When Paul Krugman left the New York Times last year, it was kind of weird. He wrote a column saying the next one would be his last and then just disappeared. Did he suddenly learn he had six months to live? Was he unwilling to endure four years of column writing under Donald Trump? Or what?
We finally know. Here it is from an interview with the Columbia Journalism Review:
Krugman agreed that he could have stayed at the paper. But in an interview, he said the circumstances of his job changed so sharply in 2024 that he decided he had to quit. He had been writing two columns and a newsletter every week, until September, when, Krugman said, [Patrick] Healy told him the newsletter was being killed.
Why would the Times want to do that? It's basically free extra content from a star columnist that costs them nothing. It makes no sense. Krugman continues:
“I’ve always been very, very lightly edited on the column,” he said. “And that stopped being the case. The editing became extremely intrusive. It was very much toning down of my voice, toning down of the feel, and a lot of pressure for what I considered false equivalence.” And, increasingly, attempts “to dictate the subject.”
“I approached Mondays and Thursdays with dread,” Krugman continued, “and often spent the afternoon in a rage. Patrick often—not always—rewrote crucial passages; I would then do a rewrite of his rewrite to restore the original sense, and felt that I was putting more work—certainly more emotional energy—into repairing the damage from his editing than I put into writing the original draft.
Ah. This I get. I had the same complaint toward the end of my tenure at Mother Jones, though it wasn't the main reason I left. But it's worth admitting up front that this can be very personality driven. I can easily see an editor making changes that, to him, seem fairly minor, but to Krugman seem like the absolute key to the whole column. I'm the same way. I hate being edited even when I know perfectly well it improves the end product. In the past, when I got back the edits for a magazine piece, it would send me into a tizzy and I'd have to wait two or three days to calm down before I went through them. This is despite the fact that I suspect my pieces were pretty lightly edited compared to most.
This is, needless to say, prima donna behavior. Hopefully I never let it show, since it's sort of embarrassing it happened at all, regardless of whether my cooling-off periods brought it under control.
As it turns out, though, Krugman just loves to write. After he quit the Times he immediately began writing long pieces every day at his substack. He even writes on weekends, which is the real mark of someone who writes because they love to. And it's obvious that he enjoys writing whatever he feels like, without having to worry about whether it's suitable for a mainstream newspaper.
On the other hand, he no longer has an audience of millions. Thete's a price to pay for everything.
Guy writes like a column a day on substack. I'm glad he left the Times.
Me too.
And the "no longer has an audience of millions" thing is crap. The Times may have a readersip of millions. Krugman was probably read by, I don't know, 5% of them, maybe.
If we measuring things by "opportunities to read," Substack has 20 million active subscribers (twice the Times).
I hate being edited, too, and also hate that I hate it. (Not a professional writer; I've had a few articles published and one essay in a book. Most of what I write these days is work related.)
But Krugman's move is, from my selfish perspective, just perfect. He was one of the people I missed when I stopped reading the Times. But now I get more of him, and without all the Times' arrogant gaslighting.
I really admire Krugman, just like I admire Drum. Both have amazing insights and a deep understanding of many subjects and GREAT CHARTS!
And now I know why Kevin left MoJo. Interesting. I suspect the rest of the story is that he had some "variant" views on progressive orthodoxy that the editors didn't approve of. We can leave it at that, but I'm glad he started this blog. It's the first thing I read every morning.
This happens even to non professional writers. My company edits my work and I have the same reaction. Yeah, I get that nobody likes transparency and most certainly not the clients, but someone has to tell the truth. If they wanted a cheerleader they should hired one. /grump
And now I know why Kevin left MoJo.
Do note that Kevin says that this was not the main reason he left MJ.
And also note that it was not the first reason Krugman mentioned either....
An op-ed is supposedly exactly that: an editorial expressing the opinion of the author. The only role I can see for an editor is to suggest improvements in the argument and to question whether some passages could be expressed more clearly. Once they start to make changes unilaterally, it is no longer the author's op-ed, but a collaborative effort. I can well understand why someone employed to express their personal opinions would find it unacceptable to have an editor substituting their own, even in a small way. Nothing "prima donna" about it at all.
Yeah, what the actual fuck, Kevin?
You can bet your bottom dollar that David Brooks and Ross Douthat, dual kings of the kingdom of Bothsidesdoit, aren't getting edited like this. Or if they are, they don't care. But given what the content of their shit has always been, I wouldn't think so.
This is just part and parcel of the media as a whole being captured by radical centrism, which is really just a cloak for appeasement of radical conservatives.
+1
> You can bet your bottom dollar that David Brooks and Ross Douthat [...] aren't getting edited like this
I feel that your confidence in this is probably a little too high. I'm not saying your wrong, more that we don't know and that I would tend to assume the other.
No one likes being edited by someone else. It's a knock on your ego, suggesting that your voice is imperfect. It's the same way with any artistic expression -- graphic design, architecture, music composition, etc. In design schools, no one likes critique sessions.
[raises hand]
Granted, I write fiction rather than non-fiction, but I couldn't function well without an editor. Part of it is that I'm entirely self-trained, so there are blind-spots in my writing. Another is that I have some odd preferences in my reading habits, so I'm not necessarily very good at judging how others are going to respond to my stories. I also, correctly or incorrectly, don't have a lot of confidence in my ability to make good revisions, or even where revisions are necessary.
My novel wouldn't have been nearly as good without the two editors it went through, especially Kellie Hultgren.
" .... The editing became extremely intrusive. It was very much toning down of my voice, toning down of the feel, and a lot of pressure for what I considered false equivalence.”
Taken together with the fact that Krugman had been lightly edited until 2024, this doesn't sound like prima donna behavior. More like capitulation on the part of NYT to Trump's demands. As to losing millions in readership, he already has more than 100,000 readers of his substack. I will probably cancel my NYT subscription.
If it wasn't for Wordle and Spelling Bee I'd have cancelled NYT a while ago.
I've cancelled WaPo effective in a few months and now they present me with these annoying pop-ups asking me to reconsider. Not a chance.
I cancelled the NYT when they labeled TFM’s* flip-flop on the Florida abortion referendum as a ‘clarification’ of his position. Now I subscribe separately, only to the Games, so I can keep doing Wordle and Connections. Yeah, they still get some revenue from me, but they know I’m not reading their damned sanewashing.
*The Fvcking Moron
Tell them you're cancelling. They'll offer you a lower subscription rate. Mine went from $25/mo to $8.
We all do our part, I left Facebook on Monday and am actively in rehab from an Amazon addiction. Very much enjoying Bluesky and relearning how to shop in stores.
Canceling my ChatGPT subscription this weekend now that they've buddied up to The Felon.
I maintain a WaPo subscription mostly for the work of Philip Bump and Aaron Blake.
One thousand fucking percent.
The NYT ceased being an admirable publication a long time ago.
I suspect that Krugman was becoming more shrill, and thus required more editing from NYT's point of view. He minces no words in his Substack.
Kevin makes the mistake of assuming that Paul Krugman’s experience must align with his own, as if Kevin’s way of experiencing something is the only valid way to experience it.
Common Kevin mistake.
See also: homelessness, housing, wages, remote work, Millennials having it pretty good akshully, etc.
This does raise the question of whether the NYTs has gotten dramatically worse or more conservative during the past two years. It does seem like their headlines sometimes normalize Trump and MAGA Republicans and that they failed to tell an accurate story about how good the economy has been during the past couple of years (as Dean Baker often points out). Also, the ratio of conservative to liberal editorial writers seems to have shifted. Would be interesting for Kevin to do a scorekeeping post on this.
I read somewhere that democracy dies in darkness, Apparently boards demanding higher revenue makes it very, very sick also.
We had a word for washing something up and then saying, "Yep, that's sane enough!"
I can't think of what it was, though.
I wrote a book once, and I came to hate my editor. In fairness I was okay with grammatical corrections and the like, but the book was in a technical area and not to toot my own horn I'm a bit of an expert in that field. My editor was not, so her "suggestions" on the content would set me off. I can empathize with Krugman.
On the bright side, I learned all those copyediting squiggles. Which I've never used since.
Years ago, I wrote for a humor magazine. I was young and clever, so I figured the way to get the stuff I wanted in was to throw some truly outrageous stuff in. When the editor would complain, I would demonstrate a defense of the crazy stuff, lose (cause it's the editor's job to win), and get the stuff I really wanted in.
It was a good plan, and it would have worked, except... I found myself really getting exercised, arguing for keeping insane, over the top stuff in the article. I had played the game so well, I even fooled myself.
Yes, editors are the worst, but they're closely followed by clever writers.
That's the strategy The Felon seems to be following. Go super outrageous, move the Overton window, settle for the thing you really wanted in the first place.
I am very fortunate to have an editor who is amenable to my going through her edits and deciding on some that, no, I really prefer it the way I had it originally, except that there are some edits that make my original passage better.
It helps that I self-publish.
If I had the resources 30 years ago that are now available to me I'd self-publish for sure.
I've been a fan of Krugman's writing ever since he joined The New York Times. His insightful takes on current issues and his nerdy but engaging economics lessons were always something I looked forward to. When his columns went behind a paywall, I missed following his work regularly, so I was thrilled when he left the Times and began publishing on Substack. While he may have lost his Times readership, he got me back. With the freedom his new platform provides, I feel like we're seeing the real Paul Krugman—and I’m loving it.
+1
Re: The F'ing NYT
I can jump the paywall most of the time. I guess anyone can do the same.
What pisses me off is how all the media are normalizing the abnormal.
Krugman can easily build a big audience with Substack and NOT have to worry bout being edited
Indeed, I’m certain there is a price to pay for being free of editors 🙂
Punctuation, spelling, grammar A-OK
Fact-checking - more than A-OK
Clarity, conciseness, pretty much OK
Creative diffs, composition, content moderation - F' Off
But I guess, if it's work for hire, you're stuck with whatever and your choice is to agree or walk, as shown.
My editor told me that the second half of my draft novel was really weak. So, I completely rewrote it, and the end result is vastly superior to what it had been.
I love my editor.
Paul Krugman isn’t a prima donna. Kevin, your jealousy is showing. Krugman is a great thinker and writer. Is there really any doubt that the NYT was fucking with him? I certainly have none. Why do you? Just because of your experience at MJ? Not good enough. Reading your posts on Gaza make clear to me you were a bad fit for MJ.
+10.
I've been put off a number of times by pieces that Healy put together on topics and in a fashion that usually had more than a whiff of bothsiderism, I did not know he was deputy editor of the opinion page nor that he edited Krugman's pieces.
It's hard not to notice that the Times did a remarkably bad job of covering the economy in the past year frequently as Dean Baker has pointed out numerous times. So, this explanation from Paul Krugman comes as further evidence that the Times spends too much time and energy trying to appear "fair" to both sides instead of trying to accurately portray the state of our nation and the world.
It's almost like the business of reporting the news shouldn't be a business at all.
The Times lost their sense of being a public service a long, long time ago. I wouldn't be shocked if that time was before I was born.
Some of it undoubtedly is both-siderism. However, a writer like Krugman also runs into the problem that far too many people in journalism are functionally innumerate. I don't know that many people in the profession, and I still know of at least two who went to journalism school because there was no math requirement.
Prepare for more of this. I cancelled WaPo and NyTimes some time ago. I read them for years and Krugman was my hero. All of my favourites have left. Those publications are a hollow shell to be filled with Faux news.
Just out of curiosity, since I left the Times last year and am growing increasingly annoyed by the Post, which news sources are you going to now?
BBC and The Guardian. There is little to choose from. Throw in Axios, Politico, Slate, Vox, and the Atlantic. I only pay for the Atlantic and browse the front page of the rest. I't getting thin out there.
I think you’ve totally missed the point here. This isn’t about Krugman being a prima donna who doesn’t like to be edited, it’s another data point in the NYT’s silencing of liberal voices.
Kevin wasn't saying that Krugman was behaving like a prima donna. He was describing his own behavior at Mother Jones.
Editing and rewriting by superiors are endured by many workers in the US. I had a job where my supervisor would edit and request a rewrite of a document three or four times before the document would be advanced to the chief, who would edit and demand a rewrite another two or three times, often changing the document back to what was originally written, before the work could proceed. Even when attempting to write in the style known to be edited, the documents would still be rewritten. This took place for a staff of ten or twelve. Poor Krugman. He was treated like an employee in America.
Years ago I was working as a contract employee for a Federal research organization. After submitting my first study report, the Feds gave me feedback in a phone conversation that went so long my cellphone ran down; I had to scramble for a charging cord. Nevertheless, they made it clear what they wanted, I did my best to write to their expectations, and my first submissions never drew more than minimal comments after that. In fact, I was later asked to rewrite a research report that had been written and rewritten by an employee of a different contractor, and still was found unsatisfactory by the Feds. They accepted my rewrite, and I later heard from third parties that the original author, whom I never met, now considered me his mortal enemy. Some people do not take editing well.
They also told him he would have to go to one column a week instead of two. That is clearly a "we want to hear less of your opinions but keep the prestige of having you on staff" moment.