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

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".

https://www.thenation.com/article/graydon-carter-air-mail-newsletter-review-essay/

rogermex = classic centrist War Democrat? even a Tarantino fan

The NYT editorial board is Vaguely Concerned about an American empire it helped create by supporting every US military action for the past 35 years. They won’t commit to any concrete action in pull back said empire but they kinda, maybe think it’s too big https://t.co/AIggJK4Log

— Adam H. Johnson (@adamjohnsonNYC) August 19, 2019

35 years is awfully specific? What's the deal there?

not sure of their track record but just going on dates it suggests opposition to... grenada?

come on pretty mama

If there is an argument at all for the way the United States invaded Grenada, President Reagan has been clumsy in making it. The rescue of medical students was, almost by his own admission, only a pretext. Their evacuation, if necessary, could have been accomplished by lesser means. The legal justifications were a sham. Such breaches of treaties and sovereignty can only be rationalized by the aggressions of others.

Four days after the landings, Mr. Reagan finally pointed to a valid question, conceding his underlying concern: What were all those Cubans doing in Grenada? But whether or not the President is vindicated in his belatedly admitted suspicions about a Cuban threat, he has surely failed to reckon fully with the cost of his response.

If Cubans, on behalf of the Soviet Union, were subverting Grenada's Government and establishing a base ''to export terror and undermine democracy'' in Latin America, their expulsion is surely a proper American objective.

What is the evidence? The presence of a force of Cuban worker-soldiers larger than Washington anticipated, better trained and hoarding more weapons than anyone knew. Though Mr. Reagan voiced concern last March about the airfield the Cubans were building on Grenada, he either had inadequate intelligence about them before the invasion or is being served a much inflated picture of their operation now.

Plainly the President was predisposed to attack, to seize a moment of turmoil on the island to rid himself of the Grenada headache. If his worst suspicions are confirmed in the coming days, he will have denied the Russians and Cubans another Caribbean airfield, an auxiliary station for small- arms transfers and a modest source of new recruits for international mischief. Set this still uncertain gain against the price. It, too, cannot yet be fully reckoned, but it will be far more costly than the loss of a dozen soldiers. Simply put, the cost is loss of the moral high ground: a reverberating demonstration to the world that America has no more respect for laws and borders, for the codes of civilization, than the Soviet Union. To liberate Grenada from some local henchmen, and perhaps from Cubans, America has defined its duty and security in ways that make it look like a paranoid bully. To much of the world, the invasion appears no different than the Soviet suppression of Poland or the occupation of Afghanistan. Even friends in the hemisphere and in Europe are tempted to think of the superpowers as equally selfish, possessed by geopolitical games. In their private thoughts, they may even raise a cheer for the Davids who dare to stand up to either Goliath. A great many Americans, to be sure, feel better about their country this weekend than last. The carnage among passive marines in Lebanon struck them as one more sign of impotence, exposing a chronic failure of will to stand up to terrorists. Now, in tiny Grenada, Americans have shown that they can play hardball, too, that they can be just as tough at defending their turf as the Commies. Watch Out, Nicaragua. Beware, Syria. Keep Out, Russia. It's a seductive but immature reaction. When all is done, pacifying Grenada will prove only the obvious about American power. The enduring test for Americans is not whether we have the will to use that power but the skill to avoid having to. A President who felt he had no other choice last Monday night should not be celebrating a victory. He should be repairing the prior political failures and forestalling the bitter harvest to come.

(nyt editorial regarding invasion of grenada)

rogermex = classic centrist War Democrat? even a Tarantino fan

poverty takes one strange places