even more quiddities and agonies of the ruling class - a new rolling new york times thread

Headline writer misspelled "lágrimas"

we thought being complete idiots was a good idea but we were wrong

I could barely plan things to do in Argentina with my parents when I was like 20

That writer is also the editor in chief at Goop.

is that shocking?!?!

My life perspective changed a lot when it hit me that jobs like "editor in chief of goop," which ordinary folks sadly strive for and usually don't get, are actually just created for the dumber kids of rich people.*

*nb I don't actually know what goop is.

presumably the smart kids of smart rich people are allowed to join in doing whatever the parents did

i am sure you have looked it up by now, but goop is G Paltrow's mockable but profitable lifestyle brand.

I think Pergament is where you go in Catholic theology to live in eternal agonies if your sins are all quiddities

Blake Lively's store-brand Goop was better
https://jezebel.com/what-real-dudes-think-of-the-mens-section-on-blake-live-1616380572

Blake's barely lasted a year i think.

What Middle-Class Families Want Politicians to Know

nothing that egregious in here except that all these families make at least $100,000 a year

deeply sadly 100k for a family _is_ middle class for nyc i imagine

this one tho

The Battle of Grace Church: What happened when Brooklyn’s oldest nursery school decided to become less old-fashioned? A riot among the one percent.

The world was a simmering, seething cauldron, one that was only going to get hotter and harder to survive in. If this felt true in general, it felt especially true to the residents of Brooklyn Heights, whose small universe had recently gotten a lot more crowded. The glass towers that sprung up along the waterfront had filled up with families, yet the number of schools remained the same. In the past, parents could pay their way into Grace Church, which traditionally served as a feed to St. Ann’s and Packer Collegiate, one of the two private schools traditionally favored by Brooklynites with $40,000-plus a year to spend on setting their children on The Correct Path. Now this privilege, like all others, seemed in jeopardy.

yeah, that one was a laff riot it's true

deeply sadly 100k for a family _is_ middle class for nyc i imagine

Yeah but one of those familes is +200K in Wyomissing PA.

you need that 200k to get by in (checks notes) Laveen Arizona i guess
i gotta move

I usually feel like 'families' make 50k or 110k and there is barely an in between. It's messed up.

1. exhibit one: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/02/technology/brex-start-up.html
2. exhibit two:

https://proxy.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fdoughroller-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2018%2F10%2FBrex-logo-e1540841268699.jpg&f=1
https://proxy.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fcdn.wallpapersafari.com%2F34%2F11%2FQG6FKy.gif&f=1

3. exhibit three: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bre-X

Kara Swisher's tech columns have moved beyond ridiculous into some sublime pure land of drivel. pic.twitter.com/5Q5hGOim0U

— Pinboard (@Pinboard) August 6, 2019

(screenshots from the same column)

hadn't really noticed her before so i clicked on another random article and got this word salad:

[Don’t get me wrong, I love to scoot, and I do it often, including a whole bunch of times here in Paris. Zoom, I went to meet someone for lunch in a bistro near the Bastille. Zip, that was me going under the Arc de Triomphe. Zut alors, me again sailing along the Seine on a Bird.

wasn't there some recipe column that did the exact same thing in the NYT a while back?

The pileup of adjectives in the first sentence of that tweet remind me of trying to pad out a book report in the 5th grade

pareene on the aristocracy's paper

Take a surgeon, making $400,000. That is, more or less, the intended reader of the Times, which consigns a mere family practitioner making $200,000 to the “middle class.” Indeed, the Times itself helpfully clarified its own upward-skewing vision of social class in a delightfully unselfaware Opinion section piece about “the middle class in America” made up almost entirely of subjects with six-figure household incomes. When readers criticized the paper’s apparent redefinition of “middle” and “class,” the Times braintrust explained the editorial process that led to the creation of that piece: They simply tasked reporters to ask Times readers who self-identified as middle class; not surprisingly, these open-ended inquiries yielded a handful of objectively wealthy people who simply don’t feel that rich.

https://newrepublic.com/article/154726/heres-better-reason-unsubscribe-new-york-times

the jonathan weisman stuff is really quite something

Yeah, he's an idiot who tweets racist shit again and again and when a black woman pointed it out he mailed her, her assistant, and her publisher to demand an apology. How the fuck is that not a firing reason?

lol

NYT says it is demoting Jonathan Weisman -- he will be an editor in DC, but no longer overseeing Congressional correspondents, and no longer active on social media. Weisman has been contrite. Story to follow.

— marc tracy (@marcatracy) August 13, 2019

This article was interesting and made a decent argument.

Here's a Better Reason to Unsubscribe From The New York Times
It's not the "newspaper of record." It's a rag for the East Coast rich.

You shouldn’t unsubscribe from The New York Times over a bad headline. Or even over a bad pattern of editorial decisions dating back years demonstrating an institutional worldview poisoned by false equivalence, blinkered elitism, and fealty to power. Don’t unsubscribe to punish them, or as economic leverage to force them to Do Better. You should instead unsubscribe from the Times because the Paper of Record doesn’t need your money. Or, at least, the Times needs it much less than someone else probably does.

The Times itself reported on Wednesday that The New York Times Company earned an operating profit of $37.9 million in the second quarter of this year—down from last year but still pretty healthy—thanks in large part to the paper’s combined print and digital subscriber base of 4.7 million readers.

If you are among that 4.7 million, you have been won over with some canny marketing. The Times’ decision to heavily invest in attracting subscriptions from a national (even international) audience has been a savvy and largely successful one, but almost by definition these world-conquering ambitions can only succeed at the expense of other, smaller outlets. There is not an unlimited international appetite for newspaper subscriptions. And that expansion has required the paper to market itself as various things it is not: chiefly as a true national newspaper, meant to be read by every literate American, or as a voice of the Resistance. But it has never been either of those things, nor has it ever sought to be. The Times has a specific niche in the media environment, and it is quite good at being the thing it actually wants to be.

The Times is a paper for the East Coast rich. If that doesn’t describe you, the paper is not making editorial decisions with you in mind.

“Times readers in the New York metropolitan area are upscale, affluent, Jewish, liberal and identify with New York’s culture, its museums and its art,” a former Times circulation editor said in a 2013 interview. The company’s media kit—the PR materials designed to convince brands to purchase ads in the paper or on their website—tells a similar story: “The NYT Weekday ranks #1 with Opinion Leaders, reaching 57% of this elite group.” It reports a median household income of $191,000 for readers of the paper and $96,000 for the website.

I am an urban professional, living in New York, making a good living, and The New York Times is barely even for me. Take a surgeon, making $400,000. That is, more or less, the intended reader of the Times, which consigns a mere family practitioner making $200,000 to the “middle class.” Indeed, the Times itself helpfully clarified its own upward-skewing vision of social class in a delightfully unselfaware Opinion section piece about “the middle class in America” made up almost entirely of subjects with six-figure household incomes. When readers criticized the paper’s apparent redefinition of “middle” and “class,” the Times braintrust explained the editorial process that led to the creation of that piece: They simply tasked reporters to ask Times readers who self-identified as middle class; not surprisingly, these open-ended inquiries yielded a handful of objectively wealthy people who simply don’t feel that rich.

They simply tasked reporters to ask Times readers who self-identified as middle class

haha

upscale, affluent, Jewish, liberal

Did they really have to go there?

occurred to me too

it's a quote by a times employee: https://newsandtech.com/columnists/nyt-and-wsj-the-industry-s-last-newspaper-war/article_4cbfda2c-8051-11e2-adb0-001a4bcf887a.html

Ew

Fun Par33n3 take but as a New Republic piece it's fkn rich.

What, pray tell, ought we to read instead? Perhaps TNR speaks for the people? Oh look, while bashing NYT's bid for national online subs TNR flashes me an interstitial to subscribe online. Sounds like a plan. That'll really stick it to those rich twits at the Grey Lady.

And how does TNR define middle class? Horse has been beaten to death but in Manhattan (or SF, or LA...) an HHI of 200K isn't a sob story but isn't not middle class. I'm not gonna fight anyone over this but it's a shallow take.

I'm not even defending the Times but TNR was the wrong place to publish this one.

https://advertise.newrepublic.com

Good stuff A+ will advertise with you instead of that stodgy old NYT

I'm not even defending the Times but TNR was the wrong place to publish this one.

― Larry Elleison (rogermexico.), Wednesday, August 14, 2019 6:22 PM (three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

where should he have published it? this bit not satisfactory?

It is not inherently bad for a media outlet to be, broadly, “for” rich people. Within that framework, there is plenty of room for important investigative journalism and vibrant culture coverage. (The New Republic’s subscriber base, especially for the print magazine, is fairly well-to-do, and we market that audience in much the same way the Times does.)

https://thenib.imgix.net/usq/8688038d-f99b-4224-872b-b8dd626f868c/mister-gotcha-4-9faefa.png

hahahaha

caek, that particular fig leaf isn't worth shit in the context of "you should unsubscribe from these guys but here's an ad to subscribe to us"

Do you have a problem with the piece or just the place that published it? Sheesh dude

Lmao “fig leaf”

Pareene’s failure to re-found the Daily Worker and publish it there really undermines his thesis.

Goddamn that Bors panel's got legs.

As evergreen as the Milkshake Duck tweet.

eh not gonna go to the mat on this one but yeah, enjoyable enough as a Gawker post, weird coming from a pub that targets Times Readers, But A Few Years Younger.

tbh there's not even much of a thesis. he wraps with a clarion call to "appreciate the content on its own merits—or don’t" which yeah, I guess I'll keep reading the Times and TNR occasionally without subscribing.

my actual issue with the piece is pareene’s presumption that people need to be told to unsubscribe from the NYT in 2019 for the right (class consciousness) reasons. like oh thanks bud hadn’t figured out how to justify my news consumer decisions to myself but now I’m squared away! 🤪 fuck off

What a weird bunch of people

new board description obv

Slate ran a transcript of the recent editorial meeting.

Basically, a lot of Times staffers are sick of calling things "racially tinged".