Another Blow to the Public Discourse

 

Several weeks ago, I had an idea for a piece that was “Times worthy.” I thought about the editors I know there, about the pieces I’ve written there recently and mulled over the prospect of pitching it there. I decided to write it for the Washington Examiner instead; it just wasn’t worth the risk. In the aftermath of the Senator Cotton op-ed, which many other conservatives watched with amusement and horror, I realized that there was a high likelihood that if it were published, a mob would come for me and the Times would leave me out to dry; if they did it with a sitting Senator, I wouldn’t stand a chance. I wondered what Bari, a friend and editor at the Times would think of my decision until today when she published her widely-read and discussed resignation letter. The whole thing is an essential read, but for the purposes of this post, I’ll flag this portion:

The truth is that intellectual curiosity—let alone risk-taking—is now a liability at The Times. Why edit something challenging to our readers, or write something bold only to go through the numbing process of making it ideologically kosher, when we can assure ourselves of job security (and clicks) by publishing our 4000th op-ed arguing that Donald Trump is a unique danger to the country and the world? And so self-censorship has become the norm.

Bari’s resignation isn’t the only bad sign for our national discourse; another centrist and signatory on the Harper’s letter on free speech, Andrew Sullivan, tendered his Twitter resignation today as well,

This note from Sullivan’s now-former boss proves Bari’s point:

Since when did publishing ideas – conservative or liberal – have to fit with your “ideals” as a publication? When did that become the litmus test for if something should be published? Who sets those “ideals?” We hear from Weiss:

Twitter is not on the masthead of The New York Times. But Twitter has become its ultimate editor. As the ethics and mores of that platform have become those of the paper, the paper itself has increasingly become a kind of performance space.

It’s not just Twitter, but the woke colleagues at the Times who set off the mob in the first place; individuals like the below:

This is what the Times is now left with, a TikTok reporter who tells you all you need to know about viral cake videos. There is nothing more representative of the future of liberal thought and discourse than the fact that Bari Weiss left the New York Times today, and Taylor Lorenz wrote some groundbreaking content on cake for the Paper of Record.

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  1. Jules PA Inactive
    Jules PA
    @JulesPA

    Twitter, formerly The New York Times, formerly a newspaper. 

    I expect there to be some kind of journalistic Red Sea that will part for the next step in this exodus. 

     

    • #1
  2. Ontheleftcoast Inactive
    Ontheleftcoast
    @Ontheleftcoast

    As Ed Driscoll notes about Trig-Palin-Truther-in-Chief Sullivan, 

    If Obama and Kerry supporting faux-conservative Andrew Sullivan can’t make it at the former home of Tom Wolfe, I’m not holding my breath for Sullivan to be replaced by an actual conservative anytime soon.

    Truther, you ask?

    As soon as then-Alaska Governor Sarah Palin strode onto the national stage as McCain’s running mate, as soon as her dynamic and fearless presence gave the hapless McCain campaign what would be their only real shot at beating Barack Obama, using the pages of the Atlantic, and all in an effort to wield lies as a means to humiliate Palin, Sullivan did something no establishment journalist had, until then, done in my lifetime: launched an evidence-free campaign of personal destruction in the form of a conspiracy theory, and did so without facing a single consequence from his “journalist” peers.

    It became known as Trig-Trutherism, and in his unrelenting jihad, Sullivan wrote countless articles at the Atlantic claiming Trig Palin was not Sarah Palin’s child. Worse still, he claimed Trig’s true birth mother was the governor’s eldest daughter, Bristol, who at the time was a 17-year-old minor.

     

    • #2
  3. Jon1979 Inactive
    Jon1979
    @Jon1979

    It’s interesting to go here and then read the reaction comments on Weiss’ firing:

    Since Maher has had Weiss on “Real Time”, does have conservatives on his show, and the Berkeley woke Jacobins tried to cancel him way back in 2015 over saying fundamentalist Christians might not be as big a danger to the world as radical Islam, the tweet shouldn’t be that surprising. But his supporters who’ve gone all-in with the Times’ scotched Earth policy are attacking Maher  as a heretic, and because the Times has switched their entire financial model to being subscription-based and have hired staffers with like mindsets of the angry woke readers the Times has courted, this is unlikely to make anyone at the paper change its current direction (especially if they’re thinking they’re helping Biden towards a landslide win in November).

    The Times is like a drug dealer whose sampled his own product too much and now is in a co-dependency with their clients. They’ve got the customers hooked on maniacal hatred not just of Trump but anything not openly progressive, but they can’t give up writing stuff like that or pushing things like the 1619 project, because if they were to try and go back to being a real newspaper and not an advocacy journalism site, their woke subscribers would cancel, and the woke writers and editors they’ve hired would revolt and toss a printing plant worth of race cards at the Sulzbergers.

    The business model plays to the anger, and the anger inside the Times means now that Weiss is gone, someone is going to have to be next in the barrel, or next up to the guillotine (possibly Bret Stephens, who doesn’t irk the woke SJWs as much as Bari did, but still enrages them when he writes columns that don’t attack Trump).

    • #3
  4. MISTER BITCOIN Inactive
    MISTER BITCOIN
    @MISTERBITCOIN

    Jon1979 (View Comment):

    It’s interesting to go here and then read the reaction comments on Weiss’ firing:

    Since Maher has had Weiss on “Real Time”, does have conservatives on his show, and the Berkeley woke Jacobins tried to cancel him way back in 2015 over saying fundamentalist Christians might not be as big a danger to the world as radical Islam, the tweet shouldn’t be that surprising. But his supporters who’ve gone all-in with the Times’ scotched Earth policy are attacking Maher as a heretic, and because the Times has switched their entire financial model to being subscription-based and have hired staffers with like mindsets of the angry woke readers the Times has courted, this is unlikely to make anyone at the paper change its current direction (especially if they’re thinking they’re helping Biden towards a landslide win in November).

    The Times is like a drug dealer whose sampled his own product too much and now is in a co-dependency with their clients. They’ve got the customers hooked on maniacal hatred not just of Trump but anything not openly progressive, but they can’t give up writing stuff like that or pushing things like the 1619 project, because if they were to try and go back to being a real newspaper and not an advocacy journalism site, their woke subscribers would cancel, and the woke writers and editors they’ve hired would revolt and toss a printing plant worth of race cards at the Sulzbergers.

    The business model plays to the anger, and the anger inside the Times means now that Weiss is gone, someone is going to have to be next in the barrel, or next up to the guillotine (possibly Bret Stephens, who doesn’t irk the woke SJWs as much as Bari did, but still enrages them when he writes columns that don’t attack Trump).

    Remember when William Safire had a daily or weekly column in NY Times?

     

    • #4
  5. Unsk Member
    Unsk
    @Unsk

    Perhaps some on the “liberal” left who thought they revered and could still engage in free and open discussion may have been awaken to the threat of this new BLM/Karens on steroids Reign of Terror. 

    It’s interesting in reading about the Times situation elsewhere where the battle lines were drawn between the “liberal 40+” and the “woke” younger generation who see no problem in eating their own.

    The Culture War and the survival of our nation may hinge on whether these older “liberals’  will wake up to fight this “Reign of Woke Terror” or not.  As I said before there are only two sides in this fight- With Trump for Better or Worse no matter what you think of his Tweets or For the Destruction of America. There is simply no middle ground, Third Way  and/or   halfway position from which to fight to save America. It simply doesn’t exist. 

    • #5
  6. MISTER BITCOIN Inactive
    MISTER BITCOIN
    @MISTERBITCOIN

    Unsk (View Comment):

    Perhaps some on the “liberal” left who thought they revered and could still engage in free and open discussion may have been awaken to the threat of this new BLM/Karens on steroids Reign of Terror.

    It’s interesting in reading about the Times situation elsewhere where the battle lines were drawn between the “liberal 40+” and the “woke” younger generation who see no problem in eating their own.

    The Culture War and the survival of our nation may hinge on whether these older “liberals’ will wake up to fight this “Reign of Woke Terror” or not. As I said before there are only two sides in this fight- With Trump for Better or Worse no matter what you think of his Tweets or For the Destruction of America. There is simply no middle ground, Third Way and/or halfway position from which to fight to save America. It simply doesn’t exist.

    1776 vs 1619

    Today is Bastille Day

     

    • #6
  7. Ontheleftcoast Inactive
    Ontheleftcoast
    @Ontheleftcoast

    Unsk (View Comment):
    The Culture War and the survival of our nation may hinge on whether these older “liberals’ will wake up to fight this “Reign of Woke Terror” or not

    The New York Slimes stopped hemorrhaging subscribers when it went all in against Trump (thereby appealing to those older “liberals.”) Weiss was in sync with that. She followed Brett Stephens from the Wall Street Journal to the NYT in 2017;  both left at least in part because the Journal’s lukewarm support for Trump was too much for them. She’s no “older liberal;” she’s 36. Nikole Hannah-Jones is in her 40s.

    Weiss was on Bill Maher’s show shortly after the 2018 mass shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue in Philadelphia Pittsburgh (where her father once led one of the congregations.) Haaretz wrote:

    “One thing that I think was made stark this week is that there are many Jews who have liked many of Trump’s policies on Israel,” she said, citing the moving of the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem and the scuttling of the Iran nuclear deal.

    “But I hope this week that American Jews have woken up to the price of that bargain: They have traded policies that they like for the values that have sustained the Jewish people – and frankly, this country –  forever: Welcoming the stranger; dignity for all human beings; equality under the law; respect for dissent; love of truth. These are the things we are losing under this president – and no policy is worth that price,” she concluded, to applause from the audience.

    She was an avid promoter of the Russia hoax which the Times did so much to advance; as noted above she was key to the Times’ publication of SSCI security honcho Wolfe’s leak of the FISA warrant; Weiss brought presstitute Ali Watkins to the Times on the strength of Watkins’ undercover exploits.

    Oh, and one comment on the CTH thread notes this about Weiss:

    I have a lefty friend that uses her as an example of one of the “conservative” writers that he reads for balance.

    No wonder the Left thinks conservatives are idiots; “conservatives” are basically court fools at the Times. Another comment on the CTH thread links this video (language warning) from comedian and Sanders supporter Jimmy Dore:

    Weiss’ performance on Joe Rogan’s show is pathetic and deserves the mockery Dore and his audience give it.

    If this is best “liberalism” could do at the Times, no wonder Nikole Hannah-Jones and 1619 project ate Weiss’ lunch.

    A curriculum based on the 1619 project is making its way into schools across the country.

    What was that you were saying about older “liberals” and the Culture War?

    • #7
  8. Zafar Member
    Zafar
    @Zafar

    Ontheleftcoast (View Comment):
    Weiss’ performance on Joe Rogan’s show is pathetic and deserves the mockery Dore and his audience give it.

    Mean, but really funny.  The interview looks like an SNL skit.  Like a good SNL skit.

    Wrt resigning because

    …the paper itself has increasingly become a kind of performance space. Stories are chosen and told in a way to satisfy the narrowest of audiences, rather than to allow a curious public to read about the world and then draw their own conclusions….

    That’s irony for ya.

    Weiss has predictably written multiple banal columns for the Times denouncing what she perceives as growing left-wing intolerance for dissent in general, but particularly on college campuses. I’ve watched as Weiss has become celebrated in right-wing circles as some sort of paragon of free expression and academic freedom, and mourned by centrists as the tragic victim of online PC mob silencing campaigns (imagine being a columnist and editor at the New York Times — with full access to the most influential media platform in the world — and seeing yourself as the victim of silencing and censorship), even though her entire career is grounded in precisely the viewpoint suppression, vilification, and censorship campaigns she now depicts herself as loathing.

     

    • #8
  9. Ontheleftcoast Inactive
    Ontheleftcoast
    @Ontheleftcoast

    Jon1979 (View Comment):
    the Times has switched their entire financial model to being subscription-based and have hired staffers with like mindsets of the angry woke readers the Times has courted, this is unlikely to make anyone at the paper change its current direction (especially if they’re thinking they’re helping Biden towards a landslide win in November).

    Weiss herself understood that she was brought to the Times to help the #Resistance understand how to fight Trump by presenting curated and defanged enemy opinions to use as intellectual bayonet targets. Fellow bayonet target Brett Stephens found the WSJ’s tepid support for President Trump was too much for him; it impelled him to leave the Journal for the Times. He took Bari Weiss with him. 

    True, what Weiss wrote in her resignation was

    The paper’s failure to anticipate the outcome of the 2016 election meant that it didn’t have a firm grasp of the country it covers. Dean Baquet and others have admitted as much on various occasions. The priority in Opinion was to help redress that critical shortcoming.

    The Times could see that going all in on the #Resistance was working out financially for the paper and realized that it didn’t need bayonet targets. The war over Tom Cotton’s editorial made it clear that the woke generation Bari Weiss had been worried about was the future of the NYT and the Democrat Party (but I repeat myself.)

    After explaining the internal dynamics of The New York Times, she continued, “I’ve been mocked by many people over the past few years for writing about the campus culture wars. They told me it was a sideshow. But this was always why it mattered: The people who graduated from those campuses would rise to power inside key institutions and transform them. I’m in no way surprised by what has now exploded into public view. In a way, it’s oddly comforting: I feel less alone and less crazy trying to explain the dynamic to people. What I am shocked by is the speed. I thought it would take a few years, not a few weeks.”

    Bari Weiss points to a generational conflict within The New York Times and she knows which side holds the future, namely, the young “woke” employees of America’s most influential paper. When they were hired, the leadership at The New York Times seems to have been blind to the fact that they were brining on radical progressives operating from a completely different worldview.

    Or maybe the leadership at #Resistance’s lead propaganda organ wasn’t blind to the fact that Bari Weiss’ milder regicidal strategy wasn’t going to work and abandoned it.

    • #9
  10. Ontheleftcoast Inactive
    Ontheleftcoast
    @Ontheleftcoast

    Zafar (View Comment):

    Ontheleftcoast (View Comment):
    Weiss’ performance on Joe Rogan’s show is pathetic and deserves the mockery Dore and his audience give it.

    Mean, but really funny. The interview looks like an SNL skit. Like a good SNL skit.

    Wrt resigning because

    …the paper itself has increasingly become a kind of performance space. Stories are chosen and told in a way to satisfy the narrowest of audiences, rather than to allow a curious public to read about the world and then draw their own conclusions….

    That’s irony for ya.

    Weiss has predictably written multiple banal columns for the Times denouncing what she perceives as growing left-wing intolerance for dissent in general, but particularly on college campuses. I’ve watched as Weiss has become celebrated in right-wing circles as some sort of paragon of free expression and academic freedom, and mourned by centrists as the tragic victim of online PC mob silencing campaigns (imagine being a columnist and editor at the New York Times — with full access to the most influential media platform in the world — and seeing yourself as the victim of silencing and censorship), even though her entire career is grounded in precisely the viewpoint suppression, vilification, and censorship campaigns she now depicts herself as loathing.

    In fairness to Weiss, her interview with Rogan was a long one and Jimmy Dore picked some real low points for Weiss—but he didn’t make anything up. 

    • #10
  11. Ontheleftcoast Inactive
    Ontheleftcoast
    @Ontheleftcoast

    Zafar (View Comment):

    Ontheleftcoast (View Comment):
    Weiss’ performance on Joe Rogan’s show is pathetic and deserves the mockery Dore and his audience give it.

    Mean, but really funny. The interview looks like an SNL skit. Like a good SNL skit.

    Wrt resigning because

    …the paper itself has increasingly become a kind of performance space. Stories are chosen and told in a way to satisfy the narrowest of audiences, rather than to allow a curious public to read about the world and then draw their own conclusions….

    That’s irony for ya.

    Weiss has predictably written multiple banal columns for the Times denouncing what she perceives as growing left-wing intolerance for dissent in general, but particularly on college campuses. I’ve watched as Weiss has become celebrated in right-wing circles as some sort of paragon of free expression and academic freedom, and mourned by centrists as the tragic victim of online PC mob silencing campaigns (imagine being a columnist and editor at the New York Times — with full access to the most influential media platform in the world — and seeing yourself as the victim of silencing and censorship), even though her entire career is grounded in precisely the viewpoint suppression, vilification, and censorship campaigns she now depicts herself as loathing.

    That’s correct. She has never opposed viewpoint suppression on principle, just suppression of views she didn’t like, and disliking the correct things was supposed to immunize her. She thinks she opposed “tribalism” but what she actually opposed was tribes that didn’t like hers (she has more than one tribe; being Jewish isn’t the only one.) The Times hired her at a transition point: it had signed on the the #Resistance and aspired to be its chief propaganda organ, and it needed readers. She was never a free speech fundamentalist like the late Nat Hentoff.

    Bari Weiss no doubt seemed like a good idea at the time to the Times’ editors: she was a younger version of an important historic Times reader: Left leaning urban American Jews who sentimentally support Israel while fantasizing about the reality of today’s Middle East and opposing the political direction Israel has taken. They also generally embrace a globalist perspective which has become increasingly hostile to Israel. They reconcile it all by not thinking hard about it and by trying to be on both Left sides of every fight. 

    That is a world view increasingly irrelevant to the reality Israel faces. The Times has realized that it is also increasingly irrelevant to the Times.

    Her insight about what was going to happen when the campus culture hit the workplace was correct, but just as the Times didn’t anticipate Trump, Weiss didn’t anticipate that the Times would turn so hard to the Left that she was no longer welcome.

    • #11
  12. JoshuaFinch Coolidge
    JoshuaFinch
    @JoshuaFinch

    MISTER BITCOIN (View Comment):
    Remember when William Safire had a daily or weekly column in NY Times?

    Safire once remarked on his work at the newspaper in these words:. “It’s not a column. It’s a pillar.”

    • #12
  13. Ontheleftcoast Inactive
    Ontheleftcoast
    @Ontheleftcoast

    JoshuaFinch (View Comment):

    MISTER BITCOIN (View Comment):
    Remember when William Safire had a daily or weekly column in NY Times?

    Safire once remarked on his work at the newspaper in these words:. “It’s not a column. It’s a pillar.”

    Safire wouldn’t have had to look up “toady” on his phone, either.

    • #13
  14. James Gawron Inactive
    James Gawron
    @JamesGawron

    Bethany Mandel: There is nothing more representative of the future of liberal thought and discourse than the fact that Bari Weiss left the New York Times today, and Taylor Lorenz wrote some groundbreaking content on cake for the Paper of Record.

    Bethany,

    It has been the Paper of the Broken Record for a long time. Finally, a few brave souls are giving it what it deserves.

    A slap in the face.

    Regards,

    Jim

    • #14
  15. Tocqueville Inactive
    Tocqueville
    @Tocqueville

    Unsk (View Comment):

    Perhaps some on the “liberal” left who thought they revered and could still engage in free and open discussion may have been awaken to the threat of this new BLM/Karens on steroids Reign of Terror.

    It’s interesting in reading about the Times situation elsewhere where the battle lines were drawn between the “liberal 40+” and the “woke” younger generation who see no problem in eating their own.

    The Culture War and the survival of our nation may hinge on whether these older “liberals’ will wake up to fight this “Reign of Woke Terror” or not. As I said before there are only two sides in this fight- With Trump for Better or Worse no matter what you think of his Tweets or For the Destruction of America. There is simply no middle ground, Third Way and/or halfway position from which to fight to save America. It simply doesn’t exist.

    I really agree with this. Everyone has seen what the Left has done with the statues. The mob took them down and Pelosi, toothless in more ways than one, said “I don’t care about statues.” And I say this as someone who voted blank in 2016.  

    • #15
  16. Jules PA Inactive
    Jules PA
    @JulesPA

    Ontheleftcoast (View Comment):
    Tree of Life synagogue in Philadelphia

    I believe Tree of Life is in Pittsburgh, not Philly.

    • #16
  17. Zafar Member
    Zafar
    @Zafar

    Ontheleftcoast (View Comment):

    She has never opposed viewpoint suppression on principle, just suppression of views she didn’t like, and disliking the correct things was supposed to immunize her.

    That’s depressing.

    Bari Weiss no doubt seemed like a good idea at the time to the Times’ editors…

    Why she was hired may have something to do with why she left?

    In 2017, on why she was hired:

    Weiss [is] just another thoroughly mainstream writer who thrives on cheap, easy, and superficial “controversy,” who sees herself as a brave intellectual dissident as she is continually celebrated by and gets promoted within the most mainstream media circles — all for spouting conventional and power-flattering critiques of largely powerless figures. But she is worth examining for what it says about the New York Times, its understanding of “diversity,” and the range of opinions it does, and does not, permit.

    Because the paper of record is also the paper of manufactured consent.

    On CNN, the paper’s executive editor, Dean Baque….claimed that “the New York Times has a history of trying to bring in different voices,”…

    Few things are more laughable than watching the incomparably homogenized New York Times op-ed page justify itself with appeals to the virtues of diversity. If your goal were to wage war on media diversity in all of its forms, and to offer the narrowest range of views possible, it would be hard to top the roster of columnists the paper has assembled: Tom Friedman, David Brooks, Nick Kristof, Paul Krugman, Roger Cohen, Ross Douthat, Maureen Dowd, Frank Bruni, David Leonhardt, Charles Blow, Gail Collins, Bret Stephens, with Bari Weiss as a contributor and editor.

    Beyond the obvious demographic homogeneity, literally every one of them fits squarely within the narrow, establishment, center-right to center-left range of opinion that prevails in elite opinion-making circles. Almost all of them, if not all, supported Hillary Clinton in the 2016 general election, and now have politics close to that neighborhood. None is associated with or supportive of the growing populist left or the populist right; they all wallow in the vague, safe, Washington-approved middle ground…

    It’s different now, with the explosion of social media, but there was a time when op ed writers of things like the NYT (especially the NYT) defined the Overton Window.

    Bari Weiss finding the NYT less comfortable than before and choosing to leave says something about the Overton Window moving on issues she finds important.

    Her insight about what was going to happen when the campus culture hit the workplace was correct

    It isn’t new in the media at all, it’s just that its focus has changed so that it effects people who didn’t notice it before, or even thought that it was good or common sense pointed at someone else.

    Turns out supporting that may have been not just depressing in terms of integrity, but ill advised when it comes to establishing precedent for what is acceptable?

     

     

    • #17
  18. Stad Coolidge
    Stad
    @Stad

    Weiss made some very good points in her resignation letter.  However, any employee leaving could have written the same thing while Weiss was editor.  I wonder if she now realizes her own tenure helped encourage the current climate that made her resign.  Regardless, at least she recognized truth and wrote about it . . .

    • #18
  19. Jon1979 Inactive
    Jon1979
    @Jon1979

    Stad (View Comment):

    Weiss made some very good points in her resignation letter. However, any employee leaving could have written the same thing while Weiss was editor. I wonder if she now realizes her own tenure helped encourage the current climate that made her resign. Regardless, at least she recognized truth and wrote about it . . .

    At the very least, she put the issue out into the public at least for a few days, and (you’d think) will force the Times’ ostensible ‘conservative’ columnists Stephens, Brooks and Douthat to deal with the questions she raises if they do any interviews/podcasts in the near future (of the overall group of columnists listed above Krugman and Blow seem to be the ones most comfortable with trying to ride the angry woke tiger that is now the Times’ readership base and a large part of its own newsroom — Blow would probably want to memory hole his column from four years ago when his brother took him to an Austin-San Antonio area gun show and he declared Second Amendment supporters were normal people, too; while Krugman’s been Patient Zero at the Times for the better part of 15 years in courting the angriest of its readership to the point you repudiate some of your own past economic beliefs to score points with your online fanboys and fangirls).

    • #19
  20. Jules PA Inactive
    Jules PA
    @JulesPA

    Stad (View Comment):

    Weiss made some very good points in her resignation letter. However, any employee leaving could have written the same thing while Weiss was editor. I wonder if she now realizes her own tenure helped encourage the current climate that made her resign. Regardless, at least she recognized truth and wrote about it . . .

    It is possible the woke left actually created an awakening in Ms. Weiss. May the leftists continue to remove their masks and cloaks and show their true colors.

    May many many more people of truth see the reality and trajectory of what is going on. 

     

    • #20
  21. Percival Thatcher
    Percival
    @Percival

    Ontheleftcoast (View Comment):
    Weiss brought presstitute Ali Watkins to the Times on the strength of Watkins’ undercover exploits.

    “Undercover.” Heh.

    • #21
  22. brad2971 Inactive
    brad2971
    @brad2971

    Jon1979 (View Comment):

    It’s interesting to go here and then read the reaction comments on Weiss’ firing:

    Since Maher has had Weiss on “Real Time”, does have conservatives on his show, and the Berkeley woke Jacobins tried to cancel him way back in 2015 over saying fundamentalist Christians might not be as big a danger to the world as radical Islam, the tweet shouldn’t be that surprising. But his supporters who’ve gone all-in with the Times’ scotched Earth policy are attacking Maher as a heretic, and because the Times has switched their entire financial model to being subscription-based and have hired staffers with like mindsets of the angry woke readers the Times has courted, this is unlikely to make anyone at the paper change its current direction (especially if they’re thinking they’re helping Biden towards a landslide win in November).

    When I saw the subscription-based comment, I have to ask: Is the NYT able to make profit margins with its model of 10% or greater BEFORE it has to collect a single dollar of advertising? FOX News can say that it can meet that standard. To my mind, that is the standard of a truly independent media.

     

    • #22
  23. Suspira Member
    Suspira
    @Suspira

    MISTER BITCOIN (View Comment):

    Unsk (View Comment):

    Perhaps some on the “liberal” left who thought they revered and could still engage in free and open discussion may have been awaken to the threat of this new BLM/Karens on steroids Reign of Terror.

    It’s interesting in reading about the Times situation elsewhere where the battle lines were drawn between the “liberal 40+” and the “woke” younger generation who see no problem in eating their own.

    The Culture War and the survival of our nation may hinge on whether these older “liberals’ will wake up to fight this “Reign of Woke Terror” or not. As I said before there are only two sides in this fight- With Trump for Better or Worse no matter what you think of his Tweets or For the Destruction of America. There is simply no middle ground, Third Way and/or halfway position from which to fight to save America. It simply doesn’t exist.

    1776 vs 1619

    Today is Bastille Day

     

    There are many metaphorical heads on pikes in celebration of the wokists’ fave red-white-and-blue holiday. I’m wondering if literal ones are closer to becoming reality than we think.

    • #23
  24. Ontheleftcoast Inactive
    Ontheleftcoast
    @Ontheleftcoast

    Jules PA (View Comment):

    Ontheleftcoast (View Comment):
    Tree of Life synagogue in Philadelphia

    I believe Tree of Life is in Pittsburgh, not Philly.

    You’re right. Typical Californian here. Anything east of Nevada is “The East.”

    • #24
  25. Jon1979 Inactive
    Jon1979
    @Jon1979

    brad2971 (View Comment):

    Jon1979 (View Comment):

    It’s interesting to go here and then read the reaction comments on Weiss’ firing:

    Since Maher has had Weiss on “Real Time”, does have conservatives on his show, and the Berkeley woke Jacobins tried to cancel him way back in 2015 over saying fundamentalist Christians might not be as big a danger to the world as radical Islam, the tweet shouldn’t be that surprising. But his supporters who’ve gone all-in with the Times’ scotched Earth policy are attacking Maher as a heretic, and because the Times has switched their entire financial model to being subscription-based and have hired staffers with like mindsets of the angry woke readers the Times has courted, this is unlikely to make anyone at the paper change its current direction (especially if they’re thinking they’re helping Biden towards a landslide win in November).

    When I saw the subscription-based comment, I have to ask: Is the NYT able to make profit margins with its model of 10% or greater BEFORE it has to collect a single dollar of advertising? FOX News can say that it can meet that standard. To my mind, that is the standard of a truly independent media.

    Bari didn’t go into that when she talked about the Times’ next-gen business model on The Ricochet Podcast back in May. But she did say the bulk of the income was now in subscriptions, mainly online, and the Times did give most of its ad department the heave-ho a month after the podcast.

    So in the wake of the loss of both classified and display advertising, and the near bankruptcy during the 2008-09 economic downturn, this is the business model the Times has chosen — dopamine hits for angry middle and upper-middle class woke progressives, in order to feed their confirmation biases and keep them subscribing. I just can’t see that as a great long-term plan, especially if Trump’s gone and the Dems’ liberal and far left factions are at war over controlling Joe Biden.

     

     

    • #25
  26. Unsk Member
    Unsk
    @Unsk

    On the Left Coast: “What was that you were saying about older “liberals” and the Culture War?”

    I won’t begin to defend the past behavior of Weiss and these other “older” liberals.  They have behaved like brainwashed idiots.

    That said, other reporting elsewhere has reported that the rift in the Times was generational  with the older Lefties concerned somewhat about free expression while the younger totally indoctrinated “woke”  wanted to cancel anyone not fully on board with a Reign of Terror. 

    My point was perhaps some of these older “liberals” are getting a taste of their own medicine from the Woke Reign of Terror, and having second thoughts about supporting the craziness. 

    Let us hope so. Only time will tell.

    • #26
  27. JoshuaFinch Coolidge
    JoshuaFinch
    @JoshuaFinch

    Regrettably on the Joe Rogan interview Ms. Weiss used the words “ape sh*t” a number of times.  I cannot take anyone seriously who uses those words (whatever they mean!) in a public forum.  It shows you how far we have sunk.

    • #27
  28. kedavis Coolidge
    kedavis
    @kedavis

    Jules PA (View Comment):

    Ontheleftcoast (View Comment):
    Tree of Life synagogue in Philadelphia

    I believe Tree of Life is in Pittsburgh, not Philly.

    Tree Of Life is what Paks eat to become Protectors.

    Oh, wait…

    • #28
  29. kedavis Coolidge
    kedavis
    @kedavis

    brad2971 (View Comment):

    Jon1979 (View Comment):

    It’s interesting to go here and then read the reaction comments on Weiss’ firing:

    Since Maher has had Weiss on “Real Time”, does have conservatives on his show, and the Berkeley woke Jacobins tried to cancel him way back in 2015 over saying fundamentalist Christians might not be as big a danger to the world as radical Islam, the tweet shouldn’t be that surprising. But his supporters who’ve gone all-in with the Times’ scotched Earth policy are attacking Maher as a heretic, and because the Times has switched their entire financial model to being subscription-based and have hired staffers with like mindsets of the angry woke readers the Times has courted, this is unlikely to make anyone at the paper change its current direction (especially if they’re thinking they’re helping Biden towards a landslide win in November).

    When I saw the subscription-based comment, I have to ask: Is the NYT able to make profit margins with its model of 10% or greater BEFORE it has to collect a single dollar of advertising? FOX News can say that it can meet that standard. To my mind, that is the standard of a truly independent media.

     

    Well you can say it’s “independent” in terms of advertising money, but how “independent” is it of having all subscribers from one side?  And not just one side, but one FRINGE?

    • #29
  30. brad2971 Inactive
    brad2971
    @brad2971

    kedavis (View Comment):

    brad2971 (View Comment):

    Jon1979 (View Comment):

    It’s interesting to go here and then read the reaction comments on Weiss’ firing:

    Since Maher has had Weiss on “Real Time”, does have conservatives on his show, and the Berkeley woke Jacobins tried to cancel him way back in 2015 over saying fundamentalist Christians might not be as big a danger to the world as radical Islam, the tweet shouldn’t be that surprising. But his supporters who’ve gone all-in with the Times’ scotched Earth policy are attacking Maher as a heretic, and because the Times has switched their entire financial model to being subscription-based and have hired staffers with like mindsets of the angry woke readers the Times has courted, this is unlikely to make anyone at the paper change its current direction (especially if they’re thinking they’re helping Biden towards a landslide win in November).

    When I saw the subscription-based comment, I have to ask: Is the NYT able to make profit margins with its model of 10% or greater BEFORE it has to collect a single dollar of advertising? FOX News can say that it can meet that standard. To my mind, that is the standard of a truly independent media.

    Well you can say it’s “independent” in terms of advertising money, but how “independent” is it of having all subscribers from one side? And not just one side, but one FRINGE?

    Maybe I should then mention how FOX News gets to make double-digit profits before getting advertising revenue then. You see, it doesn’t just get cable subscriber fee revenue from the up to 3-4 million viewers who watch Tucker Carlson each nite; it gets them from a total of about 87 million cable+satellite+live streaming subscribers. To the tune of about $1.85 per subscriber per month. My crude math says that’s about $1.95 billion in subscription revenue per year.

    The New York Times, by comparison, in order to get $1.08 billion in revenue from its (then) 5.3 million subscribers, had to charge them an average of $204.00 per subscriber in 2019.

    Now do you see what type of power FOX News has? Because let’s be honest: No matter how much you enjoy Tucker Carlson at 6PM MDT each nite, there is no way you’d voluntarily pay $200.00/year to view Tucker and the rest of the FOX News lineup.

    • #30
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