The Washington Post and the NY Times are both very fine papers: they take the traditional 20th Century American view of journalism (attempting to be objective and authoritative, and taking accuracy seriously) which is a bit alien to the European print tradition, but that's not a bad thing if you want different perspectives. The Wall Street Journal is also a fine paper if you like your news more economically and financially-focused. The Post is probably better for the inside-baseball of US Politics, the Times probably better overall, and for global coverage. But that's just my opinion - try all three and see which works for you.

The opinion sections are of highly variable quality, as people here keep pointing out. And these have always escaped the objectivity ethic. I'd just avoid reading them.

>they take the traditional 20th Century American view of journalism (attempting to be objective and authoritative, and taking accuracy seriously) which is a bit alien to the European print tradition

what are European newspapers like then? tabloids?

No (though obviously some are, and its the tabs in particular which aren't particularly bothered about accuracy). But most European newspapers are expressly part of a particular political tradition, and many are openly partisan. In the UK, for example, the Guardian is part of the (social) liberal tradition, the Telegraph is both conservative and Conservative, and the Mirror is aligned with the Labour party. The same overseas: El País is associated with PSOE, and the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung has a Christian Democrat ethos.

None of which is to say that these are bad papers - they aren't. But the idea that you can stand back from partisan politics and report some kind of objective truth is more prevalent in European broadcast media: both the BBC and its private sector competitor ITV News, for example, do not aim for a particular political constituency (though, like the US papers, they're often criticised for their implicit positioning).

The Washington Post. The NYT is unapologetically taking a side in the culture war and on many issues (campus politics, feminism, title IX, migration..) will ever only let one side make their point. The Wapo in my observation has a much better mix of both sides.

The thing about declaring a war is that you force people onto sides, even if they want nothing to do with your war. And you can then use this to feed your own propaganda even more.

If tomorrow for some strange reason half of the UK decides that actually the old testament is right and we should demolish all the Egyptian statues in Kensington, that doesn't make the Guardian part of a war if they say that's ludicrous. It just makes them sensible.

This is not a proper representation of NYT's opinion board. Beyond the absolutely dishonest stuff of more recent hires to the op-ed board, they have multiple conservatives on the board repeatedly publishing their "actually the problem is the leftist college students" every couple of months. They also have a couple "mainstream liberals" publishing inoffensive (but rarely courageous) pieces that usually match what centrists want to hear.

the WSJ subsidizes a lot of bow-tie conservatives, but the NYT is also granting credibility to a lot of bankrupt lines of thought that have no actual real support in this country. Banning abortion has less than 20% support in the US, yet if you read the opinion pages of the NYT you could only think that both sides have roughly equal support.

Really newspapers shouldn't have opinion pages. It's literally the comments section of their newspaper. Just let journalists call a duck a duck, so then you don't need the opinion pages to point out that, maybe X is bad.

Looks like:

ban = 20%

limited = 50%

anything goes = 30%

https://news.gallup.com/poll/1576/abortion.aspx

So 70-30 for at least some form of restrictions on abortion.

Also notable from that poll, 48% of respondents consider themselves pro-choice, 48% pro-life.

If rtpg means banning abortion even when it would save the life of the mother or in cases of rape, it's true that few people support a ban that extreme.

But if rtpg means banning abortion except when it would save the life of the mother or in cases of rape, both sides do have roughly equal support.

I have a digital subscription to WaPo and I've found it interesting reading even as a European. But it's still clearly a local newspaper to a certain extent: some of the political reporting is ultra-specific to the point where it's barely understandable if you're not immersed in the Washington scene.

NYT is more generic, but also has a higher volume of articles about everything under the sun. For learning about the American situation, I've found WaPo a good compromise.

I'd also recommend WSJ for a generally balanced business-centric outlook on America (their editorial and op-ed pages are basically "more tax cuts!" regardless of what is going on, but the reporting is good).

My personal favourite is the Private Eye, but it's very UK-centric as you might imagine. I love them as they often pick things up a few months before other publications start reporting them :)

I really like The Guardian. You can also pick different version between international/uk/us, so from that perspective you have plenty of choice.

The Economist is more Europe-centric, owned by less-shady people/corps, much better structured and written, less biased, and features less crappy filler articles.

The NYT is still far ahead of the WP. I like to get the actual print edition once in a while. On the weekends, it's positively massive.

It's also far cheaper than any comparable subscriptions in my European country (Germany), at least for the first year.

Another alternative I want to mention is The New Yorker: It's something like 1 Euro per week for the actual print edition, and it's a beautiful magazine both in style as well as in its content.

do you have a link to any NYTimes articles that are factually incorrect?