Resistance – The free market is a harsh mistress edition
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Giving a climate change denying conservative column inches has consequences.
In an email sent Friday afternoon and obtained by POLITICO, Sulzberger addresses subscribers who specifically mentioned the hiring of Stephens as a reason that they ended their subscriptions.
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In the letter to former subscribers, Sulzberger says it’s important to underscore that the newsroom functions separately from the opinion department, and that New York Times executive editor Dean Baquet “has sharply expanded the team of reporters and editors who cover climate change.”
This guy must think his readers are dumber than the tRump son who looks like a drowned corpse.
Even if one overlooks the NYT’s newsroom’s repeated intimate relations with the gallus gallus domesticus of Clinton’s emails, the internal wall between newsroom and opinion section is irrelevant to the reader. It’s like selling jars of Nutella and shit and telling dubious customers that it’s OK because they don’t have eat the shit.
Sulzberger wrote that, with so many people “talking past each other about how best to address climate change,” putting different points of view on the same page will hopefully help advance solutions.
If one person says cancer should be treated with a variety of methods including chemotherapy, radiation and surgery, and another says we shouldn’t treat it at all because it doesn’t really exist, then surely we’ll come up with a cure for cancer in no time.
“Our editorial page editor, James Bennet, and I believe that this kind of debate, by challenging our assumptions and forcing us to think harder about our positions, sharpens all our work and benefits our readers,” he wrote. “This does not mean that The Times will publish any commentary. Some points of view are not welcome, including those promoting prejudice or denying basic truths about our world.”
Unless the basic truth involves global climate change.
But it does mean that, in the coming years, we aim to further enrich the quality of our debate with other honest and intelligent voices, including some currently underrepresented in our pages. If you continue to read The Times, you will encounter such voices — not just as contributors, but as new staff columnists.”
What a fantastic pitch. In exchange for money now, readers will in years to come get what Sulzburger thinks is honest and intelligent debate, which could be more asshats like Stephens.
I think the way it usually works is the company that has pissed off its customers figures out what they want, gives them what they want and hopes that they come back. The NYT should try that.
