Where do I get my news now? And I am speaking as a lifelong newspaper reporter and editor: Substack. Golly! I do still subscribe to the WaPo, the NYT and many other newspapers (Times of London, Irish Times, LATimes, the Guardian, Minn. Star Tribune, etc) but it's Jess Craven's Chop Wood, Carry Water; Heather Cox Richardson's daily perspectives; Meidas; James Fallow; Adam Kinzinger; the Contrarian; the Parnas Perspective....Oh, and Robert Hubbell! Who gives me hope. OK, probably too many. But even though some of them are written in an overly-partisan way, they all have good reporting and information and focus on the most important stories of the moment.
Me too! I also really appreciate the perspectives from people of color on Substack. Here's looking at you Marlon Weems, Quasim Rashid, Egberto Willies, Khalil Greene. And I never miss Jeff Tiedrich's spot on hilarious daily recap.
I, like many others, don't have time to read/listen to so many information sources. Perhaps because I've been reading the NY Times for [stet] 65 years, I continue to read it daily (and sometimes the Guardian.)
Yes, I know the Times is slanted. But I (perhaps mistakenly) think I"m pretty good at identifying its biases between the lines.
The saving grace is that the NYT's readers in general are, I believe, much more progressive than the publication itself. In every story about Trump, etc. that allows readers' comments, the readers criticize the Times for whitewashing the current administration. The Times should learn that "both sides do it" journalism is not acceptable anymore.
I live in Buffalo and have seen your local book talks many times. In my media diet, I am most appreciative of Heather Cox Richardson. She distills the news of the day in a succinct, factual manner and often can tie it back to something that happened in history. Her daily Letters From an American and live politics conversations document this troubling time in history.
Here’s an example of the total moral collapse of US journalism: I had to go to The Independent to find out about 28 yo USMC vet Jake Hieu Quoc Nguyen, who—on the same day that Charlie Kirk was killed—was shot to death in Texas, run over, then thrown to the side of the road like a piece of trash. Presumably, the murder of a USMC vet wasn’t legacy headline news because it raises questions: Where were the presidential tributes and promises of posthumous medals? Why didn’t JDV visit his devastated family? Where were the promises of financial support? Jake’s family had to resort to crowd funding to cover his final expenses. Why wasn’t the Texas national guard activated to restore law and order? Texas has more than 4K gun deaths per year. It’s more than 10% of the horrific national total. In this case, the three suspects being held for the murder of Jake Hieu Quoc Nguyen are children, aged 13, 14, and 15. Where did they get a gun? https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/crime/marine-veteran-dead-uber-texas-b2823887.html. https://www.gofundme.com/f/jake-hieu-quoc-nguyen. https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/crime/marine-veteran-uber-shooting-texas-b2847366.html
Thank you for sharing this. What a senseless death. I had no idea there were that many gun deaths in Texas. Also senseless but never covered in national news.
It’s appalling. And Texans are aware. What does that mean? https://www.texastribune.org/2023/05/10/texas-gun-fatalities-laws/ Would Greg Abbott be as enthusiastic about military “protection of federal employees” if they were deployed to his state? “Less than an hour after Trump’s order, Greg Abbott, the Republican governor of Texas, responded that he “fully authorize[s]” such a move by Trump. “You can either fully enforce protection for federal employees or get out of the way and let Texas Guard do it,” Abbott said in a post on X.” And Florida isn’t far behind with more than 3K gun deaths. Together, those two states are responsible for more than 17% of the horrific 40k total. https://publichealth.jhu.edu/center-for-gun-violence-solutions
Thank you Margaret for your Substack here calling out the media. I’m also a big fan of Heather Cox Richardson’s Substack & posts on FB. And I’ve also become a subscriber of The Guardian.
I’m so disappointed in The New York Times-I feel they are hit & miss with their focus. And I cancelled my WaPo subscription last year.
Agree with all of this but, and in response to your question on what’s good in media today, I draw a distinction between news and opinion. If NYT and WAPO would offer an ala carte subscription I would happily go that direction and cancel support of their opinion pages and continue for their news reporting.
For opinion, I find Substack to be a marked improvement because the people there I find to be much more insightful, provocative and clear. That seems also to allow them greater volume than they had been able to provide in their previous incarnations.
Most NYT opinion writers are duds. But then there are Jamelle Bouie, Michelle Goldberg, and M. Gessen. It's for those three that I keep my subscription.
I get it. Some are better than others. But I can say that for many they write more infrequently and that I frequently feel as though I could have written their column for them based on their opinions. Whereas people I subscribe to on Substack, including those who I might have once felt the same way are writing more frequently than they had and are getting out of a rut that they also had been in.
Maybe it's simply a matter of breaking out of the constraints.
I know that there are a lot of superb commenters posting on Substack. The problem is that as far as I know, each site on Substack requires $5 per month to subscribe.
That doesn't sound like a lot, but if you subscribe to a multitude of sites, you'll be paying a fortune. There are so many excellent writers on Substack that I can't choose between them. So I don't subscribe to any of them. It's unfortunate. I think it's a bad setup.
I should add that my son and I, who aren't well off, have been sending "every last penny" we have to a family in Gaza so that they don't starve. To me that's more important than subscribing to Substack sites.
Here's another example: WAPO has an article on its front page explaining that consumers shouldn't be asking for lower prices because deflation is bad. Kind of like telling someone whose house is burning that they shouldn't throw water on it because floods are bad. Front page, above the fold, utter nonsense.
Margaret, I wrote the NYT about the Kelly thing: "
Your paper describes the dismissal of the Comey and James cases as a "setback" for Mr. Trump to "wield the criminal justice system against his enemies," yet this headline fails to note that is NOT how the Justice Department is to work. Why is it so hard to state something more truthful in your headlines? Why not call this what it is, an illegal and immoral abuse of power?
Another headline on the homepage tells us the Pentagon is going to investigate Senator Mark Kelly for a statement that was clearly not seditious. The theme here is Mr.Trump enjoys attacking so-called enemies. Please tell that story, rather than normalizing a president incapable of fulfilling the oath of office in these vindictive ways."
If it were not for Heather Cox Rochardson, many people would have no idea what is going on. The current corruption that is right out in open may be THE story of our lifetimes and corporate MSM is fumbling and bowing down. Especially wrenching for journalists, like me, who grew up on excellent reporting of Watergate, the Pentagon Papers, the My Lai massacre, etc. In addition to HCR, I get much of my news from those who’ve joined Substack , as well as The Guardian, and the AP. Have kept WaPo and NYT but read them with a great deal of skepticism. Thank you, Margaret, for your work and dedication to media criticism.
It's clear that the headline writers at the Times are a problem. Sometimes they misrepresent stories entirely; often they frame them (vide the Hegseth story you site) that point readers the wrong way. Do you have ideas about why this is so? Who are they? Do they tend to be junior or senior? Are they writing clickbait? Do reporters get a chance to push back? Might it be that one or two bad apples are pushing an agenda? I think it's worth digging into.
Thank you for this piece. Can I add one more item to your list of transgressions?
On Friday, the Washington Post reported that Pete Hegseth had ordered the execution (what else to call it?) of two survivors of the September 2 boat strike on alleged drug smugglers. The New York Times did not mention this in its headlines delivered via email on Saturday or on Sunday. The Sunday paper delivered to my home made no mention anywhere of this shocking piece of news. Now, finally, three days later, the Times puts this story in an email headline, but only because Republican senators and representatives have agreed that our defense secretary being a war criminal or murderer mighty be worth looking into. Note the Times's timid headline: "Lawmakers Suggest Follow-Up Boat Strike Could Be a War Crime."
Most of the national and political coverage I see now comes from The Atlantic, which, while not without faults, has mostly risen to meet this moment, and The Guardian, as well as your newsletter (of course!) and that of Heather Cox Richardson, who brilliantly contextualizes the day's events.
For state and local news here in North Carolina, I read and recommend The Assembly and its network, Carolina Public Press and its network, The News & Observer of Raleigh, NC Newsline (led by my friend Laura Leslie), and Down from DC, a Substack newsletter by Natalie Jennings and my friend Phoebe Zerwick that looks at the effects of Congressional action on North Carolina.
Whole books are going to be written on the failure of legacy national media in this era. I hope I live long enough that we return to an atmosphere in which such books can be freely published and distributed. I'm 65; I put the odds of that at 50/50 at best.
My guess is most print media tries to appease Trump with anodyne headlines knowing he probably doesn't read beyond that, so even if the story gets at the truth, he'll never see it. After all, his reputation is that he doesn't read at all, probably because he can't.
I appreciate your continued focus on the importance of heds and subheds, especially at the Times. I recently read a discussion of that issue by journalism professor Blasé Boylan and the Media and Democracy Project, specifically involving the Times:
In a report on children's vaccines, the Times headline read: "FDA Attributes 10 Children's Deaths to Covid Vaccines." The subhed read: "The agency's top vaccine regulator said that a review had found that found that the children were likely to have died 'because of' the shots. But public health experts want to examine the data."
Boylan was reacting, as was the Project, to criticisms of the failure of this hed/subhed to make clear (as other sources did) that the FDA assertions provided no evidence, as well as the established anti-vaccine attitudes of the regulator and HHS leadership generally. The critics wondered if this kind of behavior was taught in journalism school.
Boylan said it was not. Rather, corporate overlords think that inaccurate headlines generate more rage and engagement. The Times is especially good at "'plausible deniability'" in this area -- a skill, but not one conducive to truth. In discussion of another headline involving self-dealing at the White House by David Sacks, the Times had a headline making the behavior look almost benign -- a result of its attitude of being "'above all that.'" And Boylan noted that the Times resists any criticism of its practices: having eliminated the public editor, it instructs its comment reviewers not to approve such criticisms for publication -- quite a development when Times editors asserted that public involvement could substitute for public editorship.
I found this thread informative and wanted to make it available.
You consistently capture what I also see as the capitulation of the main stream media (NYT and WaPo) to the egregious behavior of this administration. As a matter of fact, I wrote a scathing letter to the NYT saying that I blame them in part, for the rise of this dangerous autocratic government. When the media minimize the horrors, they endorse them.
Margaret once more gives me reason to examine myself.
I once read big publications for the news and developing opinion.
From 1990 on I subscribed to and read daily in the NYTimes, WAPO, Guardian, Buffalo News and the Atlantic.
But now I prefer individuals like Margaret, Heather Cox Richardson, Freedman, Ian Bremer, Joyce Vance and such through e-mail connections and their sites.
It takes more work but the focus is much more beneficial than wading through the fog of inept journalism seeking light.
My current news diet: The Guardian and Philadelphia Inquirer for general news, Talking Points Memo, The New Republic, and The Bulwark for political news, The Atlantic, The New Yorker for longer pieces, and you and James Fallows. Plus Gothamnist and Hellgate for NYC/Brooklyn news.
Where do I get my news now? And I am speaking as a lifelong newspaper reporter and editor: Substack. Golly! I do still subscribe to the WaPo, the NYT and many other newspapers (Times of London, Irish Times, LATimes, the Guardian, Minn. Star Tribune, etc) but it's Jess Craven's Chop Wood, Carry Water; Heather Cox Richardson's daily perspectives; Meidas; James Fallow; Adam Kinzinger; the Contrarian; the Parnas Perspective....Oh, and Robert Hubbell! Who gives me hope. OK, probably too many. But even though some of them are written in an overly-partisan way, they all have good reporting and information and focus on the most important stories of the moment.
Me too! I also really appreciate the perspectives from people of color on Substack. Here's looking at you Marlon Weems, Quasim Rashid, Egberto Willies, Khalil Greene. And I never miss Jeff Tiedrich's spot on hilarious daily recap.
Quasim Rashid is EXCELLENT!
I, like many others, don't have time to read/listen to so many information sources. Perhaps because I've been reading the NY Times for [stet] 65 years, I continue to read it daily (and sometimes the Guardian.)
Yes, I know the Times is slanted. But I (perhaps mistakenly) think I"m pretty good at identifying its biases between the lines.
The saving grace is that the NYT's readers in general are, I believe, much more progressive than the publication itself. In every story about Trump, etc. that allows readers' comments, the readers criticize the Times for whitewashing the current administration. The Times should learn that "both sides do it" journalism is not acceptable anymore.
Same.
I live in Buffalo and have seen your local book talks many times. In my media diet, I am most appreciative of Heather Cox Richardson. She distills the news of the day in a succinct, factual manner and often can tie it back to something that happened in history. Her daily Letters From an American and live politics conversations document this troubling time in history.
Thanks, Sharon!
Here’s an example of the total moral collapse of US journalism: I had to go to The Independent to find out about 28 yo USMC vet Jake Hieu Quoc Nguyen, who—on the same day that Charlie Kirk was killed—was shot to death in Texas, run over, then thrown to the side of the road like a piece of trash. Presumably, the murder of a USMC vet wasn’t legacy headline news because it raises questions: Where were the presidential tributes and promises of posthumous medals? Why didn’t JDV visit his devastated family? Where were the promises of financial support? Jake’s family had to resort to crowd funding to cover his final expenses. Why wasn’t the Texas national guard activated to restore law and order? Texas has more than 4K gun deaths per year. It’s more than 10% of the horrific national total. In this case, the three suspects being held for the murder of Jake Hieu Quoc Nguyen are children, aged 13, 14, and 15. Where did they get a gun? https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/crime/marine-veteran-dead-uber-texas-b2823887.html. https://www.gofundme.com/f/jake-hieu-quoc-nguyen. https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/crime/marine-veteran-uber-shooting-texas-b2847366.html
Thank you for sharing this. What a senseless death. I had no idea there were that many gun deaths in Texas. Also senseless but never covered in national news.
It’s appalling. And Texans are aware. What does that mean? https://www.texastribune.org/2023/05/10/texas-gun-fatalities-laws/ Would Greg Abbott be as enthusiastic about military “protection of federal employees” if they were deployed to his state? “Less than an hour after Trump’s order, Greg Abbott, the Republican governor of Texas, responded that he “fully authorize[s]” such a move by Trump. “You can either fully enforce protection for federal employees or get out of the way and let Texas Guard do it,” Abbott said in a post on X.” And Florida isn’t far behind with more than 3K gun deaths. Together, those two states are responsible for more than 17% of the horrific 40k total. https://publichealth.jhu.edu/center-for-gun-violence-solutions
I wanted to read about this case and clicked your link, which is dead, fyi. Your comment was the first I had heard of this.
Thanks for letting me know. I think it’s fixed now.
Link is no good. Can you correct? Thanks.
https://www.texastribune.org/2023/05/10/texas-gun-fatalities-laws/
Thank you for letting me know.
I was specifically clicking on The Independent link which talked about the murder case specifically. Sorry!
Thank you. I think it’s fixed now.
Thank you Margaret for your Substack here calling out the media. I’m also a big fan of Heather Cox Richardson’s Substack & posts on FB. And I’ve also become a subscriber of The Guardian.
I’m so disappointed in The New York Times-I feel they are hit & miss with their focus. And I cancelled my WaPo subscription last year.
Agree with all of this but, and in response to your question on what’s good in media today, I draw a distinction between news and opinion. If NYT and WAPO would offer an ala carte subscription I would happily go that direction and cancel support of their opinion pages and continue for their news reporting.
For opinion, I find Substack to be a marked improvement because the people there I find to be much more insightful, provocative and clear. That seems also to allow them greater volume than they had been able to provide in their previous incarnations.
Most NYT opinion writers are duds. But then there are Jamelle Bouie, Michelle Goldberg, and M. Gessen. It's for those three that I keep my subscription.
I get it. Some are better than others. But I can say that for many they write more infrequently and that I frequently feel as though I could have written their column for them based on their opinions. Whereas people I subscribe to on Substack, including those who I might have once felt the same way are writing more frequently than they had and are getting out of a rut that they also had been in.
Maybe it's simply a matter of breaking out of the constraints.
I know that there are a lot of superb commenters posting on Substack. The problem is that as far as I know, each site on Substack requires $5 per month to subscribe.
That doesn't sound like a lot, but if you subscribe to a multitude of sites, you'll be paying a fortune. There are so many excellent writers on Substack that I can't choose between them. So I don't subscribe to any of them. It's unfortunate. I think it's a bad setup.
The Bulwark will happily let you be a member w/o payment if you write and tell them your situation. They have several excellent thinkers/writers.
I should add that my son and I, who aren't well off, have been sending "every last penny" we have to a family in Gaza so that they don't starve. To me that's more important than subscribing to Substack sites.
Here's another example: WAPO has an article on its front page explaining that consumers shouldn't be asking for lower prices because deflation is bad. Kind of like telling someone whose house is burning that they shouldn't throw water on it because floods are bad. Front page, above the fold, utter nonsense.
Margaret, I wrote the NYT about the Kelly thing: "
Your paper describes the dismissal of the Comey and James cases as a "setback" for Mr. Trump to "wield the criminal justice system against his enemies," yet this headline fails to note that is NOT how the Justice Department is to work. Why is it so hard to state something more truthful in your headlines? Why not call this what it is, an illegal and immoral abuse of power?
Another headline on the homepage tells us the Pentagon is going to investigate Senator Mark Kelly for a statement that was clearly not seditious. The theme here is Mr.Trump enjoys attacking so-called enemies. Please tell that story, rather than normalizing a president incapable of fulfilling the oath of office in these vindictive ways."
If it were not for Heather Cox Rochardson, many people would have no idea what is going on. The current corruption that is right out in open may be THE story of our lifetimes and corporate MSM is fumbling and bowing down. Especially wrenching for journalists, like me, who grew up on excellent reporting of Watergate, the Pentagon Papers, the My Lai massacre, etc. In addition to HCR, I get much of my news from those who’ve joined Substack , as well as The Guardian, and the AP. Have kept WaPo and NYT but read them with a great deal of skepticism. Thank you, Margaret, for your work and dedication to media criticism.
It's clear that the headline writers at the Times are a problem. Sometimes they misrepresent stories entirely; often they frame them (vide the Hegseth story you site) that point readers the wrong way. Do you have ideas about why this is so? Who are they? Do they tend to be junior or senior? Are they writing clickbait? Do reporters get a chance to push back? Might it be that one or two bad apples are pushing an agenda? I think it's worth digging into.
It's very irritating that the headline writers are secret, even when they undercut the meaning of the story.
Thank you for this piece. Can I add one more item to your list of transgressions?
On Friday, the Washington Post reported that Pete Hegseth had ordered the execution (what else to call it?) of two survivors of the September 2 boat strike on alleged drug smugglers. The New York Times did not mention this in its headlines delivered via email on Saturday or on Sunday. The Sunday paper delivered to my home made no mention anywhere of this shocking piece of news. Now, finally, three days later, the Times puts this story in an email headline, but only because Republican senators and representatives have agreed that our defense secretary being a war criminal or murderer mighty be worth looking into. Note the Times's timid headline: "Lawmakers Suggest Follow-Up Boat Strike Could Be a War Crime."
How is this story not a five-alarm fire?
Yes.
To social workers like me, obfuscation by NYT about possible exploitation of Dasani Coates is also a five alarm fire.
Most of the national and political coverage I see now comes from The Atlantic, which, while not without faults, has mostly risen to meet this moment, and The Guardian, as well as your newsletter (of course!) and that of Heather Cox Richardson, who brilliantly contextualizes the day's events.
For state and local news here in North Carolina, I read and recommend The Assembly and its network, Carolina Public Press and its network, The News & Observer of Raleigh, NC Newsline (led by my friend Laura Leslie), and Down from DC, a Substack newsletter by Natalie Jennings and my friend Phoebe Zerwick that looks at the effects of Congressional action on North Carolina.
Whole books are going to be written on the failure of legacy national media in this era. I hope I live long enough that we return to an atmosphere in which such books can be freely published and distributed. I'm 65; I put the odds of that at 50/50 at best.
My guess is most print media tries to appease Trump with anodyne headlines knowing he probably doesn't read beyond that, so even if the story gets at the truth, he'll never see it. After all, his reputation is that he doesn't read at all, probably because he can't.
I appreciate your continued focus on the importance of heds and subheds, especially at the Times. I recently read a discussion of that issue by journalism professor Blasé Boylan and the Media and Democracy Project, specifically involving the Times:
https://bsky.app/profile/blazesboylan.bsky.social/post/3m6u3ouutqk23
In a report on children's vaccines, the Times headline read: "FDA Attributes 10 Children's Deaths to Covid Vaccines." The subhed read: "The agency's top vaccine regulator said that a review had found that found that the children were likely to have died 'because of' the shots. But public health experts want to examine the data."
Boylan was reacting, as was the Project, to criticisms of the failure of this hed/subhed to make clear (as other sources did) that the FDA assertions provided no evidence, as well as the established anti-vaccine attitudes of the regulator and HHS leadership generally. The critics wondered if this kind of behavior was taught in journalism school.
Boylan said it was not. Rather, corporate overlords think that inaccurate headlines generate more rage and engagement. The Times is especially good at "'plausible deniability'" in this area -- a skill, but not one conducive to truth. In discussion of another headline involving self-dealing at the White House by David Sacks, the Times had a headline making the behavior look almost benign -- a result of its attitude of being "'above all that.'" And Boylan noted that the Times resists any criticism of its practices: having eliminated the public editor, it instructs its comment reviewers not to approve such criticisms for publication -- quite a development when Times editors asserted that public involvement could substitute for public editorship.
I found this thread informative and wanted to make it available.
It’s instructive; thanks!
You consistently capture what I also see as the capitulation of the main stream media (NYT and WaPo) to the egregious behavior of this administration. As a matter of fact, I wrote a scathing letter to the NYT saying that I blame them in part, for the rise of this dangerous autocratic government. When the media minimize the horrors, they endorse them.
Margaret once more gives me reason to examine myself.
I once read big publications for the news and developing opinion.
From 1990 on I subscribed to and read daily in the NYTimes, WAPO, Guardian, Buffalo News and the Atlantic.
But now I prefer individuals like Margaret, Heather Cox Richardson, Freedman, Ian Bremer, Joyce Vance and such through e-mail connections and their sites.
It takes more work but the focus is much more beneficial than wading through the fog of inept journalism seeking light.
My current news diet: The Guardian and Philadelphia Inquirer for general news, Talking Points Memo, The New Republic, and The Bulwark for political news, The Atlantic, The New Yorker for longer pieces, and you and James Fallows. Plus Gothamnist and Hellgate for NYC/Brooklyn news.