It’s an old name for the Times that mostly refers (at least when I was exposed to it) to the fact they were one of the last newspapers to use color presses even though their Printing Plant had been capable of doing it for 20 years.
So it’s fair to characterizes them as a hide-bound, ossified, conservative institution.
It’s really not that hard to understand Tom Cotton’s point in his Wednesday Op-Ed. He thinks we should mobilize the Front Line Combat Soldiers of the United States to suppress any Public dissent and kill the enemies of the Republican Party.
Nazi much Tom?
So I say it was obvious but as it turns out James Bennet (Op-Ed Editor) didn’t even bother to read the piece but actively solicited it after reading Tom Cotton’s inflammatory Twits.
Hard to call that a mistake, but they’re trying to.
New York Times Executives Take Turns Apologizing to Quell Staff Revolt
by Lachlan Cartwright, Maxwell Tani, and Lloyd Grove, Daily Beast
Updated Jun. 05, 2020
The New York Times apologized to its staff on Friday in a lengthy, tense meeting in which the paper’s top editors strongly suggested they will overhaul the oft-controversial and scrutinized opinion page.
Earlier this week, the Times published an op-ed, headlined “Send in the Troops,” in which Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) enthusiastically called for the deployment of American military forces to suppress the ongoing protests against police brutality. The column sparked immediate criticism from readers and many of the paper’s own staffers, who publicly denounced the decision to publish it.
One by one during Friday’s staff meeting, the paper’s top leaders apologized for the opinion piece. At one point, the paper admitted that it did “invite” Cotton to write the column.
The paper’s controversial top opinion editor James Bennet issued a mea culpa, claiming he let his section be “stampeded by the news cycle,” and confessed that the backlash had inspired him to rethink the op-ed section entirely.
“I just want to begin by saying I’m very sorry, I’m sorry for the pain that this particular piece has caused,” he said, adding: “I do think this is a moment for me and for us to interrogate everything we do in opinion.”
During the Q&A portion of the meeting, Bennet took several confrontational questions from irate staff. When asked why he did not personally read Cotton’s column before publishing it, Bennet said it was “another part of the process that broke down.” He further added: “I should have been involved in signing off on the piece…I should have read it and signed off.”
When asked about the senator’s claim that the Times approached him to write the op-ed, Bennet admitted that the opinion page had seen Cotton’s tweets on the subject and “we did ask if he could stand up that argument. I’m not sure we suggested that topic to him but we did invite the piece.”
The paper’s executive editor Dean Baquet, meanwhile, said he was “impressed” and “proud” of
the solidarity Times staffers showed each other following the publication of the op-ed, telling staff he stayed up all night following its publication on Wednesday reading their comments.Under questioning, Baquet also reaffirmed the paper’s editorial positioning, referencing his previous declaration that the Times should not be “the opposition party,” adding: “I think some news organizations have gone a little bit far—not about Trump—but to please an audience.”
“We all work at the Times because we believe this institution can help right wrongs in a way that few others can,” added Meredith Kopit Levien, the paper’s executive vice president and chief operating officer. “I’m sorry that this time we increased pain rather than reduced it.”
Levien said the issue was a “leadership problem, and we will treat it as such.”
The newspaper’s publisher A.G. Sulzberger admitted the op-ed was “sloppy” and the tone was contemptuous and “inflammatory.” He emphasized that Times leadership regretted publishing the piece altogether.
Still, the publisher defended Bennet, saying he has “as tough a job as anyone I can imagine in any newsroom,” saying Bennett and his team had diversified and modernized the opinion section.
“I’m not defending the piece, but I suspect there was a good-faith attempt” to shine a light on Cotton’s point of view, Sulzberger added.
“Serious editorial mistakes” were made, said the paper’s CEO Mark Thompson, who said the company’s executives “have something to think about… the scale of the anger.” He called for a “a weekend of deep reflection” on what transpired.
Well, diversified. It doesn’t mean there is more representation of Minorities. He means they’ve made it more Conservative by putting Racist Hacks like Bret Stephens on it.
The piece has also increased scrutiny on Bennet. Since joining the Times in 2017, the paper’s top opinion editor has been subject to numerous outcries from readers and staff over various editorial decisions. The publication of Wednesday’s piece reignited some of the most contentious internal debates of the past several years.
The Times has said that as a result of the ordeal, the paper is considering reducing the number of op-eds published by as much as 20 percent in order to increase scrutiny on pieces before they run. During Friday’s meeting, Baquet said the criticism of the op-ed from Times staffers did not violate the paper’s strict social-media policies, which limit what Times reporters are permitted to say online.
During Friday’s call, staffers demanded a full autopsy of the publication of the op-ed. But Bennet pushed back, saying he was not pleased with the paper’s decision to publish the name and background information of the editorial assistant—Adam Rubenstein, formerly of The Weekly Standard, a now-defunct conservative outlet—who oversaw the piece.
Bennet confirmed that Cotton’s column will not run in the newspaper’s Sunday print edition.
Yeah, The Weekly Standard, War Criminal Bloody Bill Kristol’s old rag. You know, we killed Julius Streicher.
Also at the Daily Beast I Fixed Tom Cotton’s Op-Ed. It’s kind of visual and I can’t duplicate it in HTML so you’ll have to click through.
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