I'm not generally a New York Times hater, but they sure do know how to overdo things. I mean, is the resignation of Harvard's president really worth five front-page pieces in a single day? I get that their target audience is upper middle class northeasterners, but come on.
That's showbiz!
Have to agree. Who cares? Especially since there’s obviously no serious risk of “genocide” against anyone at any college campus. Meanwhile I read in the NYer that basically everyone in Gaza is starving. This is the nonsensical extent to which the right needs to scream and yell to distract from what is actually happening.
At the risk of being pedantic, none of the pieces circled are front page pieces. The opinion pieces and the letter to the editor appear in the back of the first section, and the piece about Gay's resignation letter would even be in the arts section. The Time opinion columnists write about whatever they choose and don't coordinate with each other, which explains how both Blow and Douthat ended up writing about the same topic--but probably with different takes. I would be amazed if the arts section coordinates with the opinion section. So nobody decided that the Times needed four pieces on the topic; that just happened. The letter to the editor may have been selected with the knowledge that the opinion pieces were going to appear, but if there were a significant number of letters on the topic, the editors would want to run at least one, and they could probably find one with a perspective a bit different from Blow and Douthat.
Kevin is referring to the main internet page of the NYT. Most subscribers take the internet rather than print edition, and the front page is available to non-subscribers.
The editors are responsible for which lead-ins appear on this page. Not all the op-eds get on the main page.
Good comment from Coleman Hughes:
"Claudine Gay has no one to blame but herself. She chose the easy path of plagiarism—almost 50 times—over the hard path of writing original prose. It’s a pattern of serious fraud. Plain and simple.
"This moment is a useful litmus test. Anyone who is blaming Gay’s resignation on other factors—e.g., right-wingers or racism—is nuts and can safely be ignored for the rest of time."
You can’t blame right wingers? They seem to think they were the cause of her resignation:
“None of that happened by accident. As (Christopher) Rufo acknowledged to me, Gay’s resignation was the result of a coordinated and highly organized conservative campaign. “It shows a successful strategy for the political right,” he told me.”
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/01/03/christopher-rufo-claudine-gay-harvard-resignation-00133618
The takeaway is that Rufo would gladly give a pass to plagiarists if they were right wing.
He's quite an ethical and philosophical giant, that Chris.
I wonder what the color the sky is in Mr. Hughes world.
It's Claudine Gay's fault for becoming president of Harvard instead if a Supreme Court Justice, where plagiarism is just fine: https://www.politico.com/story/2017/04/gorsuch-writings-supreme-court-236891
Or maybe plagiarism is just okay for white conservative men.
Harvard presidenting while Black appears to be her main problem.
Presumably this poster also thinks we shouldn’t hear from Harvard, who had little issue with many of these … [checks nots] bibliographical errors. Errors that didn’t trouble anyone until the bad faith, pearl clutchers in the rightwing-o-sphere went searching for a scalp (their words).
This isn’t real, it’s the right wing game that never loses, and liberals get in line to tut tut, as if it was all for real. Like it’s REPUBLICANS who give a sheet about anti-semitism, when their own leader who accidentally quotes Hitler and has previously espoused the blood libel.
WHY you people let yourselves be led around by the wingnuts like this is beyond me…
Stop. Following. Their. Narrative.
He won't because it's his narrative as well, and for the same reasons.
BUT HER EMAILS!!
I saw a recent story reminding us of a little known judge and his similar problem with copious plagiarism in his academic work. Because everyone cares so much about this issue, nobody even remembers this guy.....let me check his name ...ah yes, Neil Gorsuch. Guy was run out of town by the media, and middle class Americans of all types who care deeply about this topic. Wonder what ended up happening with that guy given how big a deal these type of matters are.
This is an excellent point.
The Paper of Record (tm) has gone all-in on monetizing itself-- buying those pricey features like Athletic and Wirecutter and more games is doubling down on the goal. Clickbait like these stories fits right in and I think that's what we're looking at.
Also I agree with kennethalmquist that we're looking at prominently-placed links on the NYT main web page, not quite the same as the physical paper. I'd guess it's more equivalent to one or maybe two front-page stories but with a bunch of front-page teasers, some above the fold, and for the same reason-- Claudine Gay content is what their kind of reader has been seeing a lot lately so said reader will recognize the name and be drawn to the story, hence there's a whole lot of Claudine Gay today.
Or so they must think. Maybe they have the numbers to show it works, but I can't help thinking it's like how Google always shows me ads for what I've just bought, or how all MSNBC prime-time shows cover the same 3 or 4 or 5 stories (sometimes with the same commenters), and CNN isn't much different-- these are the stories that will grab viewer attention because they're what viewers already recognize are "in the news." I have to assume (without watching it) that Fox is the same and that it works for them to bombard viewers with the same handful of topics 24/7 the way they're famous for. Maybe that's where NYT, MSNBC, CNN learned it from and figure it breeds fanatic loyalty or something.
Clickbait like that is a substitute for the algorithms on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, etc. that structure what users see on the sites. NYT won't let itself have the algorithm so it does the next best thing with placement of story links.
The amusing thing is that you think the physical paper matters
Mr. Drum still unclear on the concept.
I noticed that when I mentioned in the comments on one of these NYTimes articles (we are up to what, 61 articles now over a month?) that it seems a tad overkill to keep writing stories about this considering everything else going on in the world, and how simply writing stenographs of GOP talking points instead of what the actual facts are, my comment wasn't published.
Apparently criticism of the grey lady isn't allowed.
I get that their target audience is upper middle class (White, middle-aged, mostly male) northeasterners.
That should clear it up
And _older_. Above all, older. This is all about retaining the NYT retaining its subcriber base, which is becoming older, whiter, more conservative every year. If you see a connection between they're doing and what the GOP strategy has been over the last thirty or so years at least, well, I wouldn't immediately come out and say you were wrong. Circling the wagons may appeal to a certain mindset and may even be (in paricular cases) an acceptable short-term solution. It is seldom, however, a good long-term solution.
Meanwhile, temperatures have had a dramatic rise (possibly an outlier), the slaughter continues on the steppes of the Donbas, we've already had mass shooting AND a school shooting this year...
I mean, there's a reason why someone created the satirical NYT pitchbot.
Keep fighting the good fight, Bill.
https://www.businessinsider.com/bill-ackman-wife-neri-oxman-mit-dissertation-plagiarism-2024-1
"Bill Ackman's celebrity academic wife Neri Oxman's dissertation is marred by plagiarism"
Claudine Gay’s NYT op-ed is excellent, important, & hardly “click-bait.” Charles Blow’s, same. Both highly recommended. (Two of the six NYT pieces.)
(Thanks, Martin S. Hypocrisy so charming, not.)
The Times has gotten rather foul lately. They've always been heavy on the power-alignment, whatever that power happens to be, that's baked in.
But they've been going heavy on culture war issues, on the pungently shitty side.
First it was teaming up with Jesse Signal to demonize trans folks and generally attempt to poison the discourse, now it is DEI scalp-hunting.
Fuck these people. The difference between them and Fox is degree, not kind.