Skimming the article - I see zero mention of quality of the news they're trying to sell me.
Back in the early 90's, I paid about $2k/year (inflation adjusted) for news and science/tech coverage. But Scientific American was already heading downhill, Byte Magazine died in 1998, I was slowly catching on to The Economist being far more consistent in its tone and 'tude than in actual expertise or mature perspective, NPR fully jumped the shark after 9/11, what remained of my local paper was fully gutted by the firm that bought it up in 2009, ...
The best dailies nowadays are the WSJ and the Financial Times in my view. Unlike the NYT, they do a reasonable job of keeping the newsroom separate from Opinion. The old joke about the Economist is that half the stories will be among the best reporting one reads; the other half is sound-good nonsense. The fun bit is trying to figure out which half is which each week.
And yes, it’s a crying shame how far Scientific American has fallen. It’s now on par with The New Scientist.
I had a subscription to the WSJ for awhile. I liked it because it is consistent. It definitely has a conservative slant, especially in the opinion section, but you can "lead the shot" so to speak. You can account for it. It is reliably and consistently conservative, and being conservative is relatively consistent.
The NYT or Atlantic or New Yorker, etc? God only knows what new thing has been declared off-limits/"problematic" in the online progressive world this week, and the tone of self-righteous goodness from the progressive media is insufferable.
I feel like Matt Stone from South Park: "I hate conservatives, but I really fucking hate liberals."
I beg to differ. The Globe is the worst of the lot, and I say this as a Boston resident. The NYT, for all its faults, is far superior. The Globe quite literally employed fresh-out-school undergraduates for COVID reporting (whose job, apparently,was to get scare quotes from fear-mongering local academics); outside of Tim Logan the newsroom is packed with NIMBYs; Renee Graham makes it clear she doesn’t much care for white men as does Shirley “pale and male”Leung; international coverage is sparse and superficial; and it’s frequently uncritical of the Democratic political machine, something absolutely fatal in an uni-party state like MA. Overall the Globe is an amalgamation of its midwit, upper middle-class, blue, 495 suburban beltway newsroom staff and editorial board. For its $38/mos subscription price, I want something that will inform, not inculcate.
Edit: my info on the Globe is a couple years out of date now. Perhaps it has gotten better recently, maybe I should sign up for a trial and give it a second chance.
The WSJ opinion section has been a running gag for 50 years. It’s where they let the cranky old conservatives let off steam. But the newsroom is separate and more measured and middle of the road.
Im interested in hearing proper rebuttals and discussions of a piece that was written by an NPR senior business editor and reporter with a 25 year tenure at that institution.
Your comment is not that. It appears to either be dismissal by association or whataboutism, in both cases focusing on the outlet that published Uri Berliner‘s piece and not the content of the piece itself.
Been a while...but what I recall the most strongly is:
- "Pushing your buttons is our only goal" reporting. Both in individual stories, and as an overall "keep you tuned in and under our thumbs 24x7" business strategy.
- A "Facts Do Not Exist" approach to political reporting. Senator Slime(D) said that 2 + 2 = 3, Senator Sleaze(R) said that 2 + 2 = 5...and NPR's reporters would not dare to suggest that there was anything resembling an objective truth. Let alone give you a hint toward that "4" thing.
What I miss in my part of the world is journalists asking tougher questions and follow ups in their articles. Not just being a spokesperson for the politician they're making a story on. You can basically get away with lies now without the journalists digging more. Just write what they said, press publish and onto the next topic.
So many articles now are lazy quotes from Twitter with little of substance to add to them. The more expensive name brand newspapers tend to be better than this, but it's still hard to justify paying more than it used to cost to get a heavy paper edition delivered to your door.
Back in the early 90's, I paid about $2k/year (inflation adjusted) for news and science/tech coverage. But Scientific American was already heading downhill, Byte Magazine died in 1998, I was slowly catching on to The Economist being far more consistent in its tone and 'tude than in actual expertise or mature perspective, NPR fully jumped the shark after 9/11, what remained of my local paper was fully gutted by the firm that bought it up in 2009, ...