Why the Success of The New York Times May Be Bad News for Journalism :: The Times new media columnist criticizes the monopoly of his paper
I spent my whole career competing against The Times, so coming to work here feels a bit like giving in. And I worry that the success of The Times is crowding out the competition.
Ben Smith takes on an outsiders perspective on the New York Times in his first article. The article is somewhat in line with the media criticism of David Perell I pointed out last week. Since the US Presidential election has heated up, the Corona virus has been ravaging China and I have deleted twitter on my phone, I found myself reading the Times again much more. I have also been attracted by the really good podcast The Daily from the Times, which focuses on one specific news item everyday.
Frankly, I don’t find the Times reporting to be very balanced. It is heavily steered towards a moderate democratic US audience, with high praise for #metoo, but staunch criticism of progressive socialist Bernie Sanders on the other side, and elusive conspiratorial reporting on China. Nonetheless, I consider it the best newspaper available to me in the digital age, and his completely replaced CNN as my ‘global’ news source over the course of the past 10 years.
I am debating to subscribe to the NYTimes as it publishes great in-depth articles and can allow itself as pretty much the only newspaper around to have its vast army of reporters on the pulse of the news stream around the world and 24 hours a day. An introspective and self-deprecating article like that is a noble approach to keeps its journalistic values of critical reporting alive. Its a step that once more makes my mouse hover of over that subscribe button.
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