I would bet there are definitely a nonzero number of people who subscribe to Freddie's substack who despise his politics but find that a fair tradeoff in exchange for when he aims his pen at someone they despise even more.
To be fair, "I hate this person but I support them because they piss off people I hate even more" isn't exactly a novel phenomenon. (See Elon Musk, Donald Trump, etc.)
I love it. It's inspired me to move from "your argument doesn't make sense on its premises" to "you don't have a discernable argument or even a statement."
That was an odd ... review. Or whatever it was! And yes, no one will write properly about the New York Times right now in part at least because of the extremely dire career prospects in media. (There are reasons others might not! For example I'm very glad there's news-gathering in far-flung places, etc., and I like reading many people there and so on, and appreciate its "daily miracle" existence.) Shitting on the Times is easy, and so it's easy to blow past the nuance of what is actually wrong with it.
I think the main thing that's wrong with NYT is that they lie. A lot. About important things. Which is why no one trusts them or their fellow travelers anymore. It wasn't always this way but it certainly is now.
“I’ve been trying to get someone big to publish a piece about the frightening lack of accountability for The New York Times for a year; I’ll write it”
This has sort of already been done, twice to my knowledge: Donald McNeil’s Medium posts regarding COVID reporting and more importantly Jeff Gerth’s opus on Russiagate in the Columbia Journalism Review.
Honestly if I had to suggest 2 things to help people understand what the hell happened over the last 7 years, it’d be Gerth’s piece and, I believe even more importantly, Jacob Siegel’s “A Guide to Understanding the Hoax of the Century.”
Gerth's opus should be required reading for revealing that even those who would align themselves in the anti-Trump camp (Comey, Strzok, McCabe) were criticizing the Times for publishing error-filled articles. Bullshit, as they called it.
It shows how the Times is not above the "hey, I'm just asking questions here" tactic that gets excoriated in our current moment.
In the second review he also completely neglected to engage with Mounk's argument, settling instead for potshots at Mounk himself and at the presumptive readers of Mounk's book. Just a very bitchy waste of real estate in the book review department.
The review was snarky. I dislike book reviews that refuse to thoughtfully consider arguments made by the author and only then critique them. Neither you nor Yascha Mounk received any careful consideration. I don't care what people said years ago about one another, or some quote about the contract you received from Substack. I read your book because I wanted to examine your ideas about elites and how they have failed the social justice movement. I'm not a Marxist; probably "Christian socialist" is more accurate, but your analysis was often spot on. Let your readers decide about the validity of your arguments and more important, use your ideas to more effectively work to better the lives of the poor.
I went over and tried to read that review with an open mind but... what? He wrote a few dozen paragraphs but I'm not convinced he said anything. I literally can't tell if he agrees or disagrees with the main points of your book.
The [generic] job of a book reviewer (of non-fiction) is NOT to 'agree' or 'disagree' with anything in the book. That's a polemicist's mission.
The reviewer assesses the cumulative success of arguments between the covers. Also, critiques style and coherence, and contextualizes the stance. Finally, evaluates some of the claims made.
Freddie, with respect, this is not the way to reply to your critic.
Take it from someone (me) who was once trashed and vaporized by a critic being read by about 250,000. (Actually, her critique was not off-target, just vicious.)
Many shivs have been buried, since the 17th c., in earnest backs of even more earnest writers by a range of credentialed grave-diggers. That's the free press.
As for the Times's book-reviewing bureau, I think It's not exactly the NYT. The excellent newsgathering bureau operates on its own. The "opinions" are often soft, predictable, sometimes wise and learned, often just identity-pol fluff. So the Gray Lady has been compartmentalized (and, I suspect, infected by Trump money to boot).
I find this interesting as a still aspiring writer -- but how do you let it go besides venting to friends? The problem with this kind of criticism (and no offense, this kind of book) is the direction history takes. Sam's criticism, as far as I can tell (I skimmed), seems laced in condescension that Freddie's misread the room of American politics, with not much evidence backing up the diagnosis. If I were Freddie, some part of me would worry he was right, and this doubt will be basically unverifiable, except maybe in 30 years.
Freddie himself points out that Substack allows him to write stuff that will never appear as a retort in the Times Review page. He doesn't then say 'that's why I'm writing in the tone I'm using and saying what I say here (including references to my mental illness)'.
Which was my point. You can howl on social media because it's built for that; although I don't recommend it. Look at the coy posts in this thread from what appears to be conspiracy peddlers who hate the Times from the far-right (my guess, they're coy).
As for the right to reply to a BOOK REVIEW, in major corporate media, using 'legacy-type' pages, it's strictly delimited. If a writer is DEFAMED by the reviewer, he/she normally has the right to object way out on Page 1. If the writer is DISSED by a critic, he would have to be an international celebrity to write an angry reply; and his agent would forbid it in any case.
I mean Chomsky isn’t a coy conspiracy peddler wrt the Times and its peers. Not just a conservative reading. (Sorry if I missed your point).
I guess FdB’s main point, disregarding tone issues, is the lack of engagement with the actual substance of the book. Maybe you’re right that it’s beneath a dignified writer to reply in this manner. But I think most of the “legacy” or “prestige” press on the book has been cranky while ignoring substance.
Hi Matt, my comment on 'coy conspiracy peddler' had to do ONLY with one contribution to the thread (I think! -- I'm getting forgetful). As for Noam Chomsky, if he's dissed in the NYT, it's possibly just to please the AIPAC reader contingent. I have never regarded him as a 'conspiracy peddler'-- where does that come from?
My other point on your more general issue, is that the right to be flip and cranky is an age-old privilege afforded to branded book- and even theater critics in the legacy press. Some of the privileges they enjoyed amount to Attitude, and are actually a form of entertainment.
We are entering a new world of commentary, so the above represents a vanishing thing.
So we are all cool with Times lying about Russia hoax? Admit it. You like it when they piss on your face and make you call it rain. You can't get enough.
One of the nice things about having a truly loyal readership (which I’m proud to belong) is that you have somewhere to vent. Your venting is appreciated and enjoyed; and your anger is reasonably controlled and lucid. Thank you.
I agree about the weirdness of the review (though not about Tanenhaus as a writer of books; his biography of Whittaker Chambers is masterful). There's zero chance that Tanenhaus is interested in defending the woke perspective. Those aren't his politics at all. It felt like there was some hidden thesis he had about what's wrong with left wing politics that he couldn't or wouldn't surface, and his beef was that you and Mounk had a different analysis.
Not totally sure I grok your conviction that the Times is a) getting more imperious and self-impressed, and b) is increasingly free of accountability. I would have said almost the opposite; they've been quietly but steadily atoning for their sins during the immediate post George Floyd-period, in terms of re-asserting the important of objective reporting and providing more space for dissenting op-ed voices. No?
I guess I see the structural point, that as everyone else falls away, and they continue to grow, they become more and more central and unassailable by default. But what are the actual things they're doing that strike you as dangerous or uncharacteristically imperious? When would they ever have paid any attention to an author like you lodging a complaint against a review?
Wouldn't hold my breath. It took over half a century for them to apologize for continuously and purposefully downplaying the Holocaust, and only after all the people responsible for it were long gone.
But they almost never *publicly* atone for any systemic failure. What they do is shift their reporting, which in the case of COVID, at least, I think they've clearly done. I don't have a super clear sense of what the case against their Russia reporting is. But in any case my argument isn't that the Times is flawless, simply that they seem better to me than they were a few years ago.
And I continue to believe the Times is an immensely valuable institution in American life, and we're all much better off for its existence, whatever its myriad flaws. That doesn't mean they should be immune from criticism; precisely the opposite. Because they're so important, and valuable, we need them to be as good as possible.
They simply are not important or valuable. Every single person who subscribed to the NYT would be much better off just reading substack (for both independent journalism and opinions) along with more local journalism instead.
They truly revealed their worthlessness in the modern era with the way they handled the lead-up to Iraq post-9/11. Russiagate and COVID were just more undeniable evidence of their incompetence.
Shitrag is truly the best description for our "paper of record" (I can't even type it without chuckling).
Well I guess we won't agree on this one, so I'm not sure it's worth arguing. Substack has very little independent reporting, which isn't a knock on substack. Reporting is expensive and time-consuming. Local reporting has been eviscerated over the last few decades, and even when it was stronger didn't have the resources to do much of what the Times and the Post and the WSJ do - international reporting, deep investigative work, and high level beat reporting on topics like religion, labor, the environment, etc. There's just no comparison.
The damage the NYT does due to their lack of integrity is not even close to worth the things you think they do well. If people shit on the NYT like they should be doing and everyone understood it to be laughingstock it truly is, other, better options would rise to take over their role.
for our own clarity, pls identify your corner. Are you an anarcho-Utopian leftist, or are you the mirror opposite, an anarcho-Jim Jordan von Peterson von Breitbart?
COVID was a novel, planetary plague that threatened hundreds of millions, with no firm knowledge by us, of how it spread, and what it did, and how long it would take to bring it under control. If there was a tiny hint of extreme caution in the press, it was THOUSANDS of times more honest than anything the Trump coterie said and did.
Thier hysterical and nearly every other day front page reporting on China 100% gins up support for WWIII. As someone who has been living in China and studies China, I can assure you that they constantly overstate the direness of life here, constantly fail to provide context, and mostly fail to report on anything beyond politics and economics as defined by thier purview. Most of thier China reporting is straight up nationalistic propaganda and I'd say it's dangerous.
"This is strong stuff, but deBoer has combed through the reporting faithfully. He’s less convincing when he reaches for broader arguments. He shrewdly draws on the political philosopher Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò’s important book on “elite capture,” but Táíwò has pointed out elsewhere that class-first ideology is as prone to “reductionism” as the race-based kind; it may not be the best way to address the persistence of the “carceral state,” which goes back to the 13th Amendment and the racially biased “get tough” drug sentencing of the Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton years."
Tannenhaus seems to be saying that one facet of class-based politics - being "reductionist" in addressing one specific problem (mass incarceration) - is enough to discount that type of messaging completely. Is he unaware that there are other pressing issues like universal health care, unions, minimum wage to consider? This seems like a baby/bathwater problem.
Also, just because Deboer used Taiwo's theme of elite capture doesn't mean the two have to agree on everything.
You’ve written before about the clique that is the professional writers class before, and while I can’t profess to know much about it other than what you’ve written, that review smacks of someone within the clique jealously lashing out at someone outside the hallowed circle for doing something so bold as to present an informed counter-narrative. The fact he writes in such an unserious way only adds insult to injury.
The idea of a non-mass market writer making a living outside of The Cathedral is deeply troubling to would-be gatekeepers and they want everyone to know that this amounts to class treason.
Libraries subscribe to the NYT. That means it is available to everyone. And that's why they are so strong. Individual subscribers aren't the key to their influence.
This is an advantage the NYT has over most other media outlets.
They also sell their index as a database to libraries.
Substack writing is largely ignored because Wikipedia does not consider anything published there a "reliable source." Not just yours, it is everyone on Substack. So all the brilliance of Substack writers--like Matt Taibbi--cannot be cited at Wikipedia.
Look at your Wikipedia page. The only ref. to anything you write is from published articles. There is an external link at the bottom of your Wikipedia page to this Substack (they call it a blog)--but the role of Substack is minimally noted in spite of the many topics you address.
Same with Matt Taibbi.
Also, "scholarly" articles that might want to cite you or Taibbi refrain from doing so because Substack and other forms of what they consider "self-publishing" are not acceptable to peer reviewers.
When you write a book it can be cited. When someone reviews your book, it can be cited.
The publishing-citation-indexing ecosystem has not been meaningfully challenged.
Again, see the Wikipedia "RELIABLE SOURCES" to see how much that is written falls outside of the definition of "reliable."
Add to this that AI uses Wikipedia and you have a sense of how closed the system is.
Not only that, it’s official policy that primary sources be used sparingly.
I have a specific axe to grind on this due to research into the Inslaw Affair, something with literally thousands of pages of court documents and congressional records and hundreds of hours of audio that can’t be used because no “Reliable Secondary Source” will touch it with a 10 foot pole.
In historical analysis, you’re supposed to put primary sources first, but not Wikipedia, nope, secondary sources only from “Reliable” people.
So Rgr09 gets to park himself on every actual CIA scandal and purge things literally in court filings because no one at the Times or Post or whatever analyzed said court filings.
Literally go to the “Talk” page on Inslaw, find Rgr09, click on his account and see what he edits. As someone who just wants to understand reality what is being done there is enraging. Literally without Google Bard and Sydney, it would be impossible to actually find information on these things. Thanks AI I guess.
Are you providing an example where that happens? It could happen if no editor takes it down. Since W. is all volunteer there is not an editor following every page. It really depends on if someone is watching a page (that "watch" tab across the top of Wikipedia entries). To give an example of a non-biographical topic--I once had an incorrect date about the destruction of a library (it was a typo on my part) and then maybe 2 months later when I was adding something to that page, I noticed I made the mistake and fixed it. (no one had noticed).
Wikipedia articles will have a lot of "watchers" on some topics (baseball!) and few on others (libraries). As for people--that will vary depending on interest in the people. However, the "watch list" of editors are not able to be viewed.
My own watch list about things that I monitor as an editor includes mostly topics like censorship, libraries, historical individuals like Charles Evans.
BUT there are also editors (I'm not one) who look at every single change made to Wikipedia. I look at the "recent changes" page once in a while, but "recent changes" are overwhelming and SO MANY about sports.
Anyone can edit Wikipedia but there are a lot of rules and it takes a while to learn them. I stick to topics I know about as trying to edit current events is tricky. I tried very hard to add information about "The Twitter Files, " for example, and since they weren't covered well in reliable sources, I wasn't too successful.
O this is a good observation. I never thought to look to see if Substacks by title could be created as main articles. I just now looked and 3 good ones I sub to do not have articles in W. But this may just mean no one has written them.
Damn, man, you barely left enough for Tanenhaus' family to bury!
Not that you're wrong, of course, I simply doubt it could have been expressed any better by anyone else.
I agree. Freddie's writing when he's been personally offended is awesome. His sentences are deliscious.
I thought FdB had been mellowing a bit lately, the edge of his best stuff missing in some instances. Angry FdB is definitely my preferred mode.
I would bet there are definitely a nonzero number of people who subscribe to Freddie's substack who despise his politics but find that a fair tradeoff in exchange for when he aims his pen at someone they despise even more.
To be fair, "I hate this person but I support them because they piss off people I hate even more" isn't exactly a novel phenomenon. (See Elon Musk, Donald Trump, etc.)
Of course it's not new, but style counts for quite a lot.
I love it. It's inspired me to move from "your argument doesn't make sense on its premises" to "you don't have a discernable argument or even a statement."
Ya RW, I agree I don’t want Freddie doing a takedown of me!
That was an odd ... review. Or whatever it was! And yes, no one will write properly about the New York Times right now in part at least because of the extremely dire career prospects in media. (There are reasons others might not! For example I'm very glad there's news-gathering in far-flung places, etc., and I like reading many people there and so on, and appreciate its "daily miracle" existence.) Shitting on the Times is easy, and so it's easy to blow past the nuance of what is actually wrong with it.
It's indispensability, the quality of its staff, and its reportage powers are exactly why its increasing impunity is frustrating.
"indispensability" They literally print WH talking points as news. There are many many MANY other ways you can get that.
The NYT is indispensable as The Authoritative Voice of a certain branch of the PMC. As opposition research.
I think the main thing that's wrong with NYT is that they lie. A lot. About important things. Which is why no one trusts them or their fellow travelers anymore. It wasn't always this way but it certainly is now.
“I’ve been trying to get someone big to publish a piece about the frightening lack of accountability for The New York Times for a year; I’ll write it”
This has sort of already been done, twice to my knowledge: Donald McNeil’s Medium posts regarding COVID reporting and more importantly Jeff Gerth’s opus on Russiagate in the Columbia Journalism Review.
Honestly if I had to suggest 2 things to help people understand what the hell happened over the last 7 years, it’d be Gerth’s piece and, I believe even more importantly, Jacob Siegel’s “A Guide to Understanding the Hoax of the Century.”
Good interview with Jeff Gerth:
https://www.cjr.org/analysis/jeff-gerth-on-the-press-versus-the-president.php
Yes-Jeff Gerth at the 𝘾𝙤𝙡𝙪𝙢𝙗𝙞𝙖 𝙅𝙤𝙪𝙧𝙣𝙖𝙡𝙞𝙨𝙢 𝙍𝙚𝙫𝙞𝙚𝙬 in January 2023 was excellent:
Series titled: 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗽𝗿𝗲𝘀𝘀 𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘀𝘂𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗽𝗿𝗲𝘀𝗶𝗱𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗶𝗻 𝟰 𝗽𝗮𝗿𝘁𝘀.
Part I.
‘𝗜 𝗥𝗘𝗔𝗟𝗜𝗭𝗘𝗗 𝗘𝗔𝗥𝗟𝗬 𝗢𝗡 𝗜 𝗛𝗔𝗗 𝗧𝗪𝗢 𝗝𝗢𝗕𝗦’
https://www.cjr.org/special_report/trumped-up-press-versus-president-part-1.php
Part II
𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗢𝗥𝗜𝗚𝗜𝗡𝗦 𝗢𝗙 𝗙𝗔𝗞𝗘 𝗡𝗘𝗪𝗦
https://www.cjr.org/special_report/trumped-up-press-versus-president-part-2.php
Part III
𝗔 𝗖𝗢𝗡𝗧𝗘𝗦𝗧𝗘𝗗 𝗣𝗨𝗟𝗜𝗧𝗭𝗘𝗥
https://www.cjr.org/special_report/trumped-up-press-versus-president-part-3.php
Part IV
𝗛𝗘𝗟𝗦𝗜𝗡𝗞𝗜 𝗔𝗡𝗗 𝗧𝗛𝗘 $𝟯,𝟬𝟬𝟬 𝗥𝗨𝗦𝗦𝗜𝗔𝗡 𝗗𝗜𝗦𝗜𝗡𝗙𝗢𝗥𝗠𝗔𝗧𝗜𝗢𝗡 𝗖𝗔𝗠𝗣𝗔𝗜𝗚𝗡
https://www.cjr.org/special_report/trumped-up-press-versus-president-part-4.php
Gerth's opus should be required reading for revealing that even those who would align themselves in the anti-Trump camp (Comey, Strzok, McCabe) were criticizing the Times for publishing error-filled articles. Bullshit, as they called it.
It shows how the Times is not above the "hey, I'm just asking questions here" tactic that gets excoriated in our current moment.
In the second review he also completely neglected to engage with Mounk's argument, settling instead for potshots at Mounk himself and at the presumptive readers of Mounk's book. Just a very bitchy waste of real estate in the book review department.
The review was snarky. I dislike book reviews that refuse to thoughtfully consider arguments made by the author and only then critique them. Neither you nor Yascha Mounk received any careful consideration. I don't care what people said years ago about one another, or some quote about the contract you received from Substack. I read your book because I wanted to examine your ideas about elites and how they have failed the social justice movement. I'm not a Marxist; probably "Christian socialist" is more accurate, but your analysis was often spot on. Let your readers decide about the validity of your arguments and more important, use your ideas to more effectively work to better the lives of the poor.
I went over and tried to read that review with an open mind but... what? He wrote a few dozen paragraphs but I'm not convinced he said anything. I literally can't tell if he agrees or disagrees with the main points of your book.
The review could have just been a tweet that said "the vibes are bad" tbh.
The [generic] job of a book reviewer (of non-fiction) is NOT to 'agree' or 'disagree' with anything in the book. That's a polemicist's mission.
The reviewer assesses the cumulative success of arguments between the covers. Also, critiques style and coherence, and contextualizes the stance. Finally, evaluates some of the claims made.
And not a single one of these things was accomplished.
That's fair. I also don't think the reviewer did any of that either though.
Freddie, with respect, this is not the way to reply to your critic.
Take it from someone (me) who was once trashed and vaporized by a critic being read by about 250,000. (Actually, her critique was not off-target, just vicious.)
Many shivs have been buried, since the 17th c., in earnest backs of even more earnest writers by a range of credentialed grave-diggers. That's the free press.
As for the Times's book-reviewing bureau, I think It's not exactly the NYT. The excellent newsgathering bureau operates on its own. The "opinions" are often soft, predictable, sometimes wise and learned, often just identity-pol fluff. So the Gray Lady has been compartmentalized (and, I suspect, infected by Trump money to boot).
Let it go.
"newsgathering"
You are completely delusional. The shitrag NYT defiles everything it touches.
I find this interesting as a still aspiring writer -- but how do you let it go besides venting to friends? The problem with this kind of criticism (and no offense, this kind of book) is the direction history takes. Sam's criticism, as far as I can tell (I skimmed), seems laced in condescension that Freddie's misread the room of American politics, with not much evidence backing up the diagnosis. If I were Freddie, some part of me would worry he was right, and this doubt will be basically unverifiable, except maybe in 30 years.
I think you pose an excellent question.
Freddie himself points out that Substack allows him to write stuff that will never appear as a retort in the Times Review page. He doesn't then say 'that's why I'm writing in the tone I'm using and saying what I say here (including references to my mental illness)'.
Which was my point. You can howl on social media because it's built for that; although I don't recommend it. Look at the coy posts in this thread from what appears to be conspiracy peddlers who hate the Times from the far-right (my guess, they're coy).
As for the right to reply to a BOOK REVIEW, in major corporate media, using 'legacy-type' pages, it's strictly delimited. If a writer is DEFAMED by the reviewer, he/she normally has the right to object way out on Page 1. If the writer is DISSED by a critic, he would have to be an international celebrity to write an angry reply; and his agent would forbid it in any case.
Never defecate in public.
Reply politely in a corner that belongs to you.
I mean Chomsky isn’t a coy conspiracy peddler wrt the Times and its peers. Not just a conservative reading. (Sorry if I missed your point).
I guess FdB’s main point, disregarding tone issues, is the lack of engagement with the actual substance of the book. Maybe you’re right that it’s beneath a dignified writer to reply in this manner. But I think most of the “legacy” or “prestige” press on the book has been cranky while ignoring substance.
Hi Matt, my comment on 'coy conspiracy peddler' had to do ONLY with one contribution to the thread (I think! -- I'm getting forgetful). As for Noam Chomsky, if he's dissed in the NYT, it's possibly just to please the AIPAC reader contingent. I have never regarded him as a 'conspiracy peddler'-- where does that come from?
My other point on your more general issue, is that the right to be flip and cranky is an age-old privilege afforded to branded book- and even theater critics in the legacy press. Some of the privileges they enjoyed amount to Attitude, and are actually a form of entertainment.
We are entering a new world of commentary, so the above represents a vanishing thing.
Thanks, sorry if I misrepresented your point, I agree!
So we are all cool with Times lying about Russia hoax? Admit it. You like it when they piss on your face and make you call it rain. You can't get enough.
One of the nice things about having a truly loyal readership (which I’m proud to belong) is that you have somewhere to vent. Your venting is appreciated and enjoyed; and your anger is reasonably controlled and lucid. Thank you.
.
This was brutal. Love it.
Also, I thought you were exaggerating about how bad the NYT article was. But in fact you were not exaggerating.
I agree about the weirdness of the review (though not about Tanenhaus as a writer of books; his biography of Whittaker Chambers is masterful). There's zero chance that Tanenhaus is interested in defending the woke perspective. Those aren't his politics at all. It felt like there was some hidden thesis he had about what's wrong with left wing politics that he couldn't or wouldn't surface, and his beef was that you and Mounk had a different analysis.
Not totally sure I grok your conviction that the Times is a) getting more imperious and self-impressed, and b) is increasingly free of accountability. I would have said almost the opposite; they've been quietly but steadily atoning for their sins during the immediate post George Floyd-period, in terms of re-asserting the important of objective reporting and providing more space for dissenting op-ed voices. No?
I guess I see the structural point, that as everyone else falls away, and they continue to grow, they become more and more central and unassailable by default. But what are the actual things they're doing that strike you as dangerous or uncharacteristically imperious? When would they ever have paid any attention to an author like you lodging a complaint against a review?
They have never publicly apologized for their failures in Russiagate or COVID reporting. It would be most excellent if they all became homeless.
Wouldn't hold my breath. It took over half a century for them to apologize for continuously and purposefully downplaying the Holocaust, and only after all the people responsible for it were long gone.
Their Iraq "apology" was also a joke.
But they almost never *publicly* atone for any systemic failure. What they do is shift their reporting, which in the case of COVID, at least, I think they've clearly done. I don't have a super clear sense of what the case against their Russia reporting is. But in any case my argument isn't that the Times is flawless, simply that they seem better to me than they were a few years ago.
And I continue to believe the Times is an immensely valuable institution in American life, and we're all much better off for its existence, whatever its myriad flaws. That doesn't mean they should be immune from criticism; precisely the opposite. Because they're so important, and valuable, we need them to be as good as possible.
They simply are not important or valuable. Every single person who subscribed to the NYT would be much better off just reading substack (for both independent journalism and opinions) along with more local journalism instead.
They truly revealed their worthlessness in the modern era with the way they handled the lead-up to Iraq post-9/11. Russiagate and COVID were just more undeniable evidence of their incompetence.
Shitrag is truly the best description for our "paper of record" (I can't even type it without chuckling).
Well I guess we won't agree on this one, so I'm not sure it's worth arguing. Substack has very little independent reporting, which isn't a knock on substack. Reporting is expensive and time-consuming. Local reporting has been eviscerated over the last few decades, and even when it was stronger didn't have the resources to do much of what the Times and the Post and the WSJ do - international reporting, deep investigative work, and high level beat reporting on topics like religion, labor, the environment, etc. There's just no comparison.
The damage the NYT does due to their lack of integrity is not even close to worth the things you think they do well. If people shit on the NYT like they should be doing and everyone understood it to be laughingstock it truly is, other, better options would rise to take over their role.
for our own clarity, pls identify your corner. Are you an anarcho-Utopian leftist, or are you the mirror opposite, an anarcho-Jim Jordan von Peterson von Breitbart?
I like to think of myself as a third quadrant deBoerian syndicalist
My question was directed to another party in the crowd, a Mister Sleazy. I'm sorry if it confused..
COVID was a novel, planetary plague that threatened hundreds of millions, with no firm knowledge by us, of how it spread, and what it did, and how long it would take to bring it under control. If there was a tiny hint of extreme caution in the press, it was THOUSANDS of times more honest than anything the Trump coterie said and did.
Thier hysterical and nearly every other day front page reporting on China 100% gins up support for WWIII. As someone who has been living in China and studies China, I can assure you that they constantly overstate the direness of life here, constantly fail to provide context, and mostly fail to report on anything beyond politics and economics as defined by thier purview. Most of thier China reporting is straight up nationalistic propaganda and I'd say it's dangerous.
This paragraph ...
"This is strong stuff, but deBoer has combed through the reporting faithfully. He’s less convincing when he reaches for broader arguments. He shrewdly draws on the political philosopher Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò’s important book on “elite capture,” but Táíwò has pointed out elsewhere that class-first ideology is as prone to “reductionism” as the race-based kind; it may not be the best way to address the persistence of the “carceral state,” which goes back to the 13th Amendment and the racially biased “get tough” drug sentencing of the Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton years."
Tannenhaus seems to be saying that one facet of class-based politics - being "reductionist" in addressing one specific problem (mass incarceration) - is enough to discount that type of messaging completely. Is he unaware that there are other pressing issues like universal health care, unions, minimum wage to consider? This seems like a baby/bathwater problem.
Also, just because Deboer used Taiwo's theme of elite capture doesn't mean the two have to agree on everything.
You’ve written before about the clique that is the professional writers class before, and while I can’t profess to know much about it other than what you’ve written, that review smacks of someone within the clique jealously lashing out at someone outside the hallowed circle for doing something so bold as to present an informed counter-narrative. The fact he writes in such an unserious way only adds insult to injury.
The idea of a non-mass market writer making a living outside of The Cathedral is deeply troubling to would-be gatekeepers and they want everyone to know that this amounts to class treason.
Yeah, I mean condescension is great for those times when you don’t want to grapple with someone’s ideas. Just one long dismissive sniff.
Libraries subscribe to the NYT. That means it is available to everyone. And that's why they are so strong. Individual subscribers aren't the key to their influence.
This is an advantage the NYT has over most other media outlets.
They also sell their index as a database to libraries.
Substack writing is largely ignored because Wikipedia does not consider anything published there a "reliable source." Not just yours, it is everyone on Substack. So all the brilliance of Substack writers--like Matt Taibbi--cannot be cited at Wikipedia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Perennial_sources
Look at your Wikipedia page. The only ref. to anything you write is from published articles. There is an external link at the bottom of your Wikipedia page to this Substack (they call it a blog)--but the role of Substack is minimally noted in spite of the many topics you address.
Same with Matt Taibbi.
Also, "scholarly" articles that might want to cite you or Taibbi refrain from doing so because Substack and other forms of what they consider "self-publishing" are not acceptable to peer reviewers.
When you write a book it can be cited. When someone reviews your book, it can be cited.
The publishing-citation-indexing ecosystem has not been meaningfully challenged.
Again, see the Wikipedia "RELIABLE SOURCES" to see how much that is written falls outside of the definition of "reliable."
Add to this that AI uses Wikipedia and you have a sense of how closed the system is.
Not only that, it’s official policy that primary sources be used sparingly.
I have a specific axe to grind on this due to research into the Inslaw Affair, something with literally thousands of pages of court documents and congressional records and hundreds of hours of audio that can’t be used because no “Reliable Secondary Source” will touch it with a 10 foot pole.
In historical analysis, you’re supposed to put primary sources first, but not Wikipedia, nope, secondary sources only from “Reliable” people.
So Rgr09 gets to park himself on every actual CIA scandal and purge things literally in court filings because no one at the Times or Post or whatever analyzed said court filings.
Literally go to the “Talk” page on Inslaw, find Rgr09, click on his account and see what he edits. As someone who just wants to understand reality what is being done there is enraging. Literally without Google Bard and Sydney, it would be impossible to actually find information on these things. Thanks AI I guess.
O yes that primary source rule is horrendous. This is funny (but awful):
WIKIPEDIA and PRIMARY SOURCES:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wla-vK4Buw
Basically the goodthink consensus is the only really reliable source.
****deleting this comment****
It got eaten.
Are you providing an example where that happens? It could happen if no editor takes it down. Since W. is all volunteer there is not an editor following every page. It really depends on if someone is watching a page (that "watch" tab across the top of Wikipedia entries). To give an example of a non-biographical topic--I once had an incorrect date about the destruction of a library (it was a typo on my part) and then maybe 2 months later when I was adding something to that page, I noticed I made the mistake and fixed it. (no one had noticed).
Wikipedia articles will have a lot of "watchers" on some topics (baseball!) and few on others (libraries). As for people--that will vary depending on interest in the people. However, the "watch list" of editors are not able to be viewed.
My own watch list about things that I monitor as an editor includes mostly topics like censorship, libraries, historical individuals like Charles Evans.
Here is the information on watchlists: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Watchlist#
BUT there are also editors (I'm not one) who look at every single change made to Wikipedia. I look at the "recent changes" page once in a while, but "recent changes" are overwhelming and SO MANY about sports.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:RecentChanges?
Anyone can edit Wikipedia but there are a lot of rules and it takes a while to learn them. I stick to topics I know about as trying to edit current events is tricky. I tried very hard to add information about "The Twitter Files, " for example, and since they weren't covered well in reliable sources, I wasn't too successful.
No, my comment got eaten. I'll repost.
There appars to be a difference between the individual's entry in Wikipedia and the blog.
So SlateStarCodex has its own entry and its articles are discussed. Ditto The Free Press.
Steve Sailer does have his articles discussed directly, which may be because his page isn't edited or for some other reason.
Anyway, if Freddie called his substack something else, then he might be able to create a page for it.
I'm not disputing the primary sources wikipedia rule, about which I know nothing.
O this is a good observation. I never thought to look to see if Substacks by title could be created as main articles. I just now looked and 3 good ones I sub to do not have articles in W. But this may just mean no one has written them.
The shitrag NYT strikes again!
Nobody who writes regularly for that embarrassment of an institution has any integrity. It's just not possible.
If they had integrity, they'll either get the message or get out.