FWIW the publisher/top editor of NYTimes changed in 2017 and Arthur Ochs Sulzberger's [1] stepped down letting his son AG Sulzberger take over [2]. This is around the time it started becoming really clickbaity and 24/7 news channel level intentionally misrepresenting or spinning stories for reactions.
I believe his father took on a more old school approach to keeping the news as neutral as possible, while still having a bit of your usual slant.
I read NYTimes daily for a decade and it's sad to see it decline as it has. I understand now just how much effort that must take, especially in the age of social media. I respect any news org that avoids the pull and pushes back on that sort of thing. But they are increasingly rare.
I mean, the NYT during the Clinton and Bush years was hardly some golden age of journalism. Off the top of my head, there was Whitewater, Wen Ho Lee, the Jayson Blair thing, and the Judith Miller / Curveball / Iraq war stuff.
You didn’t even mention their piece de resistance - killing a story on a nationwide illegal mass surveillance program, then being scooped by their own reporter years later as he’s publishing his story on how the NYT is complicit in keeping the program out of view of the public. I’ve personally lost faith in the NYT and prefer other papers of record in the US.
William T Sherman complained intensely about the new York Times in his autobiography about how they misrepresented him, (he took some time off because of burnout and they said he went insane). The problem is quite old
> he took some time off because of burnout and they said he went insane
I actually kind of assume, in my prejudice about the past, that if there had been a DSM in the 19th century, "being tired of work" would have been in it.
Was not investigative journalism. Ellsberg provided the content to the NYT. They did show some balls in rejecting the advice of external counsel (and in accepting that of internal counsel) but they were a conduit.
As was the Washington Post, which started publishing soon after the NYT (and managed to fight off the injuction NYT did not). It's possible that the Post only started publishing because the NYT had started, but the value of the NYT itself in the scheme was… limited.
I believe his father took on a more old school approach to keeping the news as neutral as possible, while still having a bit of your usual slant.
I read NYTimes daily for a decade and it's sad to see it decline as it has. I understand now just how much effort that must take, especially in the age of social media. I respect any news org that avoids the pull and pushes back on that sort of thing. But they are increasingly rare.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Ochs_Sulzberger_Jr.
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A._G._Sulzberger