Washington Post Grasps for New Direction as Trump-Era Boom Fades
December 16, 2021 7:00 PM Subscribe
News outlet’s audience is down sharply, amid sector-wide declines; subscription growth has stagnated as readers look beyond politics Aging readers are another area of focus, according to a document from May viewed by the Journal. Titled “Industry Insights: Younger Audiences,” it says that only 14% of Washington Post subscribers are under 55, compared with 61% of the U.S. adult population. The document summarizes five groups of potential subscribers to the Post, including “contented and uninvolved,” “middle grounders,” “practical mavens,” “engaged intellectuals” and “confident strivers,” and estimates their interest in the Post.
“Our paid product is not attractive to younger people,” the document reads. Of those groups, the only one listed with a “high” level of interest in the Post are “confident strivers,” which the document describes as “affluent, urban married men with kids, more multi-ethnic, skew liberal/Democratic.”
Too bad, says this under-55 Post subscriber, because they're running a lot of good material.
posted by escabeche at 7:14 PM on December 16, 2021 [55 favorites]
posted by escabeche at 7:14 PM on December 16, 2021 [55 favorites]
I just took a Post survey. I'm usually in the second to oldest age group in surveys; for this I was in the second to youngest. (It was something like under 35, 35-54, 55-64, 65-74, and 75+).
I am a longtime Post devotee, and it's my main source of information. But I have the opposite reaction to explosion: I find that the Post has more and more of an ideological bias that limits the stories it carries and the perspectives it considers to those that it thinks will appeal to people like me: coastal overeducated liberals.
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 7:23 PM on December 16, 2021 [12 favorites]
I am a longtime Post devotee, and it's my main source of information. But I have the opposite reaction to explosion: I find that the Post has more and more of an ideological bias that limits the stories it carries and the perspectives it considers to those that it thinks will appeal to people like me: coastal overeducated liberals.
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 7:23 PM on December 16, 2021 [12 favorites]
This is fascinating. Being local, I've read the Post since I was a young teen: I fall into that 14% sliver of subscribers under 55. The quality definitely isn't what it used to be, although I imagine a lot of that is due to cutbacks. I miss all the live chats because those were always a highlight of my work day; they're so few now and the new platform isn't as cozy. I loved the Travel section, although I miss travel too much to read it these days. I'm a fan of all the advice; kinda over Date Lab but sometimes it's interesting. I don't know why Gene Weingarten is still writing his column because his perspectives are so behind the times... but maybe not for its big older audience?
All that said, I still enjoy reading it, of course! I love their articles on life around the US, which so often top-notch journalism and of interest to so many. However, the New York Times is just a notch above, although I do like the local focus of the Washington Post. Yeah, the Jeff Bezos/Amazon link is gross even if it's not enough to stop me from reading. I wish it could exist without the paywalls because those are certainly scaring a lot of young subscribers away; it's like, new people first need to first be convinced it's worth it before they start paying. There's a lot of free news out there and news aggregators but too many are listicles and full of ads. Could they do "first year free" or something for those under 30? I have an educator subscription online and the lower price is truly a huge incentive.
posted by smorgasbord at 7:24 PM on December 16, 2021 [5 favorites]
All that said, I still enjoy reading it, of course! I love their articles on life around the US, which so often top-notch journalism and of interest to so many. However, the New York Times is just a notch above, although I do like the local focus of the Washington Post. Yeah, the Jeff Bezos/Amazon link is gross even if it's not enough to stop me from reading. I wish it could exist without the paywalls because those are certainly scaring a lot of young subscribers away; it's like, new people first need to first be convinced it's worth it before they start paying. There's a lot of free news out there and news aggregators but too many are listicles and full of ads. Could they do "first year free" or something for those under 30? I have an educator subscription online and the lower price is truly a huge incentive.
posted by smorgasbord at 7:24 PM on December 16, 2021 [5 favorites]
Honestly, my favorite thing about the Washington Post right now is their Eat Voraciously
daily recipe newsletter! I've made a bunch of the recipes and bookmarked many more, plus they always have fun links to random stuff at the bottom.
I'm definitely reading less news than I was during the Trump era so I guess I'm part of the problem. Maybe they need to reinstate the $4 a month subscription for Amazon Prime members; that's how they got me.
posted by carolr at 7:33 PM on December 16, 2021 [7 favorites]
daily recipe newsletter! I've made a bunch of the recipes and bookmarked many more, plus they always have fun links to random stuff at the bottom.
I'm definitely reading less news than I was during the Trump era so I guess I'm part of the problem. Maybe they need to reinstate the $4 a month subscription for Amazon Prime members; that's how they got me.
posted by carolr at 7:33 PM on December 16, 2021 [7 favorites]
Honestly, I don't really trust WSJ much these days. They have a slant that is pretty recognizable to me but that I find hard to describe outside of "manipulative and sleazy", and honestly, reading a WSJ takedown about WaPo is one of those topics that my guts tells me might be market manipulation bullshit.
posted by hippybear at 7:38 PM on December 16, 2021 [44 favorites]
posted by hippybear at 7:38 PM on December 16, 2021 [44 favorites]
I'm a WaPo (digital) subscriber. They do a lot of really good, in-depth journalism. IMHO this value becomes fully apparent if you treat the newspaper as the source of news (kind of like in the old dead tree days), rather than getting distracted by random articles one at a time as they appear to you on your social media feed or elsewhere on the internet.
But mostly, I respect any paper that hires real journalists doing real journalism in good faith, and I think this work deserves to be funded. Besides WaPo, I subscribe to a couple smaller, local newspapers in my local Seattle (all tiny and some of them online-only, but all with actual journalists on their payroll).
As P. Sainath said: you don't get to complain about how awful the state of journalism is today if you are not putting your money into supporting journalism. Pick any outlet you like, it doesn't have to be WaPo. But do put your money where your mouth is.
posted by splitpeasoup at 8:03 PM on December 16, 2021 [41 favorites]
But mostly, I respect any paper that hires real journalists doing real journalism in good faith, and I think this work deserves to be funded. Besides WaPo, I subscribe to a couple smaller, local newspapers in my local Seattle (all tiny and some of them online-only, but all with actual journalists on their payroll).
As P. Sainath said: you don't get to complain about how awful the state of journalism is today if you are not putting your money into supporting journalism. Pick any outlet you like, it doesn't have to be WaPo. But do put your money where your mouth is.
posted by splitpeasoup at 8:03 PM on December 16, 2021 [41 favorites]
The Post has Alexandra Petri, one of the best political satirists around, and their book reviews are particularly good.
posted by Agave at 8:19 PM on December 16, 2021 [19 favorites]
posted by Agave at 8:19 PM on December 16, 2021 [19 favorites]
I would have thought WaPo should have been better able to capitalise on the credibility gap of the NYT as they overplayed Hillary's emails, dismissed suggestions of Trump's improprieties and laundered his many failings, not to mention their ongoing disaster on the opinion columns. It should have been a golden opportunity to set themselves up as America's true paper of record, able to describe things as they are rather than mealy-mouthed both-sideism.
Hell, some NYT reporters were striking a couple of days ago, the kids surely should have been into that.
posted by Merus at 8:21 PM on December 16, 2021 [10 favorites]
Hell, some NYT reporters were striking a couple of days ago, the kids surely should have been into that.
posted by Merus at 8:21 PM on December 16, 2021 [10 favorites]
I, too, am an under-55 WaPo subscriber. I've been gone from NoVA for a while, but have friends on staff there, and find their journalism generally to be pretty great, even if the "Uncle Jeff" stuff is a bit squicky.
posted by higginba at 8:30 PM on December 16, 2021
posted by higginba at 8:30 PM on December 16, 2021
I agree with @smorgasbord; younger people are really reluctant to pay for news, because often it's technically available 'for free', i.e. in exchange for getting your eyeballs jackhammered with advertisements. I remember being able to be relatively well informed just by reading a few news websites, completely for free and with only a few odd banner ads for diet pills and mortgages.
It's tough to let go of that, especially when so many younger people today are dirt poor or one bad week away from it. And then there's the subscriber's dilemma: you can only afford one, maybe two. Which do you pick when all of them seem vaguely scummy?
posted by kkar at 8:31 PM on December 16, 2021 [13 favorites]
It's tough to let go of that, especially when so many younger people today are dirt poor or one bad week away from it. And then there's the subscriber's dilemma: you can only afford one, maybe two. Which do you pick when all of them seem vaguely scummy?
posted by kkar at 8:31 PM on December 16, 2021 [13 favorites]
" I don't really trust WSJ much these days. They have a slant that is pretty recognizable to me but that I find hard to describe outside of "manipulative and sleazy""
The WSJ claims to be the nation's business newspaper but refuses to have a union beat reporter on ideological grounds, and have not once but TWICE been taken by surprise by longshoremen's strikes on the West Coast that massively disrupted supply chains and cost US businesses billions of dollars -- before they were bought by Rupert Murdoch and went even further downhill. A billion-dollar strike is the sort of thing that you'd think the business newspaper of record would be eager to report on so their C-suite readers would be able to prepare their businesses for the total lack of paperclips that was about to happen. (Really, there was a paperclip shortage.) But no, that would require admitting unions exist and have power. So they don't bother.
That's literally all you need to know about the Wall Street Journal: The newspaper that is possibly best-positioned to speak truth to power in the United States prefers to speak comforting lies to capital, to reassure capital that everything's hunky-dory. And then their ed board appears on Fox News every week for the synergy points.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 8:44 PM on December 16, 2021 [83 favorites]
The WSJ claims to be the nation's business newspaper but refuses to have a union beat reporter on ideological grounds, and have not once but TWICE been taken by surprise by longshoremen's strikes on the West Coast that massively disrupted supply chains and cost US businesses billions of dollars -- before they were bought by Rupert Murdoch and went even further downhill. A billion-dollar strike is the sort of thing that you'd think the business newspaper of record would be eager to report on so their C-suite readers would be able to prepare their businesses for the total lack of paperclips that was about to happen. (Really, there was a paperclip shortage.) But no, that would require admitting unions exist and have power. So they don't bother.
That's literally all you need to know about the Wall Street Journal: The newspaper that is possibly best-positioned to speak truth to power in the United States prefers to speak comforting lies to capital, to reassure capital that everything's hunky-dory. And then their ed board appears on Fox News every week for the synergy points.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 8:44 PM on December 16, 2021 [83 favorites]
I LOVE the WaPo and the Wall Street Journal can kiss my ass. The food section is awesome and way better than the NYT's; also the Voraciously newsletter is terrific. Their cookbook cooking group was the highlight of early Covid for me. Carolyn Hax is good but even better is the adorable crowd that gathers in her comment section to catch up with each other's lives. Date Lab is predictably terrible and that's why we love it. And what do I even need to say about Alexandra Petri. WSJ name me ONE THING you have that can hold a candle to Alexandra Petri. Yeah. Exactly.
posted by HotToddy at 8:53 PM on December 16, 2021 [7 favorites]
posted by HotToddy at 8:53 PM on December 16, 2021 [7 favorites]
I'm not defensive at all about being over 55.
posted by HotToddy at 8:54 PM on December 16, 2021 [6 favorites]
posted by HotToddy at 8:54 PM on December 16, 2021 [6 favorites]
*53 year old me points and laughs at the old person!*
posted by hippybear at 8:56 PM on December 16, 2021 [19 favorites]
posted by hippybear at 8:56 PM on December 16, 2021 [19 favorites]
Too bad, says this under-55 Post subscriber, because they're running a lot of good material
One doesn't have to be 55+ to use a boomer rhetorical move in response to criticism of a paper's ideological bias and why young people would rationally and ethically dismiss a platform in its entirety even if it has some actual journalism.
posted by polymodus at 9:00 PM on December 16, 2021 [2 favorites]
One doesn't have to be 55+ to use a boomer rhetorical move in response to criticism of a paper's ideological bias and why young people would rationally and ethically dismiss a platform in its entirety even if it has some actual journalism.
posted by polymodus at 9:00 PM on December 16, 2021 [2 favorites]
Under 55 WaPo digital subscriber, but I also subscirbe to two other dailies (NYT and my local) so I know I’m a unicorn and maybe also a Confident Striver? Or is that only men and maybe a few women in 19th century novels?
posted by thivaia at 9:02 PM on December 16, 2021
posted by thivaia at 9:02 PM on December 16, 2021
And then there's the subscriber's dilemma: you can only afford one, maybe two. Which do you pick when all of them seem vaguely scummy?
Still can't believe papers haven't created group subscriptions or pay per article. Every now and then I want to read an article in the Denver Post or the Houston Chronicle or the San Francisco Chronicle. I click, I have to subscribe to read, not gonna happen.
I subscribed to WaPo for awhile, but got hit with the much higher subscription renewal price without warning. Yes, I should have put a reminder in my calendar, but the paper should have sent a reminder. I cancelled.
posted by Mavri at 9:04 PM on December 16, 2021 [12 favorites]
Still can't believe papers haven't created group subscriptions or pay per article. Every now and then I want to read an article in the Denver Post or the Houston Chronicle or the San Francisco Chronicle. I click, I have to subscribe to read, not gonna happen.
I subscribed to WaPo for awhile, but got hit with the much higher subscription renewal price without warning. Yes, I should have put a reminder in my calendar, but the paper should have sent a reminder. I cancelled.
posted by Mavri at 9:04 PM on December 16, 2021 [12 favorites]
I suppose I'm still subscribed, but I haven't been reading it very much lately. Too much mind of Bezos leaking in around the edges, in the titles and the choices of what to show off.
posted by pan at 9:08 PM on December 16, 2021
posted by pan at 9:08 PM on December 16, 2021
To me, "striver" feels like not a real word, pronounced "streever", so I imagine a "confident striver" as some kind of longsword-wielding ranger, standing in your camp, which you now realise can be seen for malms around. The striver has a smirk on their face, sensibly dressed in furs and dark leathers, with an aura that says that despite your folly they are not here to disturb your peace. But underneath their bearing, there is a quiet menace, invisible but palpable.
Do not mistake my courtesy for weakness, it says. I subscribe to the Washington Post.
posted by Merus at 9:12 PM on December 16, 2021 [9 favorites]
Do not mistake my courtesy for weakness, it says. I subscribe to the Washington Post.
posted by Merus at 9:12 PM on December 16, 2021 [9 favorites]
That was a MetaFilter mantra literally decades ago.
No, wait it wasn't. Have you READ early MetaFilter threads?
posted by hippybear at 9:16 PM on December 16, 2021
No, wait it wasn't. Have you READ early MetaFilter threads?
posted by hippybear at 9:16 PM on December 16, 2021
Don't worry Washington Post. I'm sure Trump will be back soon enough. I've found that if I take my prediction of the most pessimistic and stupid eventuality possible and revise my expectations down at least two standard deviations from that point I can pretty reliability foresee what is going to happen.
posted by eagles123 at 9:41 PM on December 16, 2021 [12 favorites]
posted by eagles123 at 9:41 PM on December 16, 2021 [12 favorites]
In other news (from August) that might be relevant to changing their demographics, "The Washington Post deepens investment in storytelling on TikTok, announcing two new positions" / "The Washington Post, A 143-Year-Old Newspaper, Just Hit 1M TikTok Followers" ... It's at @washingtonpost, and it's pretty different from their YouTube channel.
posted by Wobbuffet at 9:52 PM on December 16, 2021 [3 favorites]
posted by Wobbuffet at 9:52 PM on December 16, 2021 [3 favorites]
I get my local news from nonprofit newspapers. It's a model I really, really hope becomes more common.
posted by showbiz_liz at 10:08 PM on December 16, 2021 [12 favorites]
posted by showbiz_liz at 10:08 PM on December 16, 2021 [12 favorites]
*53 year old me points and laughs at the old person!*
*57 year old me chastises the whippers--why am I in this thread? Is this the one about the cats?*
posted by kirkaracha at 10:27 PM on December 16, 2021 [3 favorites]
*57 year old me chastises the whippers--why am I in this thread? Is this the one about the cats?*
posted by kirkaracha at 10:27 PM on December 16, 2021 [3 favorites]
explosion, which fascists do you think the WaPo is platforming, exactly? I'm a digital subscriber, and what I see them publishing is a ton of liberal content. Haven't spotted any fascists lately.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 10:45 PM on December 16, 2021 [2 favorites]
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 10:45 PM on December 16, 2021 [2 favorites]
WaPo is a lot like the NYT or The Atlantic for me. There's good cooking articles, and they do some really neat content, but they'll run some pants-on-head "better to appease fascism than risk opposing it" or "would it *really* be that bad if we got into another war? After all, it's not like it'd risk *American* lives" piece just frequently enough to keep it distasteful enough that I'm not about to support that.
posted by CrystalDave at 11:15 PM on December 16, 2021 [10 favorites]
posted by CrystalDave at 11:15 PM on December 16, 2021 [10 favorites]
The WSJ claims to be the nation's business newspaper but refuses to have a union beat reporter on ideological grounds...
Those ancient enough may remember when most newspapers had a union beat reporter.
posted by fairmettle at 11:17 PM on December 16, 2021 [5 favorites]
Those ancient enough may remember when most newspapers had a union beat reporter.
posted by fairmettle at 11:17 PM on December 16, 2021 [5 favorites]
It's almost hard to find a newspaper publishing fascist shit these days, except insofar as crime-related stuff parrots police reports at least mostly uncritically. If anything, they're getting more critical of right wing shit. Even a lot of local TV news is going the same way.
I believe that has more to do with the Trump Train "forcing" (not actually forcing) Republicans into more and more unhinged and indefensible positions than any real change in the papers themselves. It's gotten to the point where it's much harder to bothsides everything because any factual statement included in a story will clearly illustrate that Republicans are full of shit.
It's basically impossible to be a journalist these days and not look like you've moved to the left compared to even a decade ago because there is no longer any room for obfuscation of the truth. The lies have become too transparent for reporting that even approaches truthfulness to make a right winger look like anything but a fascist or a crook.
posted by wierdo at 11:31 PM on December 16, 2021 [13 favorites]
I believe that has more to do with the Trump Train "forcing" (not actually forcing) Republicans into more and more unhinged and indefensible positions than any real change in the papers themselves. It's gotten to the point where it's much harder to bothsides everything because any factual statement included in a story will clearly illustrate that Republicans are full of shit.
It's basically impossible to be a journalist these days and not look like you've moved to the left compared to even a decade ago because there is no longer any room for obfuscation of the truth. The lies have become too transparent for reporting that even approaches truthfulness to make a right winger look like anything but a fascist or a crook.
posted by wierdo at 11:31 PM on December 16, 2021 [13 favorites]
I'm eligible for free WaPo and NYT accounts (neither of which entity I'd voluntarily want to fund) so read both of them. NYT is almost self-satirical in the extent to which it writes for its implied audience of the hyper-gentry (and no, it's not just the Style section). The Amazon paper does a better job of playing dress-up as an actual news source that might be useful to normal people's lives, with a few very visible embarrassments like the (as far as I can tell) procedurally generated column that Jennifer Rubin rewrites ~16 times per day. It does offer, like, a certain essence de news, if you're able to mentally filter through its liberal/conservative, pro-war, anti-poor agenda-- which I would guess a large proportion of its readers don't.
posted by dusty potato at 12:13 AM on December 17, 2021 [8 favorites]
posted by dusty potato at 12:13 AM on December 17, 2021 [8 favorites]
even if the "Uncle Jeff" stuff is a bit squicky.
I see this mentioned every now and again. I've been a paying subscriber since 2016 (and off and on when I lived in Baltimore in the 1990s) and if there is a subtle or overt pro-Amazon or pro-Bezos agenda in WaPo reporting, they are hiding it very well. Since the Bezos purchase, any stories that involve him or Amazon seem careful to issue the requisite disclaimer in an up-front, clear way.
you don't get to complain about how awful the state of journalism is today if you are not putting your money into supporting journalism
Whatever else, whatever you want to read, a working democracy requires healthy, independent fourth and fifth estates, and that requires (monetary) support from an informed and involved public.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 12:30 AM on December 17, 2021 [13 favorites]
I see this mentioned every now and again. I've been a paying subscriber since 2016 (and off and on when I lived in Baltimore in the 1990s) and if there is a subtle or overt pro-Amazon or pro-Bezos agenda in WaPo reporting, they are hiding it very well. Since the Bezos purchase, any stories that involve him or Amazon seem careful to issue the requisite disclaimer in an up-front, clear way.
you don't get to complain about how awful the state of journalism is today if you are not putting your money into supporting journalism
Whatever else, whatever you want to read, a working democracy requires healthy, independent fourth and fifth estates, and that requires (monetary) support from an informed and involved public.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 12:30 AM on December 17, 2021 [13 favorites]
Another time Post readers may have looked beyond politics: Doonesbury.
posted by bryon at 1:28 AM on December 17, 2021 [5 favorites]
posted by bryon at 1:28 AM on December 17, 2021 [5 favorites]
Eh not disagreeing with the both side-ism, but I also don’t think it’s the slant or viewpoint of a newspaper that is the primary cause of decline.
I think it’s more because there is a limited audience both in doing only news and doing only text-based media. As a comparison, The NYT saw the writing on the wall years ago and started pivoting by doing things like acquiring Wirecutter and Audm (and integrating them into their front page), producing a lot podcasts and video, making new games, and beefing up their app.
posted by FJT at 2:07 AM on December 17, 2021 [1 favorite]
I think it’s more because there is a limited audience both in doing only news and doing only text-based media. As a comparison, The NYT saw the writing on the wall years ago and started pivoting by doing things like acquiring Wirecutter and Audm (and integrating them into their front page), producing a lot podcasts and video, making new games, and beefing up their app.
posted by FJT at 2:07 AM on December 17, 2021 [1 favorite]
Still can't believe papers haven't created group subscriptions or pay per article.
This, exactly. I'm not going to get all of my news from one or two paid subscriptions. I want to read a few articles from a wide variety of sources. And I certainly can't afford to subscribe to every newspaper that has an article or two that I'd like to read.
This is, like, how hypertext works. It's baffling that newspapers have spent 20 years saying "we just can't figure out how to survive in the internet era!" - while doggedly insisting that the only possible way to monetize their product is via the same all-or-nothing subscription model that they used in the now-long-dead print era.
Let me pay anywhere from a nickel to a dollar to read a specific article. Or at least offer more granular subscriptions. I couldn't possibly care less about newspapers' coverage of sports or entertainment. Food? Eh, sometimes - but I can get that anywhere. Just like cable packages, all these superfluous things jack up the price, and make it less likely that I'll subscribe. I want exactly one thing from a newspaper, and that's news.
On a technical level, micropayments could be handled by a third party, like Flattr (remember that?). This eliminates the need to have an account with every newspaper under the sun. It also keeps the UX consistent across multiple sites.
Failing that, the newspaper site itself could require registration, keep track of which articles you view (unobtrusively asking for confirmation whenever you click on a new article that requires payment), and then bill you for the total at the end of each month/year.
Is this just, like, not viable for some financial or legal reason? It seems like such an obvious solution.
posted by escape from the potato planet at 3:37 AM on December 17, 2021 [17 favorites]
This, exactly. I'm not going to get all of my news from one or two paid subscriptions. I want to read a few articles from a wide variety of sources. And I certainly can't afford to subscribe to every newspaper that has an article or two that I'd like to read.
This is, like, how hypertext works. It's baffling that newspapers have spent 20 years saying "we just can't figure out how to survive in the internet era!" - while doggedly insisting that the only possible way to monetize their product is via the same all-or-nothing subscription model that they used in the now-long-dead print era.
Let me pay anywhere from a nickel to a dollar to read a specific article. Or at least offer more granular subscriptions. I couldn't possibly care less about newspapers' coverage of sports or entertainment. Food? Eh, sometimes - but I can get that anywhere. Just like cable packages, all these superfluous things jack up the price, and make it less likely that I'll subscribe. I want exactly one thing from a newspaper, and that's news.
On a technical level, micropayments could be handled by a third party, like Flattr (remember that?). This eliminates the need to have an account with every newspaper under the sun. It also keeps the UX consistent across multiple sites.
Failing that, the newspaper site itself could require registration, keep track of which articles you view (unobtrusively asking for confirmation whenever you click on a new article that requires payment), and then bill you for the total at the end of each month/year.
Is this just, like, not viable for some financial or legal reason? It seems like such an obvious solution.
posted by escape from the potato planet at 3:37 AM on December 17, 2021 [17 favorites]
I think it's a bit more than both-sides-ism.
2020 was fucking scary and there were lots of times when all I wanted was some acknowledgement in the news I consumed that yes, things really are that bad and yes, there are people who are responsible for it. But when faced with an utterly unqualified sociopath of a President who literally went on television to suggest chlorine bleach as a possible treatment as hundreds of thousands died and misery swept the land, mainstream journalism still couldn't be bothered to step away from the view from nowhere and still insisted on using language like "Trump downplays severity of virus" or "Trump stated without evidence".
Right-wing media has successfully boxed in the level of outrage mainstream journalism can express without being "too political". It's especially clear after the 1/6 insurrection that there's a limit to how far papers like the Washington Post or New York Times are willing to go. Once the needle hits standard "-gate" levels of scandal--that's it, that's all they're going to do.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 3:56 AM on December 17, 2021 [30 favorites]
2020 was fucking scary and there were lots of times when all I wanted was some acknowledgement in the news I consumed that yes, things really are that bad and yes, there are people who are responsible for it. But when faced with an utterly unqualified sociopath of a President who literally went on television to suggest chlorine bleach as a possible treatment as hundreds of thousands died and misery swept the land, mainstream journalism still couldn't be bothered to step away from the view from nowhere and still insisted on using language like "Trump downplays severity of virus" or "Trump stated without evidence".
Right-wing media has successfully boxed in the level of outrage mainstream journalism can express without being "too political". It's especially clear after the 1/6 insurrection that there's a limit to how far papers like the Washington Post or New York Times are willing to go. Once the needle hits standard "-gate" levels of scandal--that's it, that's all they're going to do.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 3:56 AM on December 17, 2021 [30 favorites]
They platform fascists every time they publish an article by Marc Theissen and Hugh Hewitt. Their guest articles are either close to Bernie Sanders left or ultra right wing. I believe they have published Kavanah, however you spell justice mcfratty.
They published an "Article" "telling" "why" people "need" Austin "University" the right wing grift masquerading as a college education.
posted by Jacen at 4:32 AM on December 17, 2021 [15 favorites]
They published an "Article" "telling" "why" people "need" Austin "University" the right wing grift masquerading as a college education.
posted by Jacen at 4:32 AM on December 17, 2021 [15 favorites]
That WSJ article in the OP is free to read in its entirety - while all the other articles I clicked on, whether linked from that page or from the WSJ front page, immediately got me to the paywall. I thought maybe the
So maybe there's some URL stuff that I'm missing, or maybe the WSJ, owned by Rupert Murdoch, really wants people to read this article about how its rival, owned by a political opponent, is "grasping" for direction. Maybe both!
What are the WSJ's own stats on readership decline? It doesn't say (except to mention that it experienced "smaller declines in that time frame", which could mean anything from "a lot smaller" to "basically identical"). They do say that
Anyway, the Post is far from perfect and, as with most newspapers, its editorials are often clickbaity, crap, or both. But it does also break a lot of worthwhile stories, do actual investigations, and do a better job than many others in an extremely important role.
If a big paper made a big deal about being "not for sale" [...]
That's basically been the Guardian's model for several years now. (The "platforming both sides" part is another matter.)
posted by trig at 4:53 AM on December 17, 2021 [8 favorites]
&reflink=mobilewebshare_twitter tag might have something to do with it, but appending it to the other articles' URLs didn't help.So maybe there's some URL stuff that I'm missing, or maybe the WSJ, owned by Rupert Murdoch, really wants people to read this article about how its rival, owned by a political opponent, is "grasping" for direction. Maybe both!
What are the WSJ's own stats on readership decline? It doesn't say (except to mention that it experienced "smaller declines in that time frame", which could mean anything from "a lot smaller" to "basically identical"). They do say that
A spokesman for Journal parent Dow Jones declined to comment on the company’s plans for audience growth. Dow Jones executives said at a September 2020 investor event that the company planned to double its membership business over the long term.but decline to phrase that as "Dow Jones: No Clear Strategy for Increasing Membership". (I also like how they cite Dow Jones as the WSJ's parent company but don't go any farther up the ownership tree to, you know, News Corp.) If you connect the data points scattered through the article it also says that the Post had 16 million more unique monthly visitors in October than the WSJ, but the headline isn't "WSJ Struggling to Compete with Liberal Newspapers."
Anyway, the Post is far from perfect and, as with most newspapers, its editorials are often clickbaity, crap, or both. But it does also break a lot of worthwhile stories, do actual investigations, and do a better job than many others in an extremely important role.
If a big paper made a big deal about being "not for sale" [...]
That's basically been the Guardian's model for several years now. (The "platforming both sides" part is another matter.)
posted by trig at 4:53 AM on December 17, 2021 [8 favorites]
That WSJ article in the OP is free to read in its entirety - while all the other articles I clicked on, whether linked from that page or from the WSJ front page, immediately got me to the paywall
No, the Journal paywalls stuff according to a predictive algorithm about whether a given visitor is likely to ever subscribe. It was free for YOU, but won’t necessarily be for everyone.
posted by sock poppet at 4:59 AM on December 17, 2021 [6 favorites]
No, the Journal paywalls stuff according to a predictive algorithm about whether a given visitor is likely to ever subscribe. It was free for YOU, but won’t necessarily be for everyone.
posted by sock poppet at 4:59 AM on December 17, 2021 [6 favorites]
explosion, which fascists do you think the WaPo is platforming, exactly?
WaPo is owned by Bezos, and is thus operating under fundamental conflict of interest.
It's the New York Times that regularly platforms fascists.
posted by explosion at 5:49 AM on December 17, 2021 [9 favorites]
WaPo is owned by Bezos, and is thus operating under fundamental conflict of interest.
It's the New York Times that regularly platforms fascists.
posted by explosion at 5:49 AM on December 17, 2021 [9 favorites]
Wasn't there a regional newspaper (in Pennsylvania?) that promised post-1/6 to not give an unqualified platform to any Republican who voted against certifying the election?
That's the kind of thing I want from a news source. I hate how compartmentalized the New York Times and Washington Post can be. Someone can be the most vile, racist, anti-democratic, anti-science, pro-pandemic Congresscritter imaginable, but both papers will still put all that aside and ask them for their opinion of the budget deficit and devote headlines to their criticisms on the amount of spending in BBB.
I really wish both papers would take a more holistic approach. While it's tough to find consensus on every issue, I think we can all agree for the sake of the country that anyone who keeps peddling lies about election integrity or vaccines doesn't deserve a platform.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 6:07 AM on December 17, 2021 [5 favorites]
That's the kind of thing I want from a news source. I hate how compartmentalized the New York Times and Washington Post can be. Someone can be the most vile, racist, anti-democratic, anti-science, pro-pandemic Congresscritter imaginable, but both papers will still put all that aside and ask them for their opinion of the budget deficit and devote headlines to their criticisms on the amount of spending in BBB.
I really wish both papers would take a more holistic approach. While it's tough to find consensus on every issue, I think we can all agree for the sake of the country that anyone who keeps peddling lies about election integrity or vaccines doesn't deserve a platform.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 6:07 AM on December 17, 2021 [5 favorites]
I subscribe to WaPo and NYT. I feel like I’m reading different papers than some of my fellow Mefites.
They are flawed but I do think they are sometimes punished for reporting the bad shit that is happening in the world.
posted by girlmightlive at 6:20 AM on December 17, 2021 [8 favorites]
They are flawed but I do think they are sometimes punished for reporting the bad shit that is happening in the world.
posted by girlmightlive at 6:20 AM on December 17, 2021 [8 favorites]
Someone can be the most vile, racist, anti-democratic, anti-science, pro-pandemic Congresscritter imaginable, but both papers will still put all that aside and ask them for their opinion of the budget deficit and devote headlines to their criticisms on the amount of spending in BBB.
This isn't a problem with journalism, per se. It's a problem with capitalism. The source might be a vile, racist, treasonous shitgibbon, but he's also an elected member of congress, which means a majority of the voters in his district have no problem with any of those adjectives. The contemporary GOP is predicated entirely on doublespeak and rampant hypocrisy, so if the paper comes out and says "We're not going to treat Congressman Shitgibbon as a valid source, because he has repeatedly shown that he enjoys being a lying liar who promotes treason," then that paper has to be comfortable being boycotted by 47% of the nation's voters. (We'll ignore for the moment that those 47% are already boycotting them because of a decades-long disinformation campaign) Clearly that's the morally right thing to do, but good luck selling that premise to the board of directors in an industry that's already suffering from dwindling circulation. A newspaper whose main goal is to make money for its shareholders is never going to take a principled stand against fascists, as long as those fascists are potential customers.
posted by Mayor West at 6:21 AM on December 17, 2021 [8 favorites]
This isn't a problem with journalism, per se. It's a problem with capitalism. The source might be a vile, racist, treasonous shitgibbon, but he's also an elected member of congress, which means a majority of the voters in his district have no problem with any of those adjectives. The contemporary GOP is predicated entirely on doublespeak and rampant hypocrisy, so if the paper comes out and says "We're not going to treat Congressman Shitgibbon as a valid source, because he has repeatedly shown that he enjoys being a lying liar who promotes treason," then that paper has to be comfortable being boycotted by 47% of the nation's voters. (We'll ignore for the moment that those 47% are already boycotting them because of a decades-long disinformation campaign) Clearly that's the morally right thing to do, but good luck selling that premise to the board of directors in an industry that's already suffering from dwindling circulation. A newspaper whose main goal is to make money for its shareholders is never going to take a principled stand against fascists, as long as those fascists are potential customers.
posted by Mayor West at 6:21 AM on December 17, 2021 [8 favorites]
Craigslist can run classified ads for free, and newspaper revenue is something like a third what it was at peak: https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/fact-sheet/newspapers/
My town's paper died years ago. These few national papers are probably doing better than most, but they're still much smaller than they were.
I don't get the impression other journalism sources are filling the gap.
It's a serious problem for US democracy at every level. (The national level gets the most focus, but I suspect it's worse at the local and state levels.) So, it's really important to understand why it's happening.
Possible hypotheses:
1) The revenue streams that support journalism have declined dramatically.
2) More revenue is there for the taking, but everyone who has tried to run a newspaper for the past twenty years is a going at it the wrong way.
Hypothesis #2 suggests we don't need to do anything. Eventually someone with business sense and a passion for journalism is going to figure out how to make this work.
At this point I'm more leaning towards #1.
If it was up to me, I'd fund journalism out of taxes. Yes, that's subject to political influence. So is advertising and subscription income and waiting for billionaires to rescue you.
We could choose whatever governance structure we wanted and do the best we can. I think it'd have a good chance--well, if we could do it.
Maybe there's some better idea. I'm all ears.
posted by bfields at 6:29 AM on December 17, 2021 [1 favorite]
My town's paper died years ago. These few national papers are probably doing better than most, but they're still much smaller than they were.
I don't get the impression other journalism sources are filling the gap.
It's a serious problem for US democracy at every level. (The national level gets the most focus, but I suspect it's worse at the local and state levels.) So, it's really important to understand why it's happening.
Possible hypotheses:
1) The revenue streams that support journalism have declined dramatically.
2) More revenue is there for the taking, but everyone who has tried to run a newspaper for the past twenty years is a going at it the wrong way.
Hypothesis #2 suggests we don't need to do anything. Eventually someone with business sense and a passion for journalism is going to figure out how to make this work.
At this point I'm more leaning towards #1.
If it was up to me, I'd fund journalism out of taxes. Yes, that's subject to political influence. So is advertising and subscription income and waiting for billionaires to rescue you.
We could choose whatever governance structure we wanted and do the best we can. I think it'd have a good chance--well, if we could do it.
Maybe there's some better idea. I'm all ears.
posted by bfields at 6:29 AM on December 17, 2021 [1 favorite]
Still can't believe papers haven't created group subscriptions or pay per article.
The 1984 novel ORA:CLE by Kevin O'Donnell Jr. had as a plot point all the news sources being aggregated in a system sorta like reddit + microtransactions. Reading past the preview cost a like a nickle or dime and revenues grew along with popularity. It's risk a dime on something that caught my eye.
posted by mikelieman at 6:39 AM on December 17, 2021
The 1984 novel ORA:CLE by Kevin O'Donnell Jr. had as a plot point all the news sources being aggregated in a system sorta like reddit + microtransactions. Reading past the preview cost a like a nickle or dime and revenues grew along with popularity. It's risk a dime on something that caught my eye.
posted by mikelieman at 6:39 AM on December 17, 2021
The 1984 novel ORA:CLE by Kevin O'Donnell Jr. had as a plot point all the news sources being aggregated in a system sorta like reddit + microtransactions. Reading past the preview cost a like a nickle or dime and revenues grew along with popularity. It's risk a dime on something that caught my eye.
I'd love something like that. (I only just recently had the experience of seeing an article I'd like to read, saying "ah, well, I should just pay for that", buying a month's trial subscription to the relevant paper, setting a reminder for a month later, then having to call and navigate an extensive customer-retention script to unsubscribe. Definitely more effort than it was worth.)
But people have been talking about that sort of thing for decades and it hasn't happened, so apparently it takes something more than the idea. I'd love to hear what the practical obstacles are from anyone who's made a serious effort at it.
posted by bfields at 6:49 AM on December 17, 2021
I'd love something like that. (I only just recently had the experience of seeing an article I'd like to read, saying "ah, well, I should just pay for that", buying a month's trial subscription to the relevant paper, setting a reminder for a month later, then having to call and navigate an extensive customer-retention script to unsubscribe. Definitely more effort than it was worth.)
But people have been talking about that sort of thing for decades and it hasn't happened, so apparently it takes something more than the idea. I'd love to hear what the practical obstacles are from anyone who's made a serious effort at it.
posted by bfields at 6:49 AM on December 17, 2021
Clearly that's the morally right thing to do, but good luck selling that premise to the board of directors in an industry that's already suffering from dwindling circulation.
And replace "board of directors" with "Democratic caucus" and "dwindling circulation" with "slim majority" and we describe the same frustrating situation that's plaguing policy decisions.
Not to derail, but I think there are parallels with people's expectations of what journalism can accomplish. It's hard not to think of Woodward and Bernstein and Watergate as a go-to example of the power wielded by the press. They brought down a corrupt President! Surely if the press really wanted to and worked hard enough, they could've brought down Trump.
And certainly the number of inflated scandals over the years that were initially propagated by right-wing media and diligently picked up by mainstream journalists (the Clinton impeachment, Swiftboating, Bengazi, etc) hasn't helped. I sometimes find my self thinking that if only these papers covered things like the pandemic or the insurrection with as much eagerness and excitement as they did those stupid Butteremails, maybe the overton window could be moved a bit and we could see some real progress?
But then they don't because capitalism. Even Woodward sat on actual recordings he had of Trump from early 2020 admitting he lied about the severity of cvoid in order to save them for the book he was writing. And this leaves me disillusioned and much less likely to subscribe because I don't really see the point of funding something that keeps pulling it's punches to satisfy some status quo I don't agree with.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 6:59 AM on December 17, 2021 [8 favorites]
And replace "board of directors" with "Democratic caucus" and "dwindling circulation" with "slim majority" and we describe the same frustrating situation that's plaguing policy decisions.
Not to derail, but I think there are parallels with people's expectations of what journalism can accomplish. It's hard not to think of Woodward and Bernstein and Watergate as a go-to example of the power wielded by the press. They brought down a corrupt President! Surely if the press really wanted to and worked hard enough, they could've brought down Trump.
And certainly the number of inflated scandals over the years that were initially propagated by right-wing media and diligently picked up by mainstream journalists (the Clinton impeachment, Swiftboating, Bengazi, etc) hasn't helped. I sometimes find my self thinking that if only these papers covered things like the pandemic or the insurrection with as much eagerness and excitement as they did those stupid Butteremails, maybe the overton window could be moved a bit and we could see some real progress?
But then they don't because capitalism. Even Woodward sat on actual recordings he had of Trump from early 2020 admitting he lied about the severity of cvoid in order to save them for the book he was writing. And this leaves me disillusioned and much less likely to subscribe because I don't really see the point of funding something that keeps pulling it's punches to satisfy some status quo I don't agree with.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 6:59 AM on December 17, 2021 [8 favorites]
I suspect micropayments just don't make enough money. They're not a reliable source of income as opposed to knowing that you're getting a certain amount of money every month. Micropayments probably don't make enough to pay everyone and can you imagine how everything would go if only certain articles get paid for? We'd only get clickbait for eternity. That said, I still wish it was a thing that could happen because I'm not going to be subscribed to 20+ news sources, especially when sometimes you only want to read 1-2 articles from a source as a one-off. Too bad, so sad, not reading, I guess.
I only have monthly subscriptions to places that give me a consistent discount, which is WaPo and the Atlantic (job-related discount) and I have access to the NYT for free through work as well. I wouldn't pay for NYT though--they have a lot of articles you can only find there, but also I'm frequently unthrilled with management's behavior and the like.
posted by jenfullmoon at 7:01 AM on December 17, 2021 [2 favorites]
I only have monthly subscriptions to places that give me a consistent discount, which is WaPo and the Atlantic (job-related discount) and I have access to the NYT for free through work as well. I wouldn't pay for NYT though--they have a lot of articles you can only find there, but also I'm frequently unthrilled with management's behavior and the like.
posted by jenfullmoon at 7:01 AM on December 17, 2021 [2 favorites]
For those looking for a way to support good journalism that makes a difference, please consider donating to ProPublica.
They partner with local newsrooms across the country to investigate community issues and support regional reporting.
Their stories often result in real change, from ending abuses of restraints and seclusion on Illinois school kids to prompting the Department of Justice to investigate jailing children in Tennessee.
They use Creative Commons to encourage sharing their stories. They provide access to many of their data sets for others to explore.
Supporting ProPublica can be a great way to support solid, effective, award-winning journalism across the country.
(And speaking of Craigslist, the Craig Newmark Foundation gave ProPublica $1 million in 2017.)
posted by kristi at 7:01 AM on December 17, 2021 [32 favorites]
They partner with local newsrooms across the country to investigate community issues and support regional reporting.
Their stories often result in real change, from ending abuses of restraints and seclusion on Illinois school kids to prompting the Department of Justice to investigate jailing children in Tennessee.
They use Creative Commons to encourage sharing their stories. They provide access to many of their data sets for others to explore.
Supporting ProPublica can be a great way to support solid, effective, award-winning journalism across the country.
(And speaking of Craigslist, the Craig Newmark Foundation gave ProPublica $1 million in 2017.)
posted by kristi at 7:01 AM on December 17, 2021 [32 favorites]
Also: if you have a library card, you may have access to many major newspapers through your library. As a taxpayer, you probably already paid for access to these papers. Take advantage of it. It's a bit more hassle to go through the library portal, but if you have the access, it's there for you to use.
posted by kristi at 7:03 AM on December 17, 2021 [10 favorites]
posted by kristi at 7:03 AM on December 17, 2021 [10 favorites]
This is your regular reminder that, as at any reputable paper, the WSJ editorial page is entirely separate from rest of the paper. An imperfect rule of thumb: if you read it in the news section, it's true. If you read it in the WSJ editorial section, it's a lie. (In papers like the NY Times and Washington Post, the editorial section is generally factual, though selective in the facts they include.)
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 7:09 AM on December 17, 2021 [4 favorites]
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 7:09 AM on December 17, 2021 [4 favorites]
For those looking for a way to support good journalism that makes a difference, please consider donating to ProPublica.
Heck yes to this. Look, it comes down to this; if you want to know what's happening, there need to be people who are paid, full-time, to find out what's happening and tell you about it. I pay for the Washington Post and the New York Times and ProPublica and the Wisconsin State Journal and the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel because if nobody pays for those things, we don't have those things. Nobody's gonna tell me what my state legislators are doing unless Wisconsin-based journalists tell me.
And ProPublica, in particular, goes deep on stories of high public interest and importance that aren't attached to today's headlines and that nobody else would do.
posted by escabeche at 7:34 AM on December 17, 2021 [8 favorites]
Heck yes to this. Look, it comes down to this; if you want to know what's happening, there need to be people who are paid, full-time, to find out what's happening and tell you about it. I pay for the Washington Post and the New York Times and ProPublica and the Wisconsin State Journal and the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel because if nobody pays for those things, we don't have those things. Nobody's gonna tell me what my state legislators are doing unless Wisconsin-based journalists tell me.
And ProPublica, in particular, goes deep on stories of high public interest and importance that aren't attached to today's headlines and that nobody else would do.
posted by escabeche at 7:34 AM on December 17, 2021 [8 favorites]
It's hard not to think of Woodward and Bernstein and Watergate as a go-to example of the power wielded by the press. They brought down a corrupt President! Surely if the press really wanted to and worked hard enough, they could've brought down Trump.
Not in the same way, no. Nixon had some degree of shame and a Congress willing and able to impeach him. Trump was impeached twice, but because Republicans circled the wagons and refused to do anything about him, he wasn't removed. And Trump is absolutely incapable of admitting guilt or fault or doing anything except double-down.
We must not forget how the Republicans cravenly supported and enabled his awfulness.
posted by JHarris at 7:35 AM on December 17, 2021 [8 favorites]
Not in the same way, no. Nixon had some degree of shame and a Congress willing and able to impeach him. Trump was impeached twice, but because Republicans circled the wagons and refused to do anything about him, he wasn't removed. And Trump is absolutely incapable of admitting guilt or fault or doing anything except double-down.
We must not forget how the Republicans cravenly supported and enabled his awfulness.
posted by JHarris at 7:35 AM on December 17, 2021 [8 favorites]
Also--
Let's not forget, many people don't subscribe to these papers because they cannot afford them. Like me! I currently subscribe to the NYT because of their $4/month introductory offer, which I upgraded to $6 for crossword access, but once this expires I will have to go back to doing without again.
posted by JHarris at 7:38 AM on December 17, 2021 [2 favorites]
Let's not forget, many people don't subscribe to these papers because they cannot afford them. Like me! I currently subscribe to the NYT because of their $4/month introductory offer, which I upgraded to $6 for crossword access, but once this expires I will have to go back to doing without again.
posted by JHarris at 7:38 AM on December 17, 2021 [2 favorites]
The source might be a vile, racist, treasonous shitgibbon, but he's also an elected member of congress, which means a majority plurality of the voters eligible voters who actually were motivated to vote and were successful in doing so in his district have no problem with any of those adjectives.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 7:43 AM on December 17, 2021 [3 favorites]
posted by ricochet biscuit at 7:43 AM on December 17, 2021 [3 favorites]
I wonder if this is why WaPo news alerts have gone mad this week? I've had Trump-level waves of updates about fairly normal (since the Obama years at least) government dysfunction.
posted by grandiloquiet at 7:58 AM on December 17, 2021
posted by grandiloquiet at 7:58 AM on December 17, 2021
I would have thought WaPo should have been better able to capitalise on the credibility gap of the NYT
This is precisely why we ditched our NYT subscription and decided to try WaPo a couple of years ago. Surely we're not the only ones?
posted by missmobtown at 7:58 AM on December 17, 2021 [1 favorite]
This is precisely why we ditched our NYT subscription and decided to try WaPo a couple of years ago. Surely we're not the only ones?
posted by missmobtown at 7:58 AM on December 17, 2021 [1 favorite]
Like many other Confident Strivers™, I subscribe to the NYT, WaPo, and my local daily. But I'll admit that while I still pay for WaPo every month I don't read it. I'm trying to cut down on reading political news because I have enough in my life that fills me with despair and rage. At least when Trump was in office it felt like we could fight and try to get him and his cronies out and there was hope that the next guys would be better. Now it's like, I may literally loathe Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema to the core of my very soul, but I still have to wish them good health and long life, and I hate thinking about that shit. Reading political news when "my" party is in power is so much more depressing... it's like, wow, this is really as good as it gets for us in this bad country?
Still paying for the journalism but consuming it makes me feel hopeless, and god help me, I can't make myself do it right now. I never understood until this year why so many people are disengaged from politics but I definitely hit my limit and just needed a break.
It's also the case that I check my local daily much more often now because I need local covid information and I'm about as far as one can be from DC and still be in the lower 48. I wonder if local news has actually seen a bump from the pandemic as many people realized they don't actually need to know who in New York or Washington got coronavirus today but very much do need to know what's going on locally. And my local does pick up a fair number of wire stories from WaPo so I can kinda feel like I'm still reading it a bit even if I'm not loading up the site directly.
posted by potrzebie at 8:22 AM on December 17, 2021 [3 favorites]
Still paying for the journalism but consuming it makes me feel hopeless, and god help me, I can't make myself do it right now. I never understood until this year why so many people are disengaged from politics but I definitely hit my limit and just needed a break.
It's also the case that I check my local daily much more often now because I need local covid information and I'm about as far as one can be from DC and still be in the lower 48. I wonder if local news has actually seen a bump from the pandemic as many people realized they don't actually need to know who in New York or Washington got coronavirus today but very much do need to know what's going on locally. And my local does pick up a fair number of wire stories from WaPo so I can kinda feel like I'm still reading it a bit even if I'm not loading up the site directly.
posted by potrzebie at 8:22 AM on December 17, 2021 [3 favorites]
which fascists do you think the WaPo is platforming, exactly?
I mean, just today they're featuring a tasty little George Will piece describing the NYT's 1619 project as "maliciousness in the service of progressivism’s agenda". And they seem to have taken on a certain pro-billionaire stance.
(I know including contrarian views in the op-eds is a long-standing tradition for many papers, but I feel like I've run into some unnecessarily vile ones on WaPo lately.)
posted by ook at 8:26 AM on December 17, 2021 [10 favorites]
I mean, just today they're featuring a tasty little George Will piece describing the NYT's 1619 project as "maliciousness in the service of progressivism’s agenda". And they seem to have taken on a certain pro-billionaire stance.
(I know including contrarian views in the op-eds is a long-standing tradition for many papers, but I feel like I've run into some unnecessarily vile ones on WaPo lately.)
posted by ook at 8:26 AM on December 17, 2021 [10 favorites]
Still can't believe papers haven't created group subscriptions or pay per article.
The 1984 novel ORA:CLE by Kevin O'Donnell Jr. had as a plot point all the news sources being aggregated in a system sorta like reddit + microtransactions.
Presumably it's possible. Many organisations pay for a digital press cuttings service that covers a huge swathe of all the newspapers and magazines that you might want, so that could potentially pivot to a retail customer model. You'd probably set up the subscription model so you can get X articles from any linked source, where X is a large number. Headlines and first line of all articles at no further cost.
posted by plonkee at 8:51 AM on December 17, 2021
The 1984 novel ORA:CLE by Kevin O'Donnell Jr. had as a plot point all the news sources being aggregated in a system sorta like reddit + microtransactions.
Presumably it's possible. Many organisations pay for a digital press cuttings service that covers a huge swathe of all the newspapers and magazines that you might want, so that could potentially pivot to a retail customer model. You'd probably set up the subscription model so you can get X articles from any linked source, where X is a large number. Headlines and first line of all articles at no further cost.
posted by plonkee at 8:51 AM on December 17, 2021
There's a popular newspaper where I live that paywalls some of its articles - but not the news ones. Instead it paywalls a lot of its more fun, escapist, clickbaity content - lifestyle stuff, celeb analysis, what might the high tech future hold for us, what's the secret to wealth/happiness - and the occasional deep dive into things that are interesting but not directly related to the big issues of the day, like how bread shaped the modern world. I don't know if that model is working out for them, but I hope it is because that's kind of an optimal structure, as opposed to another major newspaper here that paywalls most of the important news posts about things you'd actually want people in a democracy to be aware of.
posted by trig at 9:26 AM on December 17, 2021 [3 favorites]
posted by trig at 9:26 AM on December 17, 2021 [3 favorites]
>unnecessarily vile
Them platforming "McMegan" is one reason I won't subscribe.
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 9:40 AM on December 17, 2021 [2 favorites]
Them platforming "McMegan" is one reason I won't subscribe.
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 9:40 AM on December 17, 2021 [2 favorites]
Since I’ve seen a couple mentions of the inconvenience of setting a cancellation reminder for some far future date: WaPo and many others allow you to cancel immediately and keep the service til the end of the subscription period (I believe there was a lawsuit in the past decade that forced this? Although I’ve definitely seen some services get around this via sneaky ToS clauses).
I’m currently on the fourth year of my $20/year “intro rate” for WaPo, which seems about right for my usage (if you try this, the “please re-subscribe!” pop-ups stop after a couple weeks, and they’ll send you a “re-subscribe at your old rate” email once your subscription actually expires).
If they’d agree to fire Thiessen into the sun at some point, I’ll happily upgrade to full price for at least a year.
posted by a box and a stick and a string and a bear at 9:55 AM on December 17, 2021 [2 favorites]
I’m currently on the fourth year of my $20/year “intro rate” for WaPo, which seems about right for my usage (if you try this, the “please re-subscribe!” pop-ups stop after a couple weeks, and they’ll send you a “re-subscribe at your old rate” email once your subscription actually expires).
If they’d agree to fire Thiessen into the sun at some point, I’ll happily upgrade to full price for at least a year.
posted by a box and a stick and a string and a bear at 9:55 AM on December 17, 2021 [2 favorites]
The thing about journalism and the "we the people need to support journalism" is that sometimes it really feels not just futile, but counter-productive.
When they're not platforming people who'd rather me dead, they're platforming landlords, business owners, cops, and other oppressors.
Articles on crime? You hear from cops, rather than the residents who actually live in the neighborhoods. Newspapers repeat police lies about crime waves, social media debunks this and shows the real stats. You'll never see an OpEd in the Times saying "Cops need to stop lying."
Articles on business? You hear from the business owners, and not the employees, who actually do the work. Newspapers repeat lies about shoplifting rings, social media explains that wage theft is far and away larger than criminal theft. You'll never see an OpEd in the Post saying "Wage theft ought to be punished criminally."
Articles on organized labor? Environmentalism? Queer rights? Racial justice? Over, and over, and over again, we get reports from without groups rather than from within.
And if I'm wrong? It kind of doesn't matter. The question isn't about the true nature of the papers, or their editorial intent. The question is about why people of my cohort don't support these large newspapers, and so it matters more what we think of them. They need to repair their reputation, not just market and strategize.
posted by explosion at 10:08 AM on December 17, 2021 [17 favorites]
When they're not platforming people who'd rather me dead, they're platforming landlords, business owners, cops, and other oppressors.
Articles on crime? You hear from cops, rather than the residents who actually live in the neighborhoods. Newspapers repeat police lies about crime waves, social media debunks this and shows the real stats. You'll never see an OpEd in the Times saying "Cops need to stop lying."
Articles on business? You hear from the business owners, and not the employees, who actually do the work. Newspapers repeat lies about shoplifting rings, social media explains that wage theft is far and away larger than criminal theft. You'll never see an OpEd in the Post saying "Wage theft ought to be punished criminally."
Articles on organized labor? Environmentalism? Queer rights? Racial justice? Over, and over, and over again, we get reports from without groups rather than from within.
And if I'm wrong? It kind of doesn't matter. The question isn't about the true nature of the papers, or their editorial intent. The question is about why people of my cohort don't support these large newspapers, and so it matters more what we think of them. They need to repair their reputation, not just market and strategize.
posted by explosion at 10:08 AM on December 17, 2021 [17 favorites]
The thing about journalism and the "we the people need to support journalism" is that sometimes it really feels not just futile, but counter-productive.
Case in point: This article includes statements from the ousted District Attorney about how she would have handled cases. Seriously, who does that? Just no ethics or sense from the reporter.
posted by The_Vegetables at 10:25 AM on December 17, 2021 [1 favorite]
Case in point: This article includes statements from the ousted District Attorney about how she would have handled cases. Seriously, who does that? Just no ethics or sense from the reporter.
posted by The_Vegetables at 10:25 AM on December 17, 2021 [1 favorite]
The thing about journalism and the "we the people need to support journalism" is that sometimes it really feels not just futile, but counter-productive.
When they're not platforming people who'd rather me dead, they're platforming landlords, business owners, cops, and other oppressors.
So, again, organizations like ProPublica do a great job of writing stories about stuff that affects and matters to everyday people - being the voice of the majority, instead of the rentiers. One of the best examples is their long-running investigation into how Intuit keeps the IRS from offering free tax filing; their reporting spurred investigations by the FTC and the DOJ and at least one state regulator.
It's distressing and annoying that we have to actively seek out journalism that doesn't promote heinous positions. But that non-heinous journalism is out there, and there are ways to support it - even by sharing their stories with others, if you don't have the funds to support them financially.
posted by kristi at 10:38 AM on December 17, 2021 [2 favorites]
When they're not platforming people who'd rather me dead, they're platforming landlords, business owners, cops, and other oppressors.
So, again, organizations like ProPublica do a great job of writing stories about stuff that affects and matters to everyday people - being the voice of the majority, instead of the rentiers. One of the best examples is their long-running investigation into how Intuit keeps the IRS from offering free tax filing; their reporting spurred investigations by the FTC and the DOJ and at least one state regulator.
It's distressing and annoying that we have to actively seek out journalism that doesn't promote heinous positions. But that non-heinous journalism is out there, and there are ways to support it - even by sharing their stories with others, if you don't have the funds to support them financially.
posted by kristi at 10:38 AM on December 17, 2021 [2 favorites]
You'll never see an OpEd in the Times saying "Cops need to stop lying."
They have their problems, but my local (McClatchy-owned) paper ran an editorial including almost if not exactly that phrasing last year after the second or third time the cops engaged in unprovoked beatings of protesters.
Of course, later that year they endorsed the long-time prosecuting attorney who is a large part of why the cops are such corrupt pieces of shit in Miami. "With reservations," even though they at least explained what her problems were, doesn't make that any better.
Nonetheless, they've been on a streak about the cops. Not full on "burn it down," for obvious reasons, but they have not in any way been quiet about the open corruption in many of the local PDs and the broken system that keeps the worst of them in a job. Hasn't done shit for good, though. Partly because there are still a few reporters who reliably transcribe the transparent bullshit spewed by what former Chief Acevedo termed "the Cuban Mafia," but mostly because there's a group of powerful people who like things exactly the way they are and a much larger group who aren't willing to risk being smeared with baseless lies and literally harassed and maybe even arrested (and tried, there is precedent, and those responsible still have their jobs!) for some made up bullshit by a particular group of cops if they speak out.
posted by wierdo at 11:17 AM on December 17, 2021 [2 favorites]
They have their problems, but my local (McClatchy-owned) paper ran an editorial including almost if not exactly that phrasing last year after the second or third time the cops engaged in unprovoked beatings of protesters.
Of course, later that year they endorsed the long-time prosecuting attorney who is a large part of why the cops are such corrupt pieces of shit in Miami. "With reservations," even though they at least explained what her problems were, doesn't make that any better.
Nonetheless, they've been on a streak about the cops. Not full on "burn it down," for obvious reasons, but they have not in any way been quiet about the open corruption in many of the local PDs and the broken system that keeps the worst of them in a job. Hasn't done shit for good, though. Partly because there are still a few reporters who reliably transcribe the transparent bullshit spewed by what former Chief Acevedo termed "the Cuban Mafia," but mostly because there's a group of powerful people who like things exactly the way they are and a much larger group who aren't willing to risk being smeared with baseless lies and literally harassed and maybe even arrested (and tried, there is precedent, and those responsible still have their jobs!) for some made up bullshit by a particular group of cops if they speak out.
posted by wierdo at 11:17 AM on December 17, 2021 [2 favorites]
Oh, and most of that shit we only know about because of the paper. Whatever their faults, and whatever the community's faults for not tackling the problem, they are confronting the fascist shit head on, even as they largely uncritically fluff up the police reports for their daily crime stories.
posted by wierdo at 11:20 AM on December 17, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by wierdo at 11:20 AM on December 17, 2021 [1 favorite]
The WSJ criticizing a paper that's even slightly to its left is risible on the face of it. But as a paying subscriber to the Post I can say that it's a pretty terrible paper in "view from nowhere" terms, without even getting into the disaster of its Opinion section. For years the Post provided a salary and a platform to Chris Cillizza, a paragon of horse race style political "journalism." Even after he left they kept the title "The Fix" (as in "the fix is in") for coverage that until only recently was still the same crap where they cast everything in terms of "winners and losers" and acted as if that mattered more than, y'know, governance.
Even now the Post is far too accommodating towards conservative viewpoints, and the closest they'll get to calling somebody out on a bullshit talking point is just to quote a political opponent's different talking point and mention that there is some disagreement. News departments everywhere would be well served by consigning that approach to the rubbish bin. "Some of this, some of that" is no way to run a newspaper.
The less said about the drivel they publish in their Opinion section, the better.
posted by fedward at 11:27 AM on December 17, 2021 [1 favorite]
Even now the Post is far too accommodating towards conservative viewpoints, and the closest they'll get to calling somebody out on a bullshit talking point is just to quote a political opponent's different talking point and mention that there is some disagreement. News departments everywhere would be well served by consigning that approach to the rubbish bin. "Some of this, some of that" is no way to run a newspaper.
The less said about the drivel they publish in their Opinion section, the better.
posted by fedward at 11:27 AM on December 17, 2021 [1 favorite]
It's the New York Times that regularly platforms fascists
Statements like this are the reason "Fascist" has little meaning anymore.
posted by Liquidwolf at 11:31 AM on December 17, 2021 [7 favorites]
Have you forgotten about the Tom Cotton piece arguing that military troops should be used to quell protests? If that wasn't platforming a fascist I'm not sure what would be.
posted by fedward at 11:36 AM on December 17, 2021 [17 favorites]
posted by fedward at 11:36 AM on December 17, 2021 [17 favorites]
I subscribe to the WaPo, NYT, and local, which is small enough to read in its entirety before I finish my coffee, but does a decent job of local news plus AP for world/national and stories from the major state paper and Minnesota Public Radio for state news. Lately, it’s what I read daily, while I may ignore the others for days to avoid a crushing sense of doom. FWIW, the WaPo is the least expensive of the three for me.
Instead of “confident striver” I fall into the “anxious slacker” category.
posted by zenzenobia at 11:57 AM on December 17, 2021 [1 favorite]
Instead of “confident striver” I fall into the “anxious slacker” category.
posted by zenzenobia at 11:57 AM on December 17, 2021 [1 favorite]
The editorial note added to the Cotton piece after all the uproar reveals a lot about the process of publishing it and how that process failed:
There's another bit of exposed sausage-making a couple paragraphs down: "The headline — which was written by The Times, not Senator Cotton — was incendiary and should not have been used." Arguably the headline was no more incendiary than the piece itself, but it's really common for Opinion editors to write their own headlines for contributed pieces, and I do wonder if sometimes they're willfully trying to make things worse, y'know, for clicks. (I feel this way a lot when I see the headlines in the Post's Opinion section).
But the kicker for the Times' apologia is this:
In conclusion, newspaper opinion sections are terrible. Thank you for coming to my talk.
posted by fedward at 12:05 PM on December 17, 2021 [3 favorites]
After publication, this essay met strong criticism from many readers (and many Times colleagues), prompting editors to review the piece and the editing process. Based on that review, we have concluded that the essay fell short of our standards and should not have been published.The context for this part of the editors' note is offered by the Politico article I linked above, but I'll paste it here for good measure:
The basic arguments advanced by Senator Cotton — however objectionable people may find them — represent a newsworthy part of the current debate. But given the life-and-death importance of the topic, the senator’s influential position and the gravity of the steps he advocates, the essay should have undergone the highest level of scrutiny. Instead, the editing process was rushed and flawed, and senior editors were not sufficiently involved. While Senator Cotton and his staff cooperated fully in our editing process, the Op-Ed should have been subject to further substantial revisions — as is frequently the case with such essays — or rejected.
Both Sulzberger and Bennet first defended the decision to run the column. Bennet wrote in an essay that “debating influential ideas openly, rather than letting them go unchallenged, is far more likely to help society reach the right answers.”Basically they got into the mess by starting from both-sides-ism (the "debating influential ideas openly" and "a newsworthy part of the current debate" lines) and following through on that by not, y'know, actually reading or meaningfully editing the piece. It took a lot of people shouting about how problematic it was before anybody in power actually considered that it might be.
But on Thursday evening, the Times reversed itself and said the column had not met editorial standards. The Times reported that Bennet said in a meeting with staff members that he had not read the essay before it was published. And the paper added an editor’s note to the top of the original column.
There's another bit of exposed sausage-making a couple paragraphs down: "The headline — which was written by The Times, not Senator Cotton — was incendiary and should not have been used." Arguably the headline was no more incendiary than the piece itself, but it's really common for Opinion editors to write their own headlines for contributed pieces, and I do wonder if sometimes they're willfully trying to make things worse, y'know, for clicks. (I feel this way a lot when I see the headlines in the Post's Opinion section).
But the kicker for the Times' apologia is this:
Finally, we failed to offer appropriate additional context — either in the text or the presentation — that could have helped readers place Senator Cotton’s views within a larger framework of debate.Oooohh, if only they'd added context when they gave a platform to a fascist! Context would have solved everything!
In conclusion, newspaper opinion sections are terrible. Thank you for coming to my talk.
posted by fedward at 12:05 PM on December 17, 2021 [3 favorites]
Oooohh, if only they'd added context when they gave a platform to a fascist! Context would have solved everything!
I mean, it might! "Fascists, and authoritarians more generally, have long seen forcible oppression as their preferred response to citizens' dissent. Even once-democratic governments have in the past succumbed to such leaders, in a remarkably consistent slippery slope that has led to millions of violent deaths and countless violations of human rights. Here are just a few examples..."
posted by trig at 12:24 PM on December 17, 2021 [7 favorites]
I mean, it might! "Fascists, and authoritarians more generally, have long seen forcible oppression as their preferred response to citizens' dissent. Even once-democratic governments have in the past succumbed to such leaders, in a remarkably consistent slippery slope that has led to millions of violent deaths and countless violations of human rights. Here are just a few examples..."
posted by trig at 12:24 PM on December 17, 2021 [7 favorites]
How come objectionable right wing shit is always newsworthy to reprint, but it's never the news?
The Times gladly printed Cotton's opinion, but somehow the very idea of a sitting member of the Senate advocating an unprecedented use of the armed forces to put down protests isn't "the news"? Like shouldn't there have been a headline or something? Something like "Senator advocates unlawful use of military in op-ed"?
posted by RonButNotStupid at 12:29 PM on December 17, 2021 [18 favorites]
The Times gladly printed Cotton's opinion, but somehow the very idea of a sitting member of the Senate advocating an unprecedented use of the armed forces to put down protests isn't "the news"? Like shouldn't there have been a headline or something? Something like "Senator advocates unlawful use of military in op-ed"?
posted by RonButNotStupid at 12:29 PM on December 17, 2021 [18 favorites]
Trump's covid press conferences were always newsworthy to broadcast, but the content of those conferences--that he often lied, repeated the same vapid talking points, wouldn't stop self-aggrandizing, and barely conveyed any actual information--was rarely if ever worthy of being news.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 12:32 PM on December 17, 2021 [2 favorites]
posted by RonButNotStupid at 12:32 PM on December 17, 2021 [2 favorites]
I'm surprised to see no mentions of Martin Gurri here, author of The Revolt of the Public and the Crisis of Authority in the New Millennium. He predicted a decade ago that shrinking ad revenue for traditional newspapers would mean bigger reliance on subscription revenue, which would in turn require more focused 'fan service' (as they call it in Hollywood) and cultivation of specific audiences, which means adopting a narrower point of view, i.e. he was agreeing more with Mr.Know-it-some rather than with Explosion at the top of this thread.
posted by PhineasGage at 12:59 PM on December 17, 2021 [2 favorites]
posted by PhineasGage at 12:59 PM on December 17, 2021 [2 favorites]
CNN did, famously, often undercut Trump's statements in real time via chyron. Whether that was enough or not is debatable, but it did occur.
If you ask me, the ultimate source of the rot is conservative media. It's pretty much just a big mouthpiece for money, that paradoxically wouldn't be nearly as profitable if it weren't propped up by billionaires and cable fees. It troth emboldens terrible opinions, spreads misinformation, and pushes the Overton window rightward, which is why the New York Times and Washington Post feel like they need to give a voice to the bad opinions and misinformation instead of letting it rot on the vine.
posted by JHarris at 1:02 PM on December 17, 2021 [4 favorites]
If you ask me, the ultimate source of the rot is conservative media. It's pretty much just a big mouthpiece for money, that paradoxically wouldn't be nearly as profitable if it weren't propped up by billionaires and cable fees. It troth emboldens terrible opinions, spreads misinformation, and pushes the Overton window rightward, which is why the New York Times and Washington Post feel like they need to give a voice to the bad opinions and misinformation instead of letting it rot on the vine.
posted by JHarris at 1:02 PM on December 17, 2021 [4 favorites]
In a way, I was glad the Tom Cotton op-ed wasn't edited down to something more generally palatable. Great to see what the assholes really think. Though, ideally it would have been accompanied by a slew of other opinion and analysis pieces that identified it as the "fascisty bananas" it was - to borrow a recent phrase
posted by DeepSeaHaggis at 1:14 PM on December 17, 2021 [3 favorites]
posted by DeepSeaHaggis at 1:14 PM on December 17, 2021 [3 favorites]
Reading political news when "my" party is in power is so much more depressing... it's like, wow, this is really as good as it gets for us in this bad country?
YUP. Then wait until the end of next year :(
posted by jenfullmoon at 1:53 PM on December 17, 2021
YUP. Then wait until the end of next year :(
posted by jenfullmoon at 1:53 PM on December 17, 2021
I admit that if Slate offered micropayments for some of its juiciest advice columns (currently mostly locked under Slate Plus) I would be seriously tempted. I have a weakness for interpersonal dumpster fires.
I may not have my shit together real well but at least I don't try to entangle visiting relatives in 24/7 happy families LARP with anthropomorphized plush mice.
Unfortunately I'm broke as shit so paywalled it all stays.
posted by kkar at 2:52 PM on December 17, 2021 [2 favorites]
I may not have my shit together real well but at least I don't try to entangle visiting relatives in 24/7 happy families LARP with anthropomorphized plush mice.
Unfortunately I'm broke as shit so paywalled it all stays.
posted by kkar at 2:52 PM on December 17, 2021 [2 favorites]
I'm a not yet but close to 55 year old WaPo subscriber. I subscribed during the Trump era because I wanted to support a national media outlet and couldn't bring myself to subscribe to the NYT (some days it seems like New York Times Pitchbot just ends up as RTs because it can't out-satire reality). But then I look at today's front page George Will opinion piece raving racist bullshit and think about what I'm supporting.
I send my local free weekly a few bucks a month because they're the ones doing local journalism. I subscribe to my town's weekly because I'm guilted into it, and can't bring myself to subscribe to my county's daily because they are so much just a tool of their owner and advertisers.
But recently I've been using paywalls as a filter to realize that I consume a hell of a lot of bullshit that isn't actionable, and doesn't actually make my life better. And sure as hell doesn't leave me more informed.
Which I guess is me talking myself into moving my WaPo subscription over to ProPublica...
posted by straw at 3:43 PM on December 17, 2021 [4 favorites]
I send my local free weekly a few bucks a month because they're the ones doing local journalism. I subscribe to my town's weekly because I'm guilted into it, and can't bring myself to subscribe to my county's daily because they are so much just a tool of their owner and advertisers.
But recently I've been using paywalls as a filter to realize that I consume a hell of a lot of bullshit that isn't actionable, and doesn't actually make my life better. And sure as hell doesn't leave me more informed.
Which I guess is me talking myself into moving my WaPo subscription over to ProPublica...
posted by straw at 3:43 PM on December 17, 2021 [4 favorites]
“I mean, just today they're featuring a tasty little George Will piece describing the NYT's 1619 project as "maliciousness in the service of progressivism’s agenda".
For whatever reason the publication has agreed to serve as some kind of retirement plan for wayward conservatives and one libertarian (?). This is annoying. I’m a paying under 55 reader and I still pay but I admit I don’t read it anywhere near as much as I did during the Trump admin. They could have a broader perspective on labor issues, but I think they were pretty tone deaf on that kind of thing pre-Bezos.
posted by Selena777 at 9:50 AM on December 18, 2021 [1 favorite]
For whatever reason the publication has agreed to serve as some kind of retirement plan for wayward conservatives and one libertarian (?). This is annoying. I’m a paying under 55 reader and I still pay but I admit I don’t read it anywhere near as much as I did during the Trump admin. They could have a broader perspective on labor issues, but I think they were pretty tone deaf on that kind of thing pre-Bezos.
posted by Selena777 at 9:50 AM on December 18, 2021 [1 favorite]
If you are unhappy with, or no longer have, your local daily newspaper, may I suggest you look into your local public radio station? I'm a digital subscriber to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, but far and away the best local news coverage in Georgia is from Atlanta's public radio station, WABE Say what you will about National Public Radio's daily news shows, the local news folks can be absolutely stellar.
posted by hydropsyche at 4:06 AM on December 19, 2021
posted by hydropsyche at 4:06 AM on December 19, 2021
Note from the Ultimate Demographic:
"The Times, they are a changin'."
posted by mule98J at 6:43 AM on December 19, 2021
"The Times, they are a changin'."
posted by mule98J at 6:43 AM on December 19, 2021
As someone in the profession, I don't think there are that many media outlets whose pages are immune to both-sidesism. For example: This head-scratcher of a piece by Slate staff writer Lili Loofbourow.
She responds to the Herman Cain Award subreddit by urging empathy for anti-vaxxers.
A plausible thesis (if a misguided one, IMO).
Meanwhile, Loofbourow overlooks that HCA recipients, almost to a one, displayed not only disregard for vaccine science but also virulent racism, transphobia, homophobia, and/or misogyny.
A hole in the piece, and one that an editor should have caught. A good editor would have pushed back, and asked Loofbourow why HCA subreddit members (especially members of subgroups specifically targeted for the hate) are obligated to feel empathy for any member of a group that relentlessly espouses such repellent views.
posted by virago at 6:44 AM on December 19, 2021 [1 favorite]
She responds to the Herman Cain Award subreddit by urging empathy for anti-vaxxers.
A plausible thesis (if a misguided one, IMO).
Meanwhile, Loofbourow overlooks that HCA recipients, almost to a one, displayed not only disregard for vaccine science but also virulent racism, transphobia, homophobia, and/or misogyny.
A hole in the piece, and one that an editor should have caught. A good editor would have pushed back, and asked Loofbourow why HCA subreddit members (especially members of subgroups specifically targeted for the hate) are obligated to feel empathy for any member of a group that relentlessly espouses such repellent views.
posted by virago at 6:44 AM on December 19, 2021 [1 favorite]
Editors need editors. Those last two sentences should read:
Meanwhile, Loofbourow overlooks that HCA recipients, almost to a one, displayed not only disregard for vaccine science but also virulent racism, transphobia, homophobia and/or misogyny.
A hole in the piece, and one that an editor should have caught. A good editor would have pushed back, and asked Loofbourow why HCA subreddit members (especially POC, trans people, LGBTQIA+ people, and women) are obligated to feel empathy for any member of a group that fails to display empathy for anyone else.
posted by virago at 6:53 AM on December 19, 2021
Meanwhile, Loofbourow overlooks that HCA recipients, almost to a one, displayed not only disregard for vaccine science but also virulent racism, transphobia, homophobia and/or misogyny.
A hole in the piece, and one that an editor should have caught. A good editor would have pushed back, and asked Loofbourow why HCA subreddit members (especially POC, trans people, LGBTQIA+ people, and women) are obligated to feel empathy for any member of a group that fails to display empathy for anyone else.
posted by virago at 6:53 AM on December 19, 2021
I was going to say "they should become ProPublica, the organization that accomplishes what the WashPost claims to accomplish", but y'all beat me to it.
posted by eustatic at 2:13 PM on December 19, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by eustatic at 2:13 PM on December 19, 2021 [1 favorite]
"Our paid product is not attractive to younger people". This epiphany ought to prompt the question, "Is any paid digital newspaper product attractive to younger people? " Considering the options, the Post is still purrrrty good and A. Petri is a national treasure. I am a chronic subscriber, under 55.
posted by abakua at 10:19 AM on December 20, 2021 [2 favorites]
posted by abakua at 10:19 AM on December 20, 2021 [2 favorites]
ProPublica, the organization that accomplishes what the WashPost claims to accomplish
In my judgement, the Post produces a shitload of great journalism; more than ProPublica. They should, having something like 10 times the staff (based on a quick glance at their Wikipedia pages; if you want to count up, please add that info). The fact that they still publish people like George Will (who I think is worth reading even as I disagree with most of what he says) doesn't take away from their feature and investigative and international work.
You need those deep pockets and huge newsrooms to do things like cover Sudan, to randomly pick one of the few dozen articles worth reading that they published today.
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 2:00 PM on December 20, 2021 [4 favorites]
In my judgement, the Post produces a shitload of great journalism; more than ProPublica. They should, having something like 10 times the staff (based on a quick glance at their Wikipedia pages; if you want to count up, please add that info). The fact that they still publish people like George Will (who I think is worth reading even as I disagree with most of what he says) doesn't take away from their feature and investigative and international work.
You need those deep pockets and huge newsrooms to do things like cover Sudan, to randomly pick one of the few dozen articles worth reading that they published today.
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 2:00 PM on December 20, 2021 [4 favorites]
NYT is almost self-satirical in the extent to which it writes for its implied audience of the hyper-gentry (and no, it's not just the Style section).
I notice this more and more. When I scan the NYT homepage these days, so much of it is just (over)educated metropolitan elites (of which I freely admit to being one) engaged in angsty navel-gazing and tired rehashing of the same few dozen topics. It seems like it's becoming harder to find substantive news, or even fresh non-news content that doesn't feel self-parodying, on the Times' site.
The scenes in the editorial offices of the "New York Herald" in "Don't Look Up" were a pretty good sendup of the NYT, I thought.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 8:08 PM on December 30, 2021 [2 favorites]
I notice this more and more. When I scan the NYT homepage these days, so much of it is just (over)educated metropolitan elites (of which I freely admit to being one) engaged in angsty navel-gazing and tired rehashing of the same few dozen topics. It seems like it's becoming harder to find substantive news, or even fresh non-news content that doesn't feel self-parodying, on the Times' site.
The scenes in the editorial offices of the "New York Herald" in "Don't Look Up" were a pretty good sendup of the NYT, I thought.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 8:08 PM on December 30, 2021 [2 favorites]
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Once upon a time, there was at least a veneer of respectability. People thought that the news would be printed, and told honestly.
Now it's all "the view from nowhere," and platforming fascists in the name of "balance."
Is it any surprise that they're struggling? When you aim to please everyone, you please no one.
If a big paper made a big deal about being "not for sale" (too late for the Post) and steadfastly refused to platform bigots and fascists, if they published journalism instead of printing both sides with a shrug of the shoulders? Yeah, maybe the younger generations would notice.
posted by explosion at 7:06 PM on December 16, 2021 [50 favorites]