1. What the hell is happening at the New York Times? I think the larger crisis, going well beyond the argument over the Cotton op ed, is the crack-up of the elite consensus that dominated from 1939 until 1991 (and had a strong afterlife until around 2014).
-
-
6. The newsroom solution is greater bluntness and diversity of experience (i.e. bringing marginalized groups into the writing of stories), then the op ed solution was expansion of political spectrum (good) combined with hot take nihilism (the source of trouble)
Show this thread -
7. I want to be clear here that I'm not a hater. There's much that happened in
@JBennet tenure as opinion editor that I admired (notably bringing on board Jamelle Bouie &@michelleinbklyn). Bennet was smart enough to know the old elite consensus was dead & need to move beyond itShow this thread -
8. As an example of what Bennet's genuinely helpful expansion of the political spectrum inside the Times, it's hard to imagine the pre-Bennet Times running
@Vinncent Vincent Bevins's piece on how the liberal world order is built on bloodpic.twitter.com/CBirUuOrRD
Show this thread -
9. But Bennet has had a harder time expanding with right-wing voices, in part because it is harder to find Trumpists who can write non-batshit stuff (one exception is
@ToryAnarchist, who the Times has been running). So paper settled back to Never Trumpists, mainly.Show this thread -
10. More broadly, I think the break-up of the elite consensus has led Bennet into a kind of epistemological nihilism. The attitude seems to be "since we can't convince each other with arguments, we can at least entertain each other with hot takes & trolling." Hence Bret Stephens
Show this thread -
11. In short, the fracturing of the New York Times is symptomatic of the larger fracturing of America (or rather the reality of a fractured America becoming more obvious in an age of protests). More thoughts here:https://www.thenation.com/article/society/racism-new-york-times/ …
Show this thread
End of conversation
New conversation -
-
-
The detached newspaper of record cannot remain detached all the time, especially in the era of Trump, and it appears the New York Times has learned this the hard way
Thanks. Twitter will use this to make your timeline better. UndoUndo
-
-
-
I agree that cohort has been one important source of ideas, but there are others worth considering as well.
@ABarnardNYT made this point w/r/t the role that journalists of Middle Eastern descent have played over the last generation of foreign news coverage https://twitter.com/abarnardnyt/status/1270013202043146240?s=21 …https://twitter.com/ABarnardNYT/status/1270013202043146240 …Thanks. Twitter will use this to make your timeline better. UndoUndo
-
Loading seems to be taking a while.
Twitter may be over capacity or experiencing a momentary hiccup. Try again or visit Twitter Status for more information.