
The New York Times Is Eliminating Its Public Editor Role - secondary
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/new-york-times-public-editor_us_592ec472e4b0e95ac1956706
======
cwyers
On one hand, having an ombudsman (whatever you want to call it) is a good
thing for an institution like the Times.

On the other hand... having Liz Spayd in that role is pointless, so this isn't
a loss. The past year has shown us how the New York Times has let false
equivalence and the need to sell newspapers to both sides of the aisle has
severely damaged the quality of the paper's coverage, and Spayd has
continually carried water for this rather than hold the paper to account. I
for one am tired of watching the Times sell itself with ads about how the
truth is more important than ever and then follow it up with coverage like
this:

[https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/03/us/politics/health-
care-f...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/03/us/politics/health-care-fact-
check-preexisting-conditions.html)

Where Pelosi saying "Up to 17 million children" is supposed to be misleading
because it chooses the high side estimate, when _that is exactly what 'up to'
means_.

Getting rid of the public editor won't make this better, but not having to
read a public editor who won't confront this sort of coverage head-on will at
least make me a bit less cranky about it.

~~~
humanrebar
I'd feel more able to agree with you if the NYT didn't carry water for some
whoppers ("you can keep you doctor", "insurers will compete for your
business", etc.) back when the ACA was passed in the first place.

~~~
specialist
Insurer's response to ACA reminds me of a Frank & Ernest comic, which I can't
find right now, sorry:

Two USPS workers. Package label says "Do not bend, fold, mutilate." One says
to the other "Doesn't say anything about crumple!"

Har har har.

\---

I had high hopes for ACA. I believed the 15% medical loss ratio was the poison
pill that would eventually drive insurers out of business, and therefore lead
to Medicare for All. For comparison, Medicare's is under 5%, meaning 95 cents
for every dollar spent goes to patient care, vs coke and prostitutes for the
execs.

Silly me. There's no set of rules that can't be broken, gamed.

So now I'm for dozing it all down and rebuilding with universal coverage,
single payer, using the capitation model (reward wellness vs fee for service).
No more incrementalism. Just do it.

\---

Aside: Mid 2000s, my team created, implemented, supported 5 regional health
information exchanges (eg BHIX). It was clear then, to everyone in healthcare
IT, that we were pushing cooked noodles across hot pavement. Since then, it's
only gotten worse. Overhead continues to grow geometrically, due to things
like ICD-10 and meaningful care, without nudging the patient care (outcomes)
needle one bit.

I can't explain it.

I just read about cost disease. It seems to explain rising costs, but I don't
understand the mechanism, or what to do about it.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol%27s_cost_disease](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol%27s_cost_disease)

And this book blew my mind:

"The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of
Bureaucracy"

by David Graeber

[http://amzn.to/2mi169U](http://amzn.to/2mi169U)

~~~
mason240
I believe the ACA itself was a poison pill that would make the system so
inefficient to drive it to collapse and bring about single payer.

The failure of Republicans to implement an alternative has pretty much
guaranteed it.

~~~
YPCrumble
I'm hoping Donald Trump is the poison pill that will bring about the
Progressive movement.

~~~
Karunamon
He's a poison pill alright, but I'm not sure who's going to feel the poison.

He's either the end of the Democrat establishment (the election and post-
election hysterics are unheard of in my lifetime), or the end of the
Republican establishment (if he crashes and burns as bad as certain circles
think he will).

------
makomk
Unfortunately, the thing that will always stick in my memory about Liz Spayd
is her criticism of the New York Times for refusing to give more credence to
the claim that junk emails about Trump hotels were a secret communications
channel with Russia: [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/20/public-editor/trump-
russi...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/20/public-editor/trump-russia-fbi-
liz-spayd-public-editor.html) (Seriously. Every single piece of evidence
pointed to the communications being mass marketing emails, from the companies
actually operating the server to The Intercept obtaining copies of some of the
emails.)

~~~
rdtsc
Wouldn't be surprised if in a few years there will be studies about the
"Russia" propaganda campaign. How first it was very effective, everyone
repeating the same things, the infamous "dossier" with sexual allegations,
communication via mass marketing emails and so on. How it was beautiful and
effective, and then everyone went too far and it ended up as a very expensive,
counterproductive and embarrassing affair.

Also I wonder to what degree the journalists and anchors involved actually
believe those things, or they simply know what to sell and do it regardless of
their personal convictions in the matter.

~~~
matt4077
Did you read what you're replying to? The New York Times didn't buy into some
sort of "propaganda campaign", nor were they part of it.

If anything it proves that journalism is doing quite well at the NYT, and the
narrative of "bias" and "propaganda campaigns" is undermining civil society,
and unfairly accusing people doing the best they can and mostly succeeding.

~~~
makomk
Supposedly a good five or so publications passed over the Trump hotel
communications with Russia story for the same reason, but ultimately it didn't
matter that much because the moment one publication (Slate) was willing to
publish their article went massively viral on social media, the Clinton
campaign helped spread it, and huge numbers of people saw and believed it.
We've effectively reduced the accuracy of the media as a whole to whatever the
sloppiest, most view-hungry outlet is willing to put out that fits everyone's
preferred narrative.

------
cocktailpeanuts
Before I start, Disclosure: I'm neither a Trump or a Hillary supporter and I
don't mean the following to be political. I'm just very dissatisfied with the
sad reality of how I cannot trust anything online anymore.

For me, the moment all my trust in NYT died was the election day. The front
page had this interactive realtime story of how Hillary is supposedly winning
by overwhelming margin, when it was very apparent that that's opposite of the
truth. People kept questioning "where the hell is this data coming from?".

I believe Newspapers should try to play as much neutral role as possible, but
throughout the entire election cycle the narrative was NYT vs. Trump. News
organizations and journalists should report stories but should not become the
story.

As someone who just wanted to learn what REALLY is going on, I had (and still
have) hard time believing anything they say anymore. Other conservative
publications at least don't claim to be neutral. A publication shouldn't claim
to "tell the truth" and do a whole TV ad about it if they are clearly biased
and they're also aware of this.

I know they're being provocative because this sells, and they need to make
money, and it's getting harder to make money with newspaper. But they've
crossed the line.

People keep talking about "fake news", but what's really dangerous is not some
viral website that write some funny photoshopped story. What's really
dangerous is influential news organizations like NYT doing deceptively
objective-sounding pieces with narratives that mislead the public.

By now I think a lot of people know it's very possible to take a same piece of
reality and write completely different versions of it, just by framing them
differently. Because of that I have hard time believing anything online
anymore, especially the influential ones. This is sad because it used to be
the job of journalism to fight against injustice, but nowadays it's more about
generating more page views and getting more subscribers, which led to people
losing faith in journalism.

~~~
untog
> The front page had this interactive realtime story of how Hillary is
> supposedly winning by overwhelming margin, when it was very apparent that
> that's opposite of the truth.

I remember that interactive story. It was not what you describe. It was
showing Hillary's _chances_ of winning throughout the evening - she started at
90% or so, based on the polling averages they'd been running on a regular
basis throughout the entire election season. Then, as the evening wore on, and
results were not as the polling would indicate, her chances of winning
dropped, dropped, and then obviously went to zero.

Now, I won't argue that in hindsight that was a pretty bad feature to run. I
think it vastly overestimated reader ability to understand statistical
probabilities, as well as the accuracy of polling data (the Brexit vote ought
to have been an indicator to be cautious). But it absolutely wasn't showing
false data that indicated Hillary was winning when she was not.

~~~
cocktailpeanuts
How is it not what I describe? You just described exactly what I described.

Everyone was wondering (both pro-trump and anti-trump) where the "90%" came
from. Because it was pretty clear the race was not that obvious. People keep
saying nobody saw it coming, but that's their emotion speaking. People just
didn't want Donald Trump to win because they thought he's a joke, but
objectively speaking people knew clearly that there were tons of his
supporters around the U.S., and it was definitely NOT 90% chance that Hillary
would win.

To me, THAT's the ultimate "fake news". Slapping a percentage number on it and
putting it on the front page is just not right, especially when it's based on
very subjective (and eventually false) speculative data.

~~~
untog
You said:

"The front page had this interactive realtime story of how Hillary is
supposedly winning"

I said:

"it absolutely wasn't showing false data that indicated Hillary was winning
when she was not"

They're pretty clearly contradictory. That data, at no point, showed Hillary
"supposedly" anything. You're making my point about readers not understanding
statistical probabilities. 90% doesn't mean she's winning. It means she's got
a 90% _chance_ of winning, and there is a 10% chance she will lose. She lost.

> People keep saying nobody saw it coming, but that's their emotion speaking.

Quite the opposite. The _data_ (that same data you're saying came from
nowhere) showed that Hillary had a 90% chance of winning. There was variance
in the polls, but pretty much all of them showed Hillary with an edge. Yes,
there were a great many reports of people saying that there was a lot of Trump
support across the country, but those reports are the very opposite of
"objective" \- they were thinly spread and anecdotal. Pretty much every
newspaper ran stories interviewing those Trump supporters, but there was no
hard data to quantify it.

Polling data isn't "subjective" and "speculative". There is a clearly defined
methodology behind it. That methodology was incorrect in the 2016 election,
and didn't accurate gauge support for two unprecedentedly unpopular
candidates. That makes it "incorrect news", not "fake news".

You could argue that the news industry has relied too heavily on this sort of
statistical prediction stuff, and I'd agree with you. But in 2012
FiveThirtyEight correctly predicted all but one state, and everyone absolutely
lauded Nate Silver for it ("Is Nate Silver a witch?"). But really, what that
meant is that each of Nate's predictions were the right side of 50%. And in
2016 they most definitely weren't.

~~~
cocktailpeanuts
I see what you're saying now.

But I don't think you got my point either. The detail doesn't matter. Whatever
that number was about, it was pretty clear that 90% was not the right number,
I'm not even pro-trump and I was confused, imagine what others thought.

Also, it is not ok to be irresponsible just because you're using a "scientific
method". This is what cigarette companies did to fund research that "prove"
that smoking is healthy. And this happens increasingly more, because writing
polarizing articles generate more shares and page views and money.

Lastly, I am not trying to talk politics here, and it's not even just about
NYT. Nowadays for a lot of writers it's all about generating more page views.
Again, I'm fine with it (even the "fake news" viral sites), but I was pointing
out that it is hypocritical to claim that you're "the truth", when you do
things that are biased.

~~~
tqi
You seem very confident that "90% was not the right number", and I'm curious
how you reached that conclusion. Do you have research that indicates the odds
were actually way different, or does it just that it feel incorrect?

If I win the lottery, is it misleading for people to state that my odds of
winning were one in a million?

~~~
cocktailpeanuts
Dude, that guy who was supposed to lose by 90% chance actually DID win. And
you're telling me to prove this by showing you some research result?

It's not misleading to say your odds of winning the lottery is one in a
million because it IS one in a million, mathematically. NYT saying Hillary
would win by 90% chance is NOT mathematics. Do you really think your analogy
was adequate?

My point was that people believe statistics, just like you believe that
because NYT did it, it would be scientific and you should believe it. But
that's where the danger lies. And an influential publication such as NYT
should be ashamed of themselves for misleading people by trivializing things
down to just a percentage and feeding it to the world, in realtime.

I'm sure a lot of Trump fans who saw that poll on NYT that morning who didn't
care for voting decided to go vote.

~~~
tqi
> Dude, that guy who was supposed to lose by 90% chance actually DID win. And
> you're telling me to prove this by showing you some research result?

Actually yes, that is exactly what I'd like to find out more about. I'm asking
why you are so sure that the NYT and other media publication odds were so
wrong? Is it just that he won, therefore his odds must have been better than
10%? Most betting markets (which the HN set seems to put a lot of faith in)
had Clinton as a 80ish % favorite ([http://www.cnbc.com/2016/11/07/betting-
sites-see-record-wage...](http://www.cnbc.com/2016/11/07/betting-sites-see-
record-wagering-on-us-presidential-election.html)), do you think they were a
product of a misled public?

------
gnicholas
Interesting choice — I love the NYT Public Editor's work and was actually just
about to add her column to my media literacy / filter bubble project, Read
Across the Aisle. Many people have never heard of a Public Editor and have no
idea what the position entails. From a media literacy standpoint, this column
offered a behind-the-scenes look at why certain decisions were made, how
journalistic standards were applied, and the pros/cons of alternative options.

In this time of political discord and journalistic polarization, I am
surprised and disappointed that such an esteemed paper would decide this
position is no longer necessary.

I hope the NYT keeps the existing archive online, and frankly I may still add
this archive to my media literacy app — even though the underlying stories
would become increasingly stale over time. IMO, it is that good!

~~~
jacobolus
You love Liz Spayd’s work, or the previous public editor, Margaret Sullivan?
I’ve found Spayd’s column pretty anodyne.

~~~
gnicholas
I have mostly read Spayd's work, and I enjoy the analytical aspects of it. How
would you say Sullivan's work differed? Worth combing through the archives?

~~~
aaronbrethorst
Yes absolutely. Margaret Sullivan is a national treasure.

Here's her 'back catalog' of stories from the NYT:
[https://www.nytimes.com/by/margaret-
sullivan](https://www.nytimes.com/by/margaret-sullivan)

------
shard972
So they think that they can just replace that role with social media? Wasn't
the whole issue with newspapers in the 2016 election was they relied far too
much on social media and ended up in a bubble?

I don't see anything in the article that makes me feel like they are
interested in fixing that problem.

~~~
matt4077
Nate Silver has done some good work on what exactly went wrong, and it was a
combination of factors:

\- (some) polls were systematically off, mostly because they underestimated
white non-college turnout and overestimated black turnout. Note that poll
errors were actually lower than for any other election–only this time they
actually got the winner wrong.

\- Most of the poll aggregators operated under the assumption of statistical
independence of state-level results. This was a serious mistake, and both
Huffpost as well as The Upshot (to a lesser extend) should be somewhat
ashamed. 538, by the way, did this right and had Trump at 3X% on election day.

\- There actually was some significant change in voters' intent in the last
days, possibly fuelled by all the news stories the FBI directors was
generating. It's highly likely that an election two weeks earlier or two weeks
later would have ended differently.

It's also important to note that newspapers aren't really in the business of
predicting the future. If they "relied too much on social media" for any facts
they reported, I'd love to see some examples.

~~~
kobeya
2X% actually (I remember watching it in real time), but the point stands as it
was way higher than anyone else thought.

~~~
scott_s
And Nate Silver got a lot of flak for that in the week before the election.

~~~
zaphod12
He did indeed! He published an article in the last week that listed 4 outcomes
for the election, each with ~25% confidence. 3 Had a Clinton victory and 1 did
not. I recall him also making some pretty emphatic condemnations of Sam Wang's
Princeton Election Consortium, arguing that the numbers absolutely did not
support PEC's >95% confidence in a Clinton win. Wang, for his part was so
confident that he offered to eat a bug if Clinton lost. Wang's statistical
method turned out to be a disaster, but he did follow through.

~~~
kobeya
Having actually eaten a bug before (yay Boy Scout survival badge), I'm going
to remember that one. The follow-through will impress people but it's not
actually dangerous or even that unhygenic (as long as you eat the right bug).

------
wonderous
"For the past three years, my assignment has been to try to help this
newspaper live up to its own high journalistic standards as it covered a
historic presidential election, two wars, the Great Recession, violence in the
Middle East and more. I have deplored the overuse of anonymous sources, warned
against the creep of opinion into news analysis and worried about the
preservation of Times quality on the Internet. But, in truth, I have sometimes
felt less like a keeper of the flame and more like an internal affairs cop."

\- Departing NYT Public Editor Clark Hoyt

SOURCE:
[https://mobile.nytimes.com/2010/06/13/opinion/13pubed.html?r...](https://mobile.nytimes.com/2010/06/13/opinion/13pubed.html?referer=)

------
_rpd
For context, this is part of sweeping cuts to NYT editorial staff:

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-
wemple/wp/2017/05/...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-
wemple/wp/2017/05/31/new-york-times-ends-its-traditional-copy-desk/)

------
jerkstate
The NY Times created the Public Editor role in response to a fabrication
scandal. Are they trying to tell us something?

~~~
eli
That they never really wanted it?

------
had2makeanacct
Saw an article about this on The Outline a month ago, it's a more informal and
harsher take on this

[https://theoutline.com/post/1372/the-new-york-times-
public-e...](https://theoutline.com/post/1372/the-new-york-times-public-
editor-is-bad-at-her-job)

------
cylinder
>“There is nothing more important to our mission, or our business, than
strengthening our connection with our readers,” Sulzberger added. “A
relationship that fundamental cannot be outsourced to a single intermediary.”

This is a disturbing statement. Shouldn't a serious newspaper's mission be to
investigate and report facts without regard to the "connection" it creates or
dissolves with the reader? I'm sure Infowars has a deep connection with its
readers.

This is a profoundly ridiculous statement but I think it represents what the
NYT has always been quite accurately.

------
matt4077
Good take on this from Politico:
[http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/05/31/good-
ridda...](http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/05/31/good-riddance-to-
the-nyts-public-editor-215213)

------
douche
I wouldn't mind if the N.Y. Times crawled up itself and disappeared. The main
loss would be the crossword puzzle.

