Home » NY Times vs. Jill Abranson, and the Sulzberger family

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<i>NY Times</i> vs. Jill Abranson, and the Sulzberger family — 14 Comments

  1. Davis Guaspari
    One of my favorite examples is that the 4th-generation rentier in charge was happy to publish this.
    That is indeed a howler, that a Sulzberger publication would tut-tut about neoptism at another publication- a publication much smaller than the NYT. The mote in your eye…

    This NYT affair is proving to be very entertaining. I just hope that Carlos Slim’s investment in the NYT goes down the drain concurrent with his losing his telcom monopoly in Mexico. Sorta funny to hear Harry Reid fulminating about the Kochs when a furriner multi-billionaire is involved with the NYT. At least the Kochs made their billions in fair competition, whereas Carlos Slim got his through crony capitalism- a telecom monopoly.

  2. Everything to loathe here and nothing to love. May they all suspire in a refining fire until their lungs are ash.

  3. I think Sulzburger has done a wonderful job of convincing the public that newspapers are not fair and honest and can’t be trusted. I live in Fairfax, Virginia and quit taking the Washington Post years ago because there was no difference between the front pages and the editorial pages and it was in the tank with the democrats.

  4. When I watch Chris Hayes and Rachel Maddow I constantly think of spoiled high schoolers that are attending bad schools.

  5. Back when the Times was busy constructing its new headquarters , it ran an editorial decrying “corporate welfare”.

    Yet in its Business section was a small article announcing that the newspaper had secured a $29 million tax break from NYC as an incentive to build that headquarters.

    Same paper, same day.

  6. Ray has the right of it. The NYT’s unctuous dreck hasn’t been able to withstand the relentless scouring of new media. Half bad example and half walking dead man, it’s no wonder the Grey Lady is suffering one painful embarrassment after another.

    Neo notes that Abramson fell rapidly at the end. Just another cascade failure, I think, and so typical of the delusional constructions of leftists. Look at the Veterans Administration, trying to solve a crucial government healthcare problem by waitlisting it away. Statists are incapable of imagining that seriously ill veterans would actually die from lack of medical care, and couldn’t foresee that grieving families might use the power of the net to harry those responsible for the murders. This is bound to go very badly, very fast.

    Cascades. They’re not just the mountains east of Seattle. More NYT subscriptions will be canceled, and much more popcorn will be needed.

  7. The Abramson affair is no mystery, it’s very simple:
    – The Times, along with most other print media, is shrinking.
    – Abramson wasn’t genius enough to reverse that trend.
    – The market was larger when her predecessor was there.
    – She thought her political status justified a raise, in a shrinking market.
    – She was wrong.

    The affair does point out a couple of interesting corollaries:
    – In a stagnant or shrinking market, protected groups will be forced to fight each other for “market share.” And they will.
    – Feminism has sold a lot of women a load of crap. They go into the world with dogma instead of understanding, and are surprised when the ideology doesn’t hold up.
    – Probably not a good idea to get a tattoo of your employer’s logo on your back.

  8. To me the most interesting thing to come out of the drama is the fact that this venerable newspaper has no idea what to do about the internet.

    The “innovation” report that was leaked makes it quite clear that they they have no idea how to think about the huge market change happening under their noses. They have lots of ideas about how to create a new business model that will extend their reach online. Every one of the ideas is based on a false premise–the idea that the New York Times can create a digital presence that will allow it to remain The Very Important Paper it imagines it is.

    That’s not going to happen.

    They’re averting their eyes from the real problem–turns out good writers will write for free now that we have a platform that makes it easy. That’s what has changed everything, and it’s very unlikely to ever change back.

    Anyone who says they know now what that means for the newspaper business in the future is kidding himself. Nobody knows yet what’s going to happen.

    It’s a lot like the software firms I’ve watched fail. People cannot or will not grasp that the market they were once a part of has imploded, or been blown to smithereens (or in the case of software, sometimes the market simply never emerges).

    Some people think their ideas are more real than reality. Lot of that going around lately….

  9. I was going to recommend the Continetti story, too. As a member of all the Times’s most despised demographics (white, male, southern, conservative, Catholic) I don’t feel the least bit guilty about savoring the schadenfreude.

  10. Matt_SE:

    Actually, it’s not that simple. Under Abramson, the Times was doing well financially.

    See this.

  11. Au contraire. It’s still simple, just a bit changed:

    If the Times was doing well under Abramson (so says Vox!), then she earned a raise. If true, whoever fired her is an idiot.

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