1. So, let's think about the New York Times a little bit, and the increasing criticism its getting from liberals & leftists.
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6. But even under Nixon, Times instinct is to try to act as mediator between competing elite factions. When Agnew complained about press bias, Times responded by hiring Safire.
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7. Trump has disoriented the Times because he's a figure occupying an elite position (he's the President) but always deriding elite pretences of consensus and cordiality ("the failing NY Times")
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8. With Trump & Trumpism, the Times finds itself forced to cover a clownish figure & extremist movement with a set of journalistic tics designed for a world where elite centrist consensus dominates.
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9. The disorientation of figuring out how to deal with Trump/Trumpism causes the Times to repeatedly make missteps, usually in direction of normalizing.
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10. A big problem the Times has is they don't know how to cover the white nationalist right, so they keep giving columns to Never Trump conservatives, who are marginal to GOP & USA politics.
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11. I understand why Times won't give a column to a Pat Buchanan or a Ann Coulter. But they should at least be reporting on politics as if these are major GOP voices. Because in fact they are.
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12. This is a good formulation, which I agree with:https://twitter.com/henryfarrell/status/963616769150726145 …
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13. One possible silver lining is the break-up of consensus politics should allow Times to be more open to voices on left as well as right -- one sign of that is hiring
@michelleinbklyn as columnist.Show this thread -
14. If I were editing the Times (ho ho ho) I'd get someone whose job it is to follow white nationalist right & report regularly on what they are thinking. Stop pretending that reasonable Never Trump conservatives are the real GOP.
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15. Also, I'd open up Times op ed to the more paleo-cons and also people on the Democratic Party left (feminists, BLM, DSA etc).
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16. For more on the Times & its troubles, this is an excellent piece by my colleague
@GrahamVysehttps://newrepublic.com/article/146828/lefts-war-new-york-times …Show this thread -
17. Well, that didn't last very long:https://twitter.com/mlcalderone/status/963612619163750400 …
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18. Honestly, James Bennet & Bari Weiss should just call me. I can really advise them on how better to cover fractured opinions in Trump era America.
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19. The Times both hired & fired Quinn Norton too quickly. If they had researched her background more, they could've offered her a more appropriate position & wouldn't have been blindsided backlash.
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20. Hiring Norton to write about tech under her own byline makes sense (she's good at it & you can separate her dubious opinions from her writing for paper). Having her write anonymous editorials was wrong choice.
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End of conversation
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