For a more timely example, please recall the whole 1619 debacle, in which the NYT published and subsequently defended a slander against our own American history. The article claimed that preserving the institution of slavery was "one of the primary reasons" for the American Revolution. Even after this claim (among others) was trashed by prominent academic historians, the NYT editorial board defended the article (in a manner scarcely discernible from lying), and only issued a correction after the historians persisted in their criticism. The correction, it should be noted, merely replaced the blatant lie with a masterfully crafted phrase which was clearly intended to imply the very same lie.

This is not the behavior of an organization with a commitment to the truth.

[0] Original Critique and NYT response: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/20/magazine/we-respond-to-th...

[1] Historians' response: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/01/1619-proje...

[2] NYT Issues Correction: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/11/magazine/an-update-to-the...

The NYT used to have industry-leading editorial standards.

Just a week or two ago in their reporting on the UFO story, they initially reported it in a "ZOMG ALIENS ARE REAL!" way, which is the most clickbaity thing they could have done...and then silently published a correction after they got the bump in views.

The NYT is practically indistinguishable from (modern) BuzzFeed.

Seconding this. I actually pay for the Times out of sheer nostalgia for its being my hometown paper, but when they're publishing Very Serious Stories on the press-release UFO crap the government was trying to distract people with, they're doing a just plain bad job of journalism.

Right; but it's one thing to say "they no longer have industry-leading editorial standards" and quite another to dismiss the entire publication for being less-than-perfect. I don't read the NYT front page – just articles linked here and elsewhere – so my view of it is far from complete and biased; I don't see "ZOMG ALIES!"-type articles for example, but there certainly still seems plenty of content of value on the NYT, in spite of also having content that detracts from that.

You also have to appreciate the NYT's position I think; at the end of the day, a newspaper is in the business selling newspapers. It's not quite that simple as many journalists and publications – quite rightfully – believe they have a greater task than "just running a business", but at the end of the day bills need to be paid, and the NYT is a business.

A business that now has to compete against a plethora of free content, not infrequently written by incompetent hacks (possibly with a less-than-savoury agenda) with almost no editorial standards. Competing against "free" is hard, and is not an easy position for a business to be in and quite likely a big reason for the decline in editorial standards. This is pretty much what this article is about.

"ZOMG ALIENS!" is complete nonsense, but ... it probably also drives traffic, and thus revenue. One way to see this is that this revenue-based clickbait content sponsors the more in-depth quality content and, like advertisement, is kind of a necessary evil. But yeah, it's not great.

As an aside, I have plenty of gripes with the state of the press by the way; especially since the Trump presidency things have ... not evolved in the right direction. But we must also be careful not to throw out the baby with the bathwater.

> and quite another to dismiss the entire publication for being less-than-perfect

The newspaper's ombudsman declined to punish the reporter in any way, or admit anything other than "oops, mistakes were made". That's what makes it a failure of the newspaper and not just "less-than-perfect" reporting. It's one example from a pattern of behavior, and the reason people are saying the NYT no longer have industry-leading editorial standards.

Let me remind you that the reporter was caught red-handed driving a car in circles in a parking lot so that he could have a more salacious story about "running out of gas". The original article stated that he coasted off the freeway into the parking lot with no energy remaining. There's no two ways about it: That's a lie.

How low do you need the p-value to be before you reject the null hypothesis? 0.0005? 5e-9?

Nobody is disputing that news is a hard business, but you can't have it both ways: If you're going to run a serious newspaper, then you need to run a serious newspaper. That means upholding editorial standards. Most importantly, that mean having real repercussions for reporters who break the trust of your readership.

> "ZOMG ALIENS!" is complete nonsense, but ... it probably also drives traffic, and thus revenue.

The owners are completely within their rights to pivot and turn the NYT into the next buzzfeed. But you're just reinforcing the point that it is no longer a serious newspaper.

They seem even less serious publishing op-eds like this:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/03/opinion/trump-biden-presi...

There's actually a named psychological effect for when people read a news article that they know to be inaccurate and don't believe that lack of standards carry forward into the rest of the paper's articles...

Unfortunately both my memory and Google are failing me on this one. Maybe someone in the comments will contribute.

THAT'S IT! Thank you.

I can't readily find this either, but the New York Times employs 1,700 journalists and publishes about 150 stories every day. I don't think treating it as a big singular monolithic entity is helpful.

And those 1700 journalists and 150 stories per day go through their much smaller editorial board before they get published. There can be costly legal ramifications if they do not have their editors carefully go over stories.

Stop giving them excuses.

I'm not excusing anything; I'm just saying that a single bad article from 7 years ago from a single reporter and the newspaper not appropriately rectifying it – which is certainly a very bad thing – is not a good reason to dismiss the entire newspaper out of hand, especially not considering the scale of the NYT. Things are just not that black/white.

The UFO article I mentioned was barely a week ago.

There's loads of these. I'm half-expecting a bat boy article as a followup.

this attitude is part of the problem... no one goes back and holds them accountable for anything. they just move onto the next BS problem and never notice the old stuff was dead wrong.

If you want to change your perspective, invest in the companies... it will stick with you. I foolishly shorted apple around antenna gate. that was the beginning of me starting to hold the media accountable. the media is wrong over and over and people don't seem to notice.

I'd love to see historical articles matching what they predicted with what actually happened.

At least in tech writing, I'd expect most of their predictions to be wrong.

This whole thread feels like I am taking crazy pills. It seems odd that so many people are on the contrarian juice in this thread against one of the best journalism outlets in the world.

I am right there with you. There are bound to be stinkers, but on the whole the reality that the Times operates in is miles ahead and closer to the truth than most reporting out there, if not all.

This was recently: https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-July-2020-Twitter-spat-bet...

Also this: https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/06/22/nyt-is-threatening-my-...

Also: https://www.bariweiss.com/resignation-letter

I think there are some great New York Times writers (Li Yuan’s articles I always like), but there’s a lot of seriously bad writing and writers.

It’s not exclusive to NYT either, Vox makes some great stuff - but they also published that “no handshakes” article mocking Silicon Valley for taking COVID seriously.

Vox repeatedly pushed the “COVID isn’t a pandemic” story. Vox doubled down on the “no handshakes” thing with Kara Swisher arguing in support of it. They still haven’t admitted being wrong.

Link: https://medium.com/@balajis/citations-for-the-recode-handsha...

If you know anyone who has a NYT piece written about them usually they’re surprised by how many things are wrong.

Of course these are just the publications that even pretend to be honest, I’m not unfairly targeting them - others unnamed are often worse.

I think their ad driven model is a corrupting influence. I also think their anti-tech company bias is related to tech companies destroying their historical business model (I think they're holding a grudge: https://zalberico.com/essay/2020/07/14/the-serfs-of-facebook...).

I think it’s better to support good writers directly, I hope substack and independent blogs win.

Some suggestions:

Persuasion: https://www.persuasion.community/

Stratechery: https://stratechery.com/

Stay Tuned with Preet: https://cafe.com/stay-tuned-podcast/

Andrew Sullivan: https://andrewsullivan.substack.com/subscribe

Sam Harris: https://samharris.org/

who is going to do, and who is going to pay for, the actual reporting on which the smart but frequently bloviating sort of writers that you cite rely?