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New York magazine published a scathing inside look at The New York Times, which details the “open secret” that the paper is “published by and for coastal liberals” and ponders if it “can again become the paper of record," while pointing out that several staffers agreed with Bari Weiss' infamous resignation letter painting the once-proud paper as toxic.
New York contributing editor Reeves Wiedeman detailed the Times’ liberal staffers who lost it earlier this year when their paper published an op-ed by Sen. Tom Cotton headlined “Send in the Troops” at the height of nationwide protests following the death of George Floyd in police custody. The backlash over the opinion piece eventually resulted in then-editor James Bennet’s abrupt exit after internal backlash.
Wiedeman detailed how Times employees created a Slack channel -- a workplace messaging system widely used by news organizations -- to vent and complain about the situation which “served as a heated pandemic-era office watercooler.” Executive editor Dean Baquet even joined the Slack channel, according to Wiedeman.
“The conversations could become tense. Employees would paste tweets criticizing the paper into the channel; the journalists would get defensive; someone would leak the argument to friends with Twitter accounts; and the ouroboros of self-criticism would take another bite out of its tail and everyone’s time,” Wiedeman wrote.
The magazine reiterated a claim by then-columnist Weiss that the paper had a “civil war” going on internally, with young liberal staffers feuding with the industry veterans. Weiss went on to quit the Times with a scathing letter in which she said was bullied by colleagues in an "illiberal environment,” noting she doesn’t understand how such toxic behavior is allowed inside the newsroom.
The magazine reported that many Times staffers agreed with Weiss’ resignation letter critiques.
“While Bari Weiss’s description of a young woke mob taking over the paper was roundly criticized, several Times employees I spoke to saw truth to the dynamic,” Wiedeman wrote.
“The dustup laid bare a divide that had become increasingly tricky for the Times: a large portion of the paper’s audience, a number of its employees, and the president himself saw it as aligned with the #resistance. This demarcation horrified the Old Guard, but it seemed to make for good business,” Wiedeman wrote.
NY TIMES WRITERS IN 'OPEN REVOLT' AFTER PUBLICATION OF COTTON OP-ED, CLAIM BLACK STAFF 'IN DANGER'
Wiedeman noted that Times staffers openly wept when President Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in 2016
“A neutral objectivity had long been core to the way the paper saw itself, its public mission, and its business interests… even if it was an open secret that the Times was published by and for coastal liberals,” he wrote.
Wiedeman then explained that Baquet wanted to cover Trump fairly so the paper could maintain its “journalistic weapon,” meaning it would have the “ability to publish something like Trump’s tax returns and have them be viewed as unbiased truth,” someone described as a “star” writer at the Gray Lady told him.
The New York magazine piece detailed a variety of other issues inside the Times: staffers complained that the paper didn’t call out Trump’s “brazen expressions of authoritarianism and racism,” an opinion staffer said it felt like no one at the Times got any work done following the Cotton op-ed, “members of the masthead talked one-on-one with employees of color to sort out why they felt the Times was an unwelcoming place” and a young staffer didn't think older colleagues understand social media.
“But the most meaningful divide in the newsroom seemed to be by temperament,” Wiedeman wrote. “’The fundamental schism at the Times is institutionalist versus insurrectionist,’ a reporter who identified with the latter group told me.”
While the newsroom drama played out, young app developers and software engineers criticized journalists on Slack.
“Reporters found that suddenly it was the Times’ programmers and developers, rather than their editors, who were critiquing their work,” he wrote.
The lengthy feature highlights many other concerns at the Times, ranging from who will eventually replace Baquet to the future of the opinion section in a post-Trump world.
“The Times had become the paper of the resistance, whether or not it wanted the distinction. The months ahead will determine whether it can again become the paper of record,” Wiedeman wrote
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