I, for one, deeply appreciate New York Times Opinion honcho James Bennett being a faithful SJ reader, even if he doesn’t always agree. So his response to me deserves to be aired.
A lot of the work we get to do in Opinion is fun: We get to tackle big ideas, write with verve, experiment with new forms and ways of making arguments. But this is also a real struggle we are engaged in. It’s not easy to believe passionately in certain positions and then work with people who see the world very differently. This is one reason, I think, that departments like ours, and even many newsrooms, have always been at risk of becoming homogeneous in various ways over time. It’s particularly hard now, when an echo chamber in social media grabs hold of one piece we publish and treats it as the whole, rather than one of dozens of opinions we publish in running arguments across a week. It’s particularly hard now because, even as we keep getting attacked from the right, left-wing sites are insistently telling the same story — that we’ve added conservative voices in a rightward frogmarch — while ignoring inconvenient realities like the powerful new voices from the left that have also joined our ranks. It’s hard because some of the critics like to resort to labels without actually contending with the arguments our people make. (The good ones contend and sometimes out-argue us. They’ll make us better.)
That’s nice. But Quinn Norton?
But we are making progress, not just in the range of our viewpoints, but in the range of our storytelling, the breadth of our subject matter, and the diversity of our team. I want to emphasize: We have a long way to go. But thanks to the fierce intellects and hard work of your colleagues in Opinion we are moving forward. Far more people than ever are reading all of our work. Great journalists want to be part of this project. Great and brave thinkers and doers and survivors and artists want to make their case in The Times because they know they can have their biggest impact here. They know they can be part of a searching argument about how to make the world a better place. That’s an argument that can never end, and it’s our great privilege, in this angry and vengeful time, to have the chance to help give it new vitality.
Cool story, James, but Norton?
I’d like to close with an ask of you: Criticize our work privately to each other as you see fit. Please also let me or our other Opinion colleagues know when you think we have, indeed, put a foot over the line. But please also understand that our folks are acting in good faith. Whether you disagree with some of our many viewpoints or not — surely you will — please understand that your colleagues in Opinion are committed to ideals that matter, to fair play, tolerance, pluralism, the free exchange of ideas and intellectual challenge. They, like you, are committed to helping The Times achieve its highest purposes.
Ah. So you’re all for good adjectives and adverbs, as long as no voice hurts anyone’s feelings by putting “a foot over the line.” And where would that line be?
Inevitably, it also means sometimes falling short and making mistakes. (Remember: we’re not pretending to be right about everything here in Opinion.) We’re taking some chances, recruiting voices that are new to The Times and publishing pieces that press against our traditional boundaries. Sometimes you — or we — might judge, in retrospect, that we’ve made the wrong choice and put a foot over one line or another. I’m very sorry when that happens. I’d be far sorrier if we never tested the limits.
So you’re keeping Bari Weiss and rehiring Quinn Norton?
Don’t get me wrong: We’re not just letting a thousand flowers bloom. We are picking our contributors with care, looking for people who share Times standards for fairness and intellectual honesty and originality, who believe in empiricism and the essential equality of all human beings. We are, as ever, editing and fact-checking our work. And we’re not indifferent to the question of who’s right and who’s wrong. As debates ripen or the news demands, The Times editorial board is rendering its best judgment on consequential matters, consistent with the progressive values that have shaped its reasoning for many decades.
Yeah, that’s what I thought. Thanks for your honesty.
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Dear Papa,
Bennett is a murderer. Look at what he did to all those poor words. They didn’t stand a chance. So many sacrificed to say what? That the Times is doing just fine, thanks? Great.
Best,
PK
But he has a great future writing fortune cookie inserts.
I’m gonna steal that. Just so you know.
I added it to the list of SHG isms. Soon to be published without permission .
Got your box. Thank you. Teuscher’s champagne truffles are good too, but you would have to pay by bitcoin.
And closing his fortune tweets with “Allbest.”
“Attend the words of the Chairman and follow his teachings.”
A “real struggle.” Yes, it is just so hard to step back and view matters objectively. And yet, thousands of lawyers and judges are called upon to do it everyday. There is no reason the media hacks should be so completely unable to do it. Except that they really don’t care. The great “struggle” is everything to today’s advocacy journalist, and any and all other principles are expendable to further it. It isn’t “good faith,” but a sham of a farce pf a mockery of reporting news.
Justice, justice shall you pursue.
Deuteronomy 16:18–21:9.
We like our justice simple here.
Everything tastes better fried.
“The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.” I’m glad someone else sees through the lies. There’s only one struggle, and it has nothing to do with journalism.
Keep teeing ’em up McLeod.
Wasn’t the “Let a Thousand Flowers Bloom” an infamous, Maoist fake-out, that enticed people to express potentially nonconforming opinions so the Chinese state knew who needed to go to the reeducation camps?
Curious reference by Comrade Bennett, but no harm will come to you.
Yes. Yes it was. Your point?
Well, NYT is apparently intending to do even more to normalize staff’s external stereotype, as indicated by “We’re not just letting a thousand flowers bloom.” So, NYT looks to be trying to out-Mao Mao.
Dammit, now I have “Surfin Bird” stuck in my head today. Thanks for the ear-worm.
Surfin Bird? Nah.
It is only the site policy alone which prevents me from posting the link to “Chairman Mao Mao Meow Meow Meow Meow” (to the old Meow Mix jingle).
If it makes you feel better, I’ll post your peeps-o-rama this year.
Well, then, I will have to focus on coming up with a worthy Peep-O-Rama for the occasion.
Not a single concrete word, example, opinion, or person in entire letter. All vacuous expressions.
I especially liked his “I’d like to close with an ask of you: Criticize our work privately to each other as you see fit.”
What an odd request for a newspaper’s opinion section honcho to make.
Poor Sullivan. Public criticism for thee but not for the grey lady.
That sentence makes it read like he wrote the missive primarily for his staffers, then decided to share the meat of it outside, but didn’t get around to editing out the tells.
That’s a good point. Transparency is all well and good, but that was just awkward.
Odd indeed. An “ask.” Maybe he expects them to write back with a “tell”.
“So his response to me deserves to be aired.”
“aired.”
Not sure that word means what you think it does, either…
Poetic license. “Seen” doesn’t have the same panache.
The writing is atrocious, the thoughts imbecilic, and the screed, if written by anyone else, would certainly be considered to be deserving of burying, not airing.
You have performed a valuable public service by pulling back the curtain to the control room, but that which you have exposed deserves nothing but contempt.
What got me is that this is from the big man himself. I had to share it.
Well damn he must of felt like you ripped him a new one. I wonder how long he was in the puppy room before he could speak clear enough for alexa to dictate that email to you. You are not just a curmudgeon, you’re a mean one and Your heart’s a dead tomato splotched with moldy purple spots
*Whispers* It wasn’t really an email just to me. But I am a mean one, I am.
Mister Grinch!
“…looking for people who share Times standards for fairness and intellectual honesty and originality”
I’m dead, as the kids say these days.