Journalists used to have a monopoly on the news. This power bred restraint; whatever their private feelings, they avoided overt personal attacks. Now this power and the consequent restraint are both evaporating. Now they're just Twitter users.
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I wonder if some of the power _relied_ on the restraint. A newspaper could claim to deserve its position in part _because_ of journalistic standards etc. Moral suasion.
Yes, I think that's right, the power and restraint fed one another. Which would explain why they'd decline together too.
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My guess: their editors believed that the power was a reward for restraint and other forms of quality in writing. They abandoned restraint to hypercompete for clicks, and lost the power that came from respect, while retaining power based on fear.
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But the fear is residue from a situation where the NYT was respected as well as feared. Even now, the NYT has a momentum where everyone still thinks NYT determines *other* people's social reality. The NYT has lost more respect than there is common knowledge it has lost.
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Hi folks, ex-NYT employee here. You've dived into a really complex set of issues here, with a history going to the very founding of modern "impartial" journalism in America as an almost unique product mixed up with public service. You would be astounded (I was) at how often>
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2/editors feel a need to think through these issues de nove, case by case, on deadline, several times a week. That said, all the major newspapers have gone through convulsive remakings over the course of their histories, because of what happened direclty to media but also how>
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