In my post this morning on the Times, I failed to mention the main reason that many political people I know don't lament the Times's collapse– because it foolishly promoted the Iraq war and has ignored the destruction of Palestinian human rights. Writes a Jewish activist friend:
The man who was murdered yesterday in Bil'in was protesting the
expansion of a settlement 30% built by Lev Leviev, built on land
swiped with fraudulent papers from Bil'in by the Leviev-supported Land
Redemption Fund.
Has NYT mentioned anything negative about Leviev, ever reported UNICEF rejecting him? The UK gov't refusing to rent its embassy from him? Even the NY Post covered the campaign against Lev twice.
No; but they've run ads for his blood diamond store on their oped page more than a dozen times. As I said, not suitable for wrapping fish.
From this extraordinary Ha'aretz piece: 'Israel could have made peace with Hamas under Yassin'
Adding that this was a turbulent period of terror attacks, Sela explains that his goal in the encounters was "to collect information about the Palestinian cells and organizations, to thwart the attacks outside. In that capacity I met with Yassin. We held him in Hadarim Prison [near Netanya] on the third floor in harsh conditions. We gave him a very hard time. He was not allowed visits and we kept him tightly locked up for almost five years. He was held in a narrow room where the temperature was 45 degrees [Celsius] in the summer and freezing cold in the winter. His blankets were dirty and smelled. That's how he lived. I found him to be a very smart man, and also very decent. We engaged in a war of minds. We knew that after every battle between us someone would die, either on my side or on his side."
What did you talk about?
Sela: "Business – intelligence. When the biggest adversaries sit down to talk face to face, it's a different ball game. I always told him, 'Stop blowing up buses, stop murdering women and children.' He replied: 'Tzvika, listen, we had good teachers: You established a state thanks to your military power. The dead I take from you are for the sake of establishing a state, but you are killing women and children for the sake of the occupation. You already have a state. You are dirty and hypocritical. I have no interest in destroying you – all I want is a state."
So the father of the Hamas movement told you he recognized the State of Israel?
"Yes. He was smart and brave. Cruel, but credible. He gave his life in the war for the freedom of his people. I tend to think that if we had tried for an agreement with him, we would have succeeded. He thought the reason the Israelis were dealing with [then PLO leader] Yasser Arafat is that they were very smart, because we knew we would get nowhere with him. In his opinion, Arafat was thoroughly corrupt."
Then continue reading about Samir Kuntar
If you want to see the disconnect between the NYT's world view and its readership take a look at the commnents section to Brooks last piece on the wonders of Israeli civic society. Not just that the majority of comments are sharply critical of Brooks but that those comments get about 10 times as many recommends as those favorable to Brooks. The critical comments bring up numerous points that the NYT usually do not cover.
I noticed Friedman getting similar treatment when he covers Israel.
You want the downfall of the New York Times because it didn't publish an article on Leviev?
How mature an approach is that?
Not as mature as running ads for Leviev's diamond store? Not as mature as Hollywood?
Witty, you're missing the point. If it was just an article on Leviev, a one-time shot, you would be right. But the Jewish activist that Phil quotes is also using Leviev as a metaphor for the entire settler issue because Leviev is so involved in every aspect of it. Yet the NYT protects him.
As I wrote on the other NYT post here today, the NYT has become a neighborhood rag for uptown pro-Likudniks. That's it's audience. That's its readership. And since it doesn't seem to know from the web, it doesn't understand the death spiral it's in.
If HuffPo isn't careful, it's next in terms of political relevance. It has already become a gatekeeper whenever Israeli subjects are brought up. But its younger crew members should tell their political editor Hillary Rosen (?) that if you squeeze necks on the web thinking you can control it, people will go elsewhere. Probably Twitter.
I got that point MRW.
Did you get my point that the complaint about the NY Times is that they don't draw the same conclusions (illustrated by their choice of what to write about and what to include in articles) as a Phil on a limited (but important) issue.
The NY Times is also not monolithic. For example, Ethan Bronner (often criticized here) has written widely on aspects of the conflict that do not embellish the official Israeli PR.
You can't just read headlines is one point.
So, Phil concludes that the NY Times will and should fail (a death of a great service with hundred of thousands missing that service, with a couple thousand then unemployed) citing that they chose not to write about Leviev in the manner that he thinks it deserves.
I think the NY Times should write about a carbon tax weekly, that it is a matter of ultimate national survival, but they don't. I still read it and value what I do get from it.
The NYT is in a slow but sure decline, it is not profitable as a business. Smart people have started to aggregated feeds into pages of their like and becoming the fact editors. If you do not use Netvibes or igoogle or other services of the web2 you have been "left behind". As for PR it is a well know fact that the Huf is a compromised web rag. Just check this article http://tinyurl.com/8nctfp
'Fine post and good comments MRW.
'Last Man Standing' might as well be called Hail Mary (or whatever the Jewish equivalent is). Why should the Last Bastion of Bullshit carry on into the brave new world, simply by virtue of it's last-ness? Nostalgia? Pity?
Eerie parallels with the GFC here – the building has collapsed, but the same builders are retained, not to construct something more lasting, but to patch up the useless old structure with kleenex and spit, a little chutzpah and a lot of hope.
Richard Witty says: 'People can't tell the difference between a credible presentation, a lie, or merely a bias.'
Some people can, and they vote with their feet (or rather, their fingers) Two words Richard – Judith Miller. As MRW said the essential ingredient, one not easy to quantify into balance sheets and projected earnings – is trust. They can peer at the entrails but if they don't understand the mechanics of the disease, it will just look like a gory mess. It's like the US military's inability to understand that in a 4th Generation world, legitimacy is the one element that ultimately matters – so they continue to blow up wedding parties and family homes with unmanned drones controlled by grunts sipping coffee in warehouses in New Mexico, then scratch their heads about the locals' mystifying refusal to love them. The insiders can see every detail except the one overarching truth that really matters.
Clay Shirky at Edge says: 'When reality is labeled unthinkable, it creates a kind of sickness in an industry. Leadership becomes faith-based, while employees who have the temerity to suggest that what seems to be happening is in fact happening are herded into Innovation Departments, where they can be ignored en masse. This shunting aside of the realists in favor of the fabulists has different effects on different industries at different times. One of the effects on the newspapers is that many of their most passionate defenders are unable, even now, to plan for a world in which the industry they knew is visibly going away.'
Hence the Last Man Standing, or 'cross your fingers'… and hope to die!
CO says: 'There is a vast fortune to be coined by the entrepreneur who cracks the code of pay-per-view internet browsing.'
I'll believe that when I see it. That entrepreneur will surely be foiled by some pimply kid who works out a way to bypass it. Shirky says:
'"The Wall Street Journal has a paywall, so we can too!" (Financial information is one of the few kinds of information whose recipients don't want to share.) "Micropayments work for iTunes, so they will work for us!" (Micropayments only work where the provider can avoid competitive business models.) "The New York Times should charge for content!" (They've tried, with QPass and later TimesSelect.) "Cook's Illustrated and Consumer Reports are doing fine on subscriptions!" (Those publications forgo ad revenues; users are paying not just for content but for unimpeachability.)'
That last point being key – as MRW says, we won't pay for bullshit. Per-click instead of subscription won't save establishment organs like the Times unless it can change it's spots and become a more transparent window between the elite and the masses, rather than deal in the deliberate, establishment-friendly opacity that characterises it now on a range of important issues. This means co-opting bloggers without imposing any restrictions at all, using transparent ranking software to push up to the top those that warrant most attention; publishing every letter or message or op-ed submission or complaint or threat they receive on all issues from all stakeholders (including advertisers, lobbies, officials, etc); making public every aspect of their financing (equity and shares, bequests, advertising revenue – the lot) etc etc etc.
Shirky again: 'Round and round this goes, with the people committed to saving newspapers demanding to know "If the old model is broken, what will work in its place?" To which the answer is: Nothing. Nothing will work. There is no general model for newspapers to replace the one the internet just broke. With the old economics destroyed, organizational forms perfected for industrial production have to be replaced with structures optimized for digital data. It makes increasingly less sense even to talk about a publishing industry, because the core problem publishing solves — the incredible difficulty, complexity, and expense of making something available to the public — has stopped being a problem'
Yes, but that solution doesn't necessarily sound the death knell for institutions like the Times. The gold standard in a world where everyone can check everything is trust, legitimacy, respect. The Times had a head start over most in it's field when the internet began to eat into the business plans of the newspaper industry; it could have got out ahead of the curve. Instead it wasted it's good name in establishment and Lobby-pandering, playing a major part in the lies that drove a war which began a precipitous and ongoing American decline. It also ignored the stench wafting up over the last decade from Wall Street, an omission that may end up even more costly.
It's not too late, but there is little evidence that the volte-face required is being considered, though I have been encouraged by some of it's more even-handed I/P pieces lately. Too little, too late probably.
You nailed it, Glenn. The Times lasso'd its decline to the country's. Even if the country 'comes back' it wont be coming back with the Times as a respected cheerleader and chronicler unless it makes some serious about-faces on a whole host of topics it sneers at now as beneath it.
I've said it 20 times on this blog and I'll say it again: it must start with 9-11. It must start with its backyard.
Dr. Steven Jones' recent talk at Faneuil Hall showing his and others' scientific investigation of the dust from the WTC is incontrovertible. Just plain pure science, especially with one of the samples collected within 20 minutes of the first tower going down; meaning, not contaminated by cleanup efforts. Some of that dust contains spheres that can only come from military grade explosives, which he shows, although Dr. Jones says he's not ready to make that final determination just yet.
What happened on 911 led to everything: Iraq, War on Terror, desecration of the constitution and bill of of rights, the Patriot Act, our airports turned into lock-and-load prisons, wire-tapping. Massive defense contract spending. Everything evolves from that.
There is no way you can watch Dr. Jones' presentation of the electron microscope study of the WTC dust, and not realize the official story was a gigantic bamboozle that must be investigated. This is the 21st C version of the Pentagon Papers and it must be done. The NYT rolled over at the end of October 2001 when Bush said he didn't want to see a lot of conspiracy theories. If the phrase had been around in the 70s, I'm sure that's what Nixon would have called Watergate the same thing.
Oddly enough, if the NYT had the guts to do it, it could save the paper. The NYT doesn't have the guts because it means bringing up the five dancing Israelis who were caught with a video camera atop a van just before the first tower went down high-fiving and rejoicing, and who were later identified as Mossad agents. They actually told the cops that they only set up their video camera to film it. But they did it before any tower went down.
The NYT wont do the story, but as these 100 scientists now working on the dust around the world report to their peer journals, one courageous paper will, maybe not in this country, and it will get the new mantle as the paper of record.
Sorry for the twisted syntax typos.
Great stuff, Glen, MRW!
You guys are right on target.
What say you Chris Berel?