Dear The New York Times Company:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I am writing this letter to express my opinion about your\ncompany and its future. While I have no\nclaims to expertise in these matters, I offer my external observations for what\nthey may be worth to you. Personally I\nhave no concern over the financial success of your corporation and in fact, I\nbelieve in corporate eugenics, may only the \u201cfit\u201d survive e.g. those companies\nwhich fail to provide the services and products their customers or who relegate\nthemselves to a dying niche should fail so that the resources they utilize can\nbe redistributed to companies which better serve the needs of their customers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
However, the New York Times is more than a corporation, it\nis a social and political institution. \nIt was once one of the premier journalistic institutions in our country\nand the world. As such it has, in\naddition to serving its subscribers and advertisers, been of great service to\nthe public. It is the degradation of this\nservice that is of concern to me and which motivates this letter. While I would be happy if you referred some\nor all of this letter to your editorial staff it is not my specific intent but\nrather, I speak to the corporate leadership of the company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While the Times has long been classically liberal in the\nbest sense of the term the illiberal leftward trend it has taken in recent\ndecades is undeniable. While I disagree\nwith this political position, I do not seek here to proselytize my own\nviews. I rather wish to address what I\nsee as a trap into which the NYT may be falling which I see as undermining its\nrole as a public institution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There have been two driving factors affecting the behavior\nof the NYT over recent history. The first\nhas been technical, the explosion of the internet and the resulting emergence\nof new journalistic and content paradigms. \nThe second, possibly driven by the first in some ways, is the\npolarization of the public political rhetoric. \nThis in spite of the fact that when polled on specific issues (that\u2019s\nissues not political identities) the vast majority of the public is generally\nin agreement on a majority of issues. However,\nthe minority of ideological extremists, especially on the left, have a very\nloud voice and I believe this is the mechanism where the technical trend has\ndriven the social one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Here then is how I see the effects of these trends on your\nnewspaper. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Firstly, you have, it appears to me, successfully begun to\nmake good use of the new technology as your increasing revenues show. However along with this adaptation your\nattention to public feedback has shifted to the physical mail which requires\nthe investment of at least the price of a stamp and the effort to type\/pen a\nphysical letter and send it, to electronic communication, and disproportionately\nto the anonymous social media mobs, as on Twitter, who take only moments to send\nout a gut reaction and must expend no more resources than a moments\npassion. I am thinking specifically of\nthe example of your recent headline change with regard to President Trump as a pointed\nexample.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Secondly, your editorial and reporting staff has shifted\nleftward in political ideology well beyond the original meaning of the term \u201cliberal\u201d\nto the position of increased government intervention in personal and social\nissues which is contrary to the definition of liberalism. Again, I am not arguing the righteousness or\nwrongness of that position though you may correctly imagine my stance. My point is that you should recognize that\nthis is the fact and further that the mean position of your staff is well left\nof the current population in our country. \nThis would not be a problem if, ideally, their bias is restricted to the\nOp Ed pages of your publication. The\nproblem is that this is not the case and indeed not the case to an ever-increasing\ndegree. I believe that the staff cannot\nsee the degree to which this is occurring given their monolithic political bent. There has been a self-amplifying filtering\nprocess in the training and selection of journalists which comes into play here\nand relates to the same process in academia which also concerns me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Finally, the principle issue is the degradation of journalistic\nintegrity of your institution. As your staff\u2019s\nbiases manifest to a greater and greater degree your readership also shifts as\nyou gain more from the extreme end and lose more from the center and\nright. Here then is the trap. More and more your readership will not merely\ndisagree with your politics but respect your journalism and accept factual\nreporting. Instead they demand you be an\nadvocate in all ways to the determent of journalism and facts and you will be more\nand more financially dependent on a monolithic radical readership. At some point you will no longer be able to\nbrush off the extremists and survive the financial hit you would take. The moderates will have left long ago. You will cease to be an institution of journalism\nand become yet another partisan newsletter publisher. That can be done cheaply, and you will have to\ncompete much more vigorously against the ocean of tweeters and YouTube rants\nout there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Keep in mind that now, while you are succeeding financially\nis the time to reclaim your journalistic integrity. You feed off of the reputation of your past\nonly so long before you\u2019ve eaten all the seed corn and there\u2019s nothing to do\nbut starve or sell your souls into bondage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As a final note let me talk about my own political\nposition. I voted for Trump over Clinton\nbecause he promised to rebalance the Supreme Court (and because I believe Hillary\nis utterly corrupt). I thought that, if\nhe fulfilled his promise on only this, we could survive anything negative he\nwas likely to do while in office given the exiting constitutional guardrails. The alternative promised to further imbalance\nthe court to the point which could easily become a real existential threat to\nour constitutional republic. While I\nfind him dislikable and abrasive, I do not think that relevant to his\ncompetence and have been pleasantly surprise at how well he has done for the\nmost part on policy. This even as I wince\nat his tweets. I have also delighted at\nhow he has thumbed his nose at the pseudo journalistic media who treat him with\nopen contempt. While apprehensive about\nTrump when he was elected, I am in full support of him for his second term and,\nbased on the opposition\u2019s total lack of positive individually empowering policies,\nI fully expect he will be reelected.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What worries me however is that I do see the press as a vital institution in the preservation of our country as a free and prosperous nation.\u00a0 A free press is essential to keeping in check those in office.\u00a0 Once the press is almost unilaterally partisan against the current administration and refuses to respect the validity of the political and philosophical views of its base then it will cease to have any influence over those in office.\u00a0 You can always have a voice but when your integrity is gone who will listen?\u00a0 As you would justifiably distrust the positions of a lobbyist organization for some corporation, I am justifiably distrustful of your paper as it becomes merely a lobbyist for the ever more radical left. So, I have written to you now because I do still believe the New York Times wishes to stand for journalistic integrity and with all due respect to the true journalism you have demonstrated in the past and strive for in the present and future. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sincerely,
James Baugh<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Dear The New York Times Company: I am writing this letter to express my opinion about your company and its future. While I have no claims to expertise in these matters, I offer my external observations for what they may be worth to you. Personally I have no concern over the financial success of your […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[8,7,6,9],"class_list":{"0":"post-23","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-politics","7":"tag-journalism","8":"tag-new-york-times","9":"tag-nyt","10":"tag-radical-left"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.jamesbaugh.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.jamesbaugh.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.jamesbaugh.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jamesbaugh.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jamesbaugh.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jamesbaugh.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jamesbaugh.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23\/revisions\/24"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.jamesbaugh.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jamesbaugh.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jamesbaugh.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}