

I've no doubt that will expand in the future.

Per the story, I'd expect a lot more of sponsored podcasting in the future, too. It also wouldn't totally surprise me if the NYT launched its own version of programmatic advertising to outsource, not so much to newspapers but to magazines.

No print New York Times in 20 years? OK, and???

An interesting interview with exiting NYT CEO Mark Thompson. Or rather, compressed interview snippets from another site behind a paywall plus a second interview with neoliberals on steroids, McKinsey. The fact that Thompson thought that was a good place to visit is itself a "tell."

The reality, of course, is that the Times ain't all that, its shit does stink, and its "best news" is best news for the establishment class. That's takeaway No. 2 after the McKinsey butt-kissing.

No. 3? Thompson, though thinking editorial page editor James Bennet did need to leave over his handling of the Tom Cotton guest op-ed, applauded his hiring of the likes of all-purpose wingnut Bret Stephens and hardcore Zionist and Palestinian hater Bari Weiss.

So, Nieman, no, I really have no need to read the full, linked stuff at CNBC and pay for it, or at McKinsey and need to take a shower later. Pass.

It's stuff like this that led me to blog about how I not only wouldn't pay the current subscription fare, but to ask others if they'd pay the hiked rate.

If you want to be proud of a self-erected Overton Window, too, Mark, fine. Don't expect me to subscribe.

Calling out the NYT on its Overton Window

So, the Old Gray Lady said goodbye to James Bennet as NYT op-ed head last week. He won't be missed. Will his temporary or permanent successor reign in Bret Stephens or Bari Weiss? Probably not. Move Teapot Tommy Friedman out to pasture? Unlikely.

That's the theme of Kenan Malik's commentary at The Guardian.

Shorter, and sharpened, Malik?

The New York Times has erected its own Overton Window for the past three years. He mentions Stephens; dunno why he passed by Weiss, unless ultra-Zionism isn't on his radar screen, or unless he felt  Stephens was good enough as representative of a class. (Mondoweiss notes that Israeli guest op-eds have had Tom Cotton angles toward Palestinians before, like Schmuel Rosner, one of four such in 2018. One of them was by Stephens.)

The column has other points, though. Yeah, Bennet resigned. Riffing on Malik, this isn't the first time he hadn't read a controversial column, though. So, did the NYT push? Shouldn't it require its editorial page editor to personally read all potential guest columns before they run?

That said, Malik only touches on the tip of the problem. The NYT has long had NOBODY representing blue-collar liberalism on its pages. It's NEVER had anybody representing left-liberalism or beyond.

So, not only has it moved its Overton Window rightward with Stephens and Weiss, it created its own Overton Window in the first place.

If people would stop subscribing to the damn thing, since subscriptions, and especially digital ones, are an ever-bigger part of its revenue, maybe it would listen up.

Not likely, but maybe.

The New York Times has stopped being COVIDIOTs

No, I'm not talking about some of the Old Gray Mare's he-said, she-said on Trump pressers as late as last week.

I'm talking business side.

They've stopped publishing Sunday sports and travel sections for the duration.

And it took it this long WHY to make that call?

And even this isn't that big of a deal.

Most daily papers aren't even publishing sports PAGES, let alone sections.

The Dallas Snooze had, last week Thursday, one, maybe two pages as a lead-up to the NFL Draft. This is DALLAS, home of Jethro Jerry Jones and his Cowgirls.

And, travel? What was the Slimes running the last couple of weeks, excursions from the Lower East Side to Staten Island? Upper East Side to Harlem? Seeing if New Yorkers were welcome in Connecticut

Dean Baquet kind of asleep at the wheel, unless Punch Sulzberger was forcing this stuff to still print.

That said, per H.L. Mencken, nobody ever went broke overestimating the pomposity of the Times.

1619 Project: Bad journalism, as are most responses to it

I'd read bits and pieces from the New York Times' ongoing project to claim that 1619, not 1776, is the real beginnings of America. It hadn't really interested me at the time, because I thought it was too much into identity politics to lack nuance, among other things.

That said, I don't need the likes of Conor Friedersdorf to lead the opposition.

Neocentrist mush-pulper Friedersdorf of the Atlantic is the latest to call out the old black lady, citing "enemy of my enemy" support such as World Socialist (who are generally Trots) and Ibram X. Kendi, who bats around something like the black nationalist world. (Contra what you might think on the X, though, he's not a black Muslim.) They can't agree with one another why the 1619 Project is wrong, just that it is. I could tell the others are wrong from reading; I'd read snippets of 1619 pieces and knew it was less than fully right at the time it was breathlessly announced.

So, they're ALL wrong, at least to some degree. Wrong enough to set off a Tweetstorm on my part which I will expand into a blog post.

Let's start!

I just lost respect for Gordon Wood as a historian. (I didn't have much respect to lose for .@conor64) as a journo.
Many slaveholders were aware of 1774 Somerset ruling. It may not have been FOREMOST in their minds, but ONE cause for backing revolt? Yes. https://t.co/VV0M7cBbNM

— reallyDonaldTrump  🚩🌻 (@AFCC_Esq) January 6, 2020

Friedersdorf may not have directly chosen the header, but it accurately reflects his take. And it's wrong right from the header.

The Somerset decision? Writing from memory, I got the year wrong. It was 1772. But, fear of it was behind fear of Dunmore's Declaration about freeing Virginia slaves once the Revolutionary War started. So, ONE cause? Indeed. WSWS mentioned Dunmore but not Somerset; Friedersdorf mentions neither.

Next?

As for .@WSWS_Updates calling out the #1619Project, I understand why. Ppl like it, Adolph Reed, etc., believe that race issues inevitably reduce to class issues. (This is the same Reed who a few years ago laughingly said New Mexico was one of the whitest states in the nation 2/x

— reallyDonaldTrump  🚩🌻 (@AFCC_Esq) January 6, 2020

And, I blogged about that issue in much detail, plus a follow-up. It eventually led Reed flak and flunky Doug Henwood to block me on Twitter and vice versa. (Several months before that, possibly not wanting to believe that red states, on average, have less income inequality than blue ones, Henwood got the order backward on state Gini coefficients, not realizing that Utah has the least income inequality in the union.)

Next, let's kick the 1619 Project itself:

Does the #1619Project have problems? Hell yes. Its take on Abraham Lincoln is especially ridiculous. To the degree it works off Jill Lepore, I knew that, too. I wrote the top, AND top critical, review of "These Truths." 3/x https://t.co/I4ZCiwJ9Dn

— reallyDonaldTrump  🚩🌻 (@AFCC_Esq) January 6, 2020

Was Lincoln perfect? No, but he did "evolve," and evolve indeed, on race issues throughout his life and through the Civil War. Frederick Douglass knew that.

Meanwhile, would Trots be hypocritical? Does the Pope shit in the woods? Is a bear a Presbyterian? 

But, when it stops attacking the #1619Project as capitalist and uses Lincoln as a cudgel for that, .@WSWS_Updates & .@WSWSMedia will surely attack Lincoln elsewhere as a capitalist. 4/x

— reallyDonaldTrump  🚩🌻 (@AFCC_Esq) January 6, 2020

I once was a member of its Yahoo group. But, for years, I don't waste my time on Trots, any more than on conspiracy theorists.

I promised more on Reed:

As for Adolph Reed? Dave Garrow also had a nice vignette about his time with Obama — and with Alice Palmer. https://t.co/2vl4YbEIAS

— reallyDonaldTrump  🚩🌻 (@AFCC_Esq) January 6, 2020

Just a throwaway, but fun. (I'll have yet more below.)

Now to Kendi:

Re Ibram X. Kendi criticizing #1619Project? He's got wrongs himself. There was no pre-Colombian visit to America fr Africa. Claims there were by whites OR blacks are racist, based on a racist belief American Indians couldn't build temples or pyramids. 6/x https://t.co/WNItnKfqEw

— reallyDonaldTrump  🚩🌻 (@AFCC_Esq) January 6, 2020

I've called out James Loewen for promoting this BS before. And, if you do it willingly, after being called out? You're promoting racism. I don't care if you're black. Stop it.

Friedersdorf is bad enough to get two tweets, even at the 280-character length:

As for Friedersdorf's plaint re the #1619Project? A boatful of wrongs (Shock)
1. By focusing on July 4, 1776, he focuses on a snapshot, undermining all else he says about other non-1619 issues.
2. He ignores California's anti-Chinese racism while talking abt growing up there 7A/x

— reallyDonaldTrump  🚩🌻 (@AFCC_Esq) January 6, 2020

and then:

Friedersdorf re #1619Project also:
3. Doesn't discuss American Indian and other racial issues that, if he lived in NM beyond being born there, he should have seen
4. Re his ancestry, ignores that the multitude of Second Klan lynchings were north of the Mason-Dixon. 7B/x

— reallyDonaldTrump  🚩🌻 (@AFCC_Esq) January 6, 2020

I easily could have tweeted more about him. Friedersdorf epitomizes everything I don't like about The Atlantic and I'll be fine if Laurene Powell puts him (and most of Atlantic, other than James Hamblin and anything Ed Yong writes there) behind a paywall.

Now, back to Adolph Reed (and the Trots).

World Socialist interviewed him about the 1619 Project. He takes the typical left-Socialist and Communist tack of trying to reduce race — and culture — to class.

Bullshit.

A study of human evolutionary development shows xenophobia, which often became articulated in race or culture stances, existed long before capitalism. Capitalism may have intensified it, but it didn't start it. And, beyond Marxism being a pseudoscience (it is; crappy philosophy used as the framework for even a marginal social science like economics pushes you into pseudoscience), Reed's take epitomizes one other problem with it — dialectical materialism usually turns into not just reductionism but greedy reductionism. That's why it's funny, until we call it hypocritical, for him to call out critical race theory for being reductionistic.

It's not just Trots, though. Jacobin, whose editorial content sprawls the gamut between DSA Democrats and Sovietskis of some sort, of not necessarily Trotskysts, does the same as Reed and WSWS on capitalism and antisemitism.

I will give Reed credit for cooking the goose of both Kendi and Ta-Nehisi Coates.

I will also say that Reed is almost certainly right in thinking there's an element of capitalist career-hiking here. Certainly with the 1619 Project writers themselves and almost certainly with Kendi. Probably with Coates. I am reminded of the allegedly environmentalist SJW Instagram influencers last year who played High Country News for fools. (Actually, it was about 50-50 between that and a self-own by HCN, which was one of several reasons I quit subscribing.)

Teh stupidz, it burns!

And, when all is said and done, it burns least stupid, by a decent margin with Reed, but only for calling out the capitalist motives. Setting that said, it's a tie for the bottom between him, WSWS in general, 1619 folks, and the likes of Kendi.

No, it's a tie for second-bottom. Friedersdorf's gelatinous crap is still at the bottom.

==

Now, what do the opponents get right? Even more, opponents that Friedersdorf mentions but that get less airplay?

First is that the first blacks, arriving in 1619, like certain whites, were indentured servants, not slaves. Related to that is that a majority of Virginians at that time were indentured servants but that the majority was white. Nell Irvin Painter, author of "The History of White People" and other books, is one pointing this out. But, all Friedersdorf can do is attack her for not signing the letter against the project, then attack her for why she didn't sign, when instead, it's a reason plausible and logical.

If one wants a "turning point" year or years and bases it on Virginia, per Painter's piece, it would be 1676-77 and Bacon's Rebellion. The ruling class, after eventually putting it down, hardened slavery and made it more race focused, to break the ties between indentured servants, more and more of them white, and slaves, mainly black.

==

Let's tie this back to Adolph Reed's one comment to tie this to media issues more, to differentiate from my original posting.

The New York Times has already admitted, re Bret Stephens' column of Ashkenazi racism, that it doesn't edit or fact-check its op-ed staff. Given that the 1619 Project is, if not op-ed, news analysis as much as news, maybe it wasn't fact-checked or copy-edited that much, either? Maybe that was even a precondition of Ida Bae Wells and others?

Or maybe the old gray lady, with its hoary motto of "all the news that's fit to print," in its repeated whackings of editorial staff over the years, doesn't have the resources to do serious checking on something like this?

In that case, that's kind of sad. Even before reading Painter's comment that the development of a race basis for black slavery was a process, but one that accelerated shortly before 1700, I was already thinking of Bacon's Rebellion.

And, in turn, these issues turn back to the issue of capitalism. Even without opposing Marxism to capitalism, beyond career advancement issues for Kendi, Wells (and Coates), one can smell the stench of money in the morning, to rift on Apocalypse Now, coming from this whole project.

One can also whiff it coming from Atlantic Monthly; why else would it run the gelatinous crap of Friedersdorf?

So, this is ultimately bad journalism as well as bad history.

Will or would you pay more for the NYT as it becomes yet-more subscription focused?

So, New York Times overall revenues are up. But, that's because digital subscription revenues have more than offset ad losses. (That's even though digital advertisers, especially targeting social media channels, can't deliver what they promise.)

Nieman reports on how the $800 million in online subscription revenue, and total subscribers, are all records, and the dollar amount hit a Times target a year early.

Percentages aren't listed, but there's two takeaways here.

One is that subscriptions as a percentage of digital revenue continue to grow, to about two-thirds of the total last year.

The other is that — albeit slowly — digital ad revenue grew again, in the face of that ongoing print ad slump.

Well, the old gray lady has decided to raise that online subscription price. The increase is 50 cents a week. Or 13.3 percent to look at it that way.

It's the first time the Times has ever done it. (Nieman adds at its link that this won't hit everybody. Basically, they'll start with the people who have subscribed the longest.)

Would or will you, whether not a current subscriber as a would or if you are as a will, pay the extra?

I wouldn't. For professional as well as personal reasons.

And those reasons largely overlap.

On the op-eds side, the fact that an editorial page editor doesn't edit individual columnists, as seen with Bret Stephens citing a racist to turd-polish "schmart as a whip" Ashkenazi Jew legends, is unacceptable on both professional and personal counts. Now, other big dailies like the Bezos Post may do the same, but, that doesn't make it acceptable.

On the personal side, the narrow range of the paper's op-ed columnists, and the narrow range of its foreign policy news coverage, especially on all things Israel and Middle East, is Reason No. 1 I don't subscribe now. But, that's also a professional issue. I see alternative papers and websites, or a mainstream paper like the Independent in Britain with Robert Fisk, doing much better on Middle East coverage. The Times chooses to color well, WELL within the duopoly lines.

Putting the professional hat on again, the Times says, per the third link, it wants to hit 10 million on digital subscriptions by 2025, compared to its current 4 million. I doubt it will. If Trump is re-elected, I think its pandering to "the resistance" will eventually plateau. And I don't otherwise see any way it can "goose" itself to 10 million.

Fake news, thy name is Associated Press

Mainstream media has caviled about so-called "fake news" for the last year or so.

Of course, there's a high level of hypocrisy here.

The New York Times ran Judith Miller's fake news, nay, PUSHED it, then, if that contribution to the Iraq War wasn't enough, it spiked for a full year a story about Bush's warrantless snooping, which helped him get re-elected. Not that John Kerry would have done much different on Iraq, and judging by Dear Leader four years later, wouldn't have done much different on spying on Americans.

(And, I haven't even covered the fake news that's increased on the Times' op-ed page with hiring Bret Stephens.)

And, earlier this year, after it decried "fake news," the Washington Post then Tweeted repeatedly for a third-party group called "Prop Or Not," which made the Democratic Party's, and Clintonistas', "Putin Did It" claims about the presidential election read as soberly as wallpaper drying compared to Prop Or Not's McCarthyism — McCarthyism which later turned up to have seeming connections to Ukrainian fascists.

And, now? Per that screenshot up top?

It's the good old Associated Press, with the screenshot coming from this story.

The issue of posting crap from a place like Taboola has become even more decried in the last year or so, even as "digital dimes" in the online ad world become ever more "mobile nickels." (Thanks, Dean Singleton, and the 1990s AP board of directors, who touted the "TV model" of the Internet while ignoring that pay TV channels like HBO had already existed for 15 years or more.) Indeed, Taboola itself is one of the worst of the "sponsored links" folks, and most the news, or "news," you'll find off those links is sketchy at best, skeezy at worst, and almost certainly native advertising in some way, shape or form.

But, that's not all.

AP is writing, and photographing, its own clickbait as well, as shown above.

If American media dies, it will be from self-strangulation in its own crib.

NYT kicks Liz Spayd to curb as cover for continuing ad struggles

Liz Spayd has been neutered

So, the Old Gray Lady has decided to can its public editor position, apparently in part as a way of canning its current public editor, Liz Spayd, who didn't do the job as well as predecessor Margaret Sullivan.

That said, the position, created in the wake of Jayson Blair, was always about forward-looking PR for the paper at bottom. And, when the paper gives you shit, sometimes, shit-tasting lemonade being made at the end still isn't that good, if you're the public editor, no matter the seriousness of your lemonade-making endeavors.

That said, per a Salon overview, on paper, Spayd had the chops for the job. But, she not only appears antiquated in relation to social media, but in relation to ways in which the Times could be, and sometimes was, different in a good way.

In hindsight, she strikes me as "earnest." Like a fourth-grade schoolteacher from the 1950s. And, generally, that's not that good.

On the other hand, predecessor Margaret Sullivan was by no means perfect. I once both emailed and Tweeted her about staff "pre-writing" a weather storm in anticipation of a snowpocalypse that didn't pan out. Never heard back. How she would have handled Stephens, I have no idea. That said, per Nieman Lab, Sullivan's defense of the position, and by extension, her prior inhabitation of it, is kind of laughable.

But, back to the headline of this post.

The decision to eliminate the public editor comes a day after the Times announced the creation of a “Reader Center” led by editor Hanna Ingber. One role of the new “Reader Center” is to improve how the Times “respond(s) directly to tips feedback, questions, concerns, complaints and other queries from the public,” according to a Tuesday memo.

This is the TrumpTrain punking part of the headline. Have fun with THAT, Times! Because you will get it. You're probably already getting it with your idiotic "say something nice about Trump" schtick. I know that, if there's others like me, you're getting punked from the other side, too. Well, actually from the nonduopoly left-liberal third side.

Then, there's this, from the memo to staff from Punch Sulzberger:

We are dramatically expanding our commenting platform. Currently, we open only 10 percent of our articles to reader comments. Soon, we will open up most of our articles to reader comments. This expansion, made possible by a collaboration with Google, marks a sea change in our ability to serve our readers, to hear from them, and to respond to them.

Lemme see how interesting that is. Will readers try to Google SEO their own comments? Will Google AdSense try to sell Google ads into those comments?

What else will this involve? Google bots helping edit comments?

And, while the PE role was allegedly designed to address, or turd-polish, the Blair issue, it never did allegedly do that for Judith Miller. Or for the Times holding a 2004 story on President Bush spying on Americans until after the election. Or its sanitized photo coverage of U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Couple of other notes, coming primarily from the Times' own piece. One, Spayd is getting kicked to the curb today, just two days after the announcement.. Wow. Second, this is part of larger buyouts. Third, they're going to hire some new journos. They claim that the moves are to hire journos who don't think in "legacy" ways, but what it really is, is younger people they can pay less.

Overall ad sales are still down. It's unclear if the post-election circ rise has come close to offsetting that. It's also not reported if the backlash over the Stephens hiring has ixnayed that rise or even reversed it.

In any case, getcha popcorn! And remember Spayd by this interview earlier in May.

Why the NYT is right to charge online

Yes, Times Select didn't "work." Actually, it showed that, if forced to pay for Maureen Dowd, a lot of ppl wouldn't. At least not at that price.

Anyway, Steve Brill crunches all the numbers and says just $2 per month per unique visitor would pay fantastic returns. He also, obliquely, explains why the phase-in will take a while, contra a few critics on that.

Oh, The Big Money agrees.

Take THAT, Clay Shirky, Jay Rosen, and other people, like perhaps Bora, who think the online pay model is wrong. (And, maybe I overly stereotyped Mr. Rosen's views, in part as a deliberate caricature. I don't think I got them 100 percent wrong.)

Jay, you can diversify content all you want. But, any company that still relies on an advertising-only model to try to make money off that is run by schmucks.

Let's add to that. A Columbia Journalism Review story last year said that in a typical larger metro area (Baltimore was sampled in depth) the traditional newspaper still breaks 60 percent or more of the news. Next is TV, then radio. "New media"? Even in a halfway-techie area like Baltimore, it's still below 5 percent.

So, if you're still the primary purveyor, you have more incentive to charge, charge, charge.

Where media analysts of the "free Internet" stripe (and the more clueless old media moguls like Dean Singleton) miss the boat can best be illustrated by an analogy.

If Campbell's started selling its condensed soup in plstic screw-top bottles, while still selling in cans, and said it wouldn't charge for it because it could spit out soup much faster this way, we'd grab all the Campbell's we could while laughing at its stupidity.

As for the AP, more than a decade ago, buying into the "TV model"? That ignored newspapers themselves charging for circulation. In the TV world, it ignored cable, let alone premium cable.

Metered newspaper charges?

Amongst all the different ways to try to get people to pony up for reading newspapers, I hadn’t heard anybody mention the option “the New York Times is considering.

Basically, it’s something similar to your cell phone bill, or the way your ISP bill may have been in the past, or may still be today.

You buy an account with a limit, except in this case the limit will be pageviews or online words rather than minutes. As the story notes, setting the base rate price is key. If you set it right, and get enough people reading, you can charge pretty high “extra” fees.

Of course, the next question is what goes behind the paywall. Times Select flopped with its columnists, which was probably embarrassing to them.

I’d start with the Mag and the Review of Books. Narrowly focused audiences, more dedicated than average readers, even average Times readers.

Bloodbath at the Times

Only 70 editorial staffers at the New York Times have accepted buyouts, less than the 100 Executive Editor Bill Keller wanted. So, the NYT is expected to engage in its first-ever mass firing. Why?

You know the drill. Poor ad revenues. Well, poor for the newspaper biz, that doesn’t want to lower profit margin expectations, especially in the middle of a board restructuring cave-in.

How newspapers endorse candidates, with one dirty little secret

In between comments I made at Washington Monthly yesterday about “la Mésalliance McCain,” somebody commented about Mitt Romney being upset about the New York Times endorsing McCain instead of him; that person also wondered a bit about the process involved.

I touched a bit on the process here, but thought I could do a bit more public service by detailing the editorial endorsement process, from my experience at (much smaller) daily newspapers.

The NYT editorial board would likely have publisher Pinch Sulzberger, Executive Editor Bill Keller, Managing Editor Jill Abramson, Opinion Editor Gail Collins, possibly the top editorial writer (editorial writers and bylined op-ed columnists are different critters at major dailies), possibly/probably the deputy managing editor for politics, or similar position, and perhaps a couple of others.

You’d also have some ad hoc members. For example, for New York City mayoral endorsements, the city editor might sit in. For gubernatorial endorsements, the Albany editor. For presidential endorsements, Dean Baquet, the Washington editor.

First, outside of campaign endorsements, here’s a bit of how an editorial board operates in general. It will meet once, maybe twice a week, plus special meetings on hot button issues. At the NYT, for example, the board would develop a consensus on what issues the paper needs to officially opine about in the next week. It then, after discussion and some sort of vote, especially in a division of house on tough issues, decides the official stance to take, talking points to be mentioned, etc. (If the division on an issue is fierce, an op-ed column might be devoted to the leading representative of the minority view.) Collins would then, after the meeting, assign different editorials to her various writers, copy edit them, etc.

When it comes time for endorsements, the board would first schedule interviews, whenever possible, with the candidates involved, in elections big enough to warrant. (The full editorial board is not going to interview NYC municipal judge candidates, or even get involved in the process.) Before the interviews, board members will discuss questions they want to raise, angles they want to pursue, issues they see of importance, etc. For endorsements in primaries, rather than general elections, these issues will also be connected to some degree with party stances, etc. Interviews may be in person, speakerphone, video, e-mail or whatever.

The board then discusses the candidates after the interview and makes their call.

How this relates to Keller sitting on the story?

As I noted before, I’m sure Keller played his cards close to the vest. If Baquet was in on the McCain vs. Romney endorsement, of course he knew. Abramson was in on the loop, too. Pinch may have been. Collins, likely not.

So, this was something that could have been discussed in the endorsement process. If necessary, you could boot most the people out of the room and have discussed the McCain story and its relation to an endorsement just between Pinch, Keller, Baquet if there, Abramson and Collins, bringing her in the loop.

Was it discussed? Ahh, that’s a whole different kettle of fish.

Given that the endorsement didn’t mention McCain being ethically challenged on lobbyist issues, let alone personal issues, I’d say no. Pinch is neoconish enough, I think his mind would already have been made up for McCain. For different reasons, ditto on Keller. Baquet would have pushed to talk more about the story, I think, and not been in McCain’s endorsement corner, but I’m guessing Keller had him on an officially very short leash if he was there. Abramson? Guessing she had an open mind on the endorsement, and at this point at least, figured the story didn’t have enough new, or wasn’t moved enough by the story, for whatever reasons.

And, the dirty little secret?

It’s well-known inside the biz, and discussed, but editorial endorsements from major daily newspapers provide little “bump” in the polls to candidates. In fact, some newspapers, whether to save time or to save face, are moving away from doing them.

Follow-up thoughts on the McCain scandal story and the New York Times

One: Why did the New York Times endorse John McCain over Mitt Romney if it was working on “la Mésalliance McCain”?

I'm guessing that the NYT op-ed structure has Executive Editor Bill Keller on the editorial board for endorsement interviews, endorsements, etc. (I'm a newspaper editor, but never at a paper of nearly that size; so this is my semi-insider guesstimate.)

I would guess that Keller kept his cards close enough to the vest that nobody else on the editorial board knew what was up. Prolly nobody had read the WaPost story in December or seen any blog linkage to the Drudge piece at that time. And, as we see most often and most spectacularly at the WSJ, major dailies can sometimes have huge disconnects between newshole staff and op-ed writers.

Other points:

First, the importance of Schmuck Talk hiring Bob Bennett. You just don't do that unless some real shit is up. So, right-wingers who claim this is all smoke, if they know inside Washington, know there's plenty of fire. And, they know they’re lying about this being a tempest in a teapot.

Second, is the sex side unimportant, or a matter of “private lives”?

No. McCain is pandering to the Religious Right again, and has been from the start of this campaign, after years of mutual antagonism. Given that the RR often focuses on sexual issues, it’s perfectly legitimate to focus on this.

And, given McCain has a “track record” in this area, it’s even more legitimate.

Of course, that’s not to deny the importance of the impropriety of McCain’s attempted interference with the Federal Communications Commission.

In short, looking at McCain’s life, it looks like we have a mash-up of Keating Five redux and wife-cheating round two.

Third, just how castrated, or self-castrated, can Bill Keller be? Without some combination of the staff defections over the pace of the story, D.C. editor Dean Baquet pushing back to run the piece, the earlier Drudge leak, and TNR’s sniffing around the Times news staff this week, it’s quite likely this story would be continuing to molder in a bottom-drawer file, if not actually getting an official File 13.

Keller has, and not for the first time, damaged the Times’ news-gathering credibility.

Dateline: Maureen Dowd and New York Times editorial deceit

A “Dateline: Kerry, N.H.” tag on a column about Hillary Clinton potentially crying her way to election loses a lot of objectivity and ethical credence when it was actually filed from Jerusalem about the obesity crisis.

Meanwhile, the column itself engages in psychobabble pseudo-analysis below even her normally vapid and puerile standards.