
The New York Times–Facebook Deal Is Here - coloneltcb
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/05/new-york-timesfacebook-deal-is-here.html
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hackuser
This is a big deal to everyone. Independent, high-quality, high-integrity
journalism is essential to society. Of three who provided it on a national
scale, the NY Times might be the last standing.[1] Now they are affiliated
with someone who recruited other tech leaders by saying:[2]

[We can be] "one of the most powerful political forces" because "We control
massive distribution channels, both as companies and individuals. We saw the
tip of the iceberg with SOPA/PIPA." To what degree is the Times part of that
distrubtion channel? You and I may agree with their SOPA stance, but in
general I want to make up my own mind and I need independent journalism to do
that.

Regarding the Times: Reading their internal report from last year[3] it was a
frustrating to see how far behind they were in both development and
perspective. If you haven't read it, some of it is shocking, at least to me.

I hope the owners of the Times see themselves as stewards of an institution
essential to society (not only the publication itself, and also independent,
quality journalism), and will sell it to another responsible steward if they
can't make it work.

[1] Following and reading the 'serious' media closely for a long time, my
perspective is that maybe 10 years ago there were three top-end sources: The
Times, the Wall St Journal, and the Washington Post. The WSJ is now published
by the same people as Fox News, which (along with their willingness to publish
absurd lies on their editorial page) tells me about their journalistic ethics.
The Post now publishes increasingly strident and poorly considered stories,
seemingly aiming for BuzzFeed. People love to criticize the Times; partly
that's a result of being #1 in any field. They are imperfect as is every human
institution, but if you look at all they do, we would be much worse off
without them. For example, why was the Times the only publication (AFAIK)
kicked out of China? Bloomberg openly made the concession to not criticize the
government; how do the others avoid trouble?

[2] [http://www.politico.com/story/2013/04/mark-zuckerberg-
immigr...](http://www.politico.com/story/2013/04/mark-zuckerberg-immigration-
groups-status-stumbling-89652.html)

[3]
[https://www.scribd.com/embeds/224608514/content?start_page=1...](https://www.scribd.com/embeds/224608514/content?start_page=1&amp;view_mode=scroll&amp;access_key=key-
TiQrYKIlOq2iHdtIubdB&amp;show_recommendations=false)

