You’re right. Apologies to the libertarians. There’s no clear political label for whatever the greedy, cloistered, self-righteous elitists who work at the Times are. At a loss, I used libertarian, since it really is the closest. Sorry for the offense. I’ll try to make a neologism or soemthing next time.

-bjb

Yes, MarloweC, “libertarian” is the word for people who are anti-tax, pro-war AND pro-choice! Not liberal!

Beaverton_Jewboy,

Your comment demonstrates a serious misunderstanding of libertarianism.

Libertarians are not “pro-war” as you claim. On the contrary, they are extremely anti-war. The Libertarian Party vehemently opposed the war back when half the Democrats in congress voted for it.

And the New York Times is hardly libertarian. The New York Times is pro-establishment…hardly a libertarian value.

You can look at

It states that

At the beginning of the 21st century, readership is lowest among the country’s two fastest-growing minority populations – Asians and Hispanics
and it also states The newspaper industry is failing to attract newer immigrant groups. The backbone of the industry remains non-Hispanic whites and African Americans, the two population groups not growing much.

Fraternal greetings, comrade. Have missed you, and hope you are well.

I’ve had to be travelling a lot on family health crises these past months…so not at TMV much.

Cheers

There is nothing racist about pointing out that Asian Americans read newspapers at about half the rate of Whites.

You’re right, it’s not racist. It’s just a “fact” made up out of mid air with no basis in reality.

This post went everywhere, didn’t it.

I thought Shaun made a good point, though. When I first came here in the early 90s I loved the Times on Sunday.

One could spend an afternoon getting sitting on a patio and reading page after page of generally good writing.

Shaun is right…one has to distinguish between their bad business (cf. the white elephant Pinch is building)…and their bias.

BJ has a sorta point. The friends of the Times on the Upper East Side may consider themselves righteous liberals, but they are certainly plutocrats.

Anyhow, thought this a good post. Ah well…

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/30/business/media/31papercnd.html?ei=5088&en=e085b0aa9ab0ddb3&ex=1319864400&adxnnl=1&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&adxnnlx=1192903209-SF1acvvAMFa7sJgnT3Vq6g

The lowering of the Times’ quality is part and parcel with what I was talking about: They’re a bunch of rich douchebags who just write what they want! It’s all about “Narrative” and good journalism be damned!

Trying to separate that from the paper’s right-wing bias and just saying “partisanship” is absurd! Judith Miller! Wen Ho Lee! WTF, Shawn, don’t tell me the NYT’s problems aren’t just as much about that BS as its not having a good web business model! Right-wing bias = low quality journalism! Stop trying to gloss over it!

Morgan Stanley said they were dropping their shares because of Sulzberger’s influence and control! What does that mean to you, if not Democrat-trashing and war-boosting?

Damnit Shawn, stop trying to obfuscate your way into the mainstream press corps. You’ll just lose your soul. And don’t just follow what ABC says, that’s just Disney Corp’s line, for chrissakes. The first rule of the mainstream media: don’t talk about the BS that goes on in the mainstream media!

But everyone knows its crap that’s coming down, slowly but surely. In a few years, the networks will be having problems, too.

Dear Everyone,

Please don’t feed the troll. Thank you.

Sincerely,
beaverton_jewboy

With all its faults, warts and missteps, it delivers something unrivaled: something for everyone.
By reading its arts and entertainment section, for example, even the housebound can keep up with the latest developments. Keeping up by reading a one package deal instead of flitting around the Internet to get bits and pieces is a quality experience. At the very least, it provides a starting point on hundreds of topics that can then be further explored through other channels.

All these rants about MSM are an example of not seeing the forest for the trees. The alternative on the horizon is the Murdoch paradugm of sole source news control producing a lobotomized nation of news consumers not even bothering to question or criticize.

I, for one, hope that there’s life in the old NYT yet.

The Times does not “depend” on those newly arrived and recently assimilated people of color that you obsess about week in and week out. It is a national paper with the most read Internet edition in the U.S., a steady and growing source of online ad revenue.

Actually the decline of newspaper reading goes hand in hand with the decline of republican/conservative voters. There is a high correlation between newspaper reading and voting Republicans. As fewer Americans are capable of reading English in a newspaper, the number of people who are possible Republican voters also goes down.

domajot,

It is hard to argue that ethnic groups become newspaper readers when newspaper readership is so low in those very ethnic groups. Do you really think that anyone who belong to the Korean Merchants associations is interested in reading a newspaper that announces which rich white person is marrying some other rich white person?

As I have argued before, as the demographics of the U.S. become to resemble the demographics of California, the politics and political habits of current day California will become the political environement of all of America.

Any newspaper that depends upon circulation outside of its metropolitan area is also making a business mistake. How buys out of town newspapers when you can read them on line.

There is nothing racist about pointing out that Asian Americans read newspapers at about half the rate of Whites. Most newspapers know that blacks are more likely to read the newspaper than either asians, Hispanics, or Eastern European immigrants.

Look at all of the newspapers that have tried to add Spanish language section while refusing to admit that very few Hispanics can actually read Spanish.

There is also the problem that immigrants who do not feel part of the community. They are not going to be interested in reading the community happening section of the newspaper. Do you really think that someone living in an all Hispanic neighborhood where all interactions are conducted in Spanish is every going to read a newspaper?

To refuse to face the problems that “diversity” has created for schools, local governments, and even the media demonstrates that newspapers are so locked into political correctness that they are incapable of developing a business plan that will be profitable.

Once again, you just ‘know’ all about how many people speak English in NY, etc.
Since I do live in NYC, I can tell you that your font of knowledge has long run dry.

NYC is an international Babel, with ethnocentric enclaves. Successive generations of immigrants emerge from their new arrival status… speaking English They join the native born Americans to
keep English alive and healthy.

It would really help you if you tried learning instead of “knowing’.

It’s the BROWN PEOPLE!!!!

You’re always talking about the coming irrelevance of the GOP.

I think there’s a bit of projection in play there.

Thank you for yor predictably racist tail wagging. You are off base as usual.

The Times, unlike the Daily News, Post and Newsday, does not live or die by its metro circulation.

Nice try, but no tamale.

Of course, the biggest bad business decision was to continue to believe that they could sell a newspaper in a city where the number of people capable of reading an English language newspaper was decreasing. The NY Times is in the same business situaiton was the white-owned mom-and-pop dinner in South Texas. There just is not enough potential customers in their geographic area to sustain the business.

What makes it humorous is that the entire editorial staff at the NY Times had to pretend that everyone in the U.S. is culturally the same while the business collapse because of differences in different demographic groups in the NYC.

Of course, the biggest bad business decision was to continue to believe that they could sell a newspaper in a city where the number of people capable of reading an English language newspaper was decreasing. The NY Times is in the same business situaiton was the white-owned mom-and-pop dinner in South Texas. There just is not enough potential customers in their geographic area to sustain the business.

What makes it humorous is that the entire editorial staff at the NY Times had to pretend that everyone in the U.S. is culturally the same while the business collapse because of differences in different demographic groups in the NYC.