I really like Parker Molloy’s work — I’m a paying subscriber — but I’ll tell you what I’ve told her.
The argument that “many people don’t read past the headlines” plays into the Times’s hands. It lets them stand there, arms folded, with that Timesian smirk and say “Well, you should read past the headlines. In fact you should subscribe!”
I worked in newsrooms for 30 years. The first day, I was told that headline writers were the best and most important writers in the newsroom, because of the responsibility they have. My fellow trainees and I then went through two weeks of work on editing but mostly on writing headlines. And the real point of that training — even beyond writing better headlines — was to look at each other’s work and realize that every story could have five different headlines, none of them technically incorrect, that could mean wildly different things. And to show us the power and responsibility that we had.
So when someone from the Times, or someone defending the Times, says it’s “just a headline,” I think the proper response is “don’t give me that. You know %^*+ing well what you’re doing there.” There’s no such thing as a default headline. Each and every one is a conscious choice by multiple people.
Normalizing and sane-washing are media preoccupations these days, all in the service of deflecting the public's exposure to tRump's madness, incompetence, and cascading dementia. And at that they are excelling...we're yet again at the "tRump says...Democrats say..." stage of reporting, if that's what that failed journalism is called.
My absolutely favorite story about Buffalo occurred in late 2022 when a devastating snowstorm hit the city around Christmas. A group of 10 Korean visitors was stranded and rescued by a Buffalo family, who housed the visitors for several days. The rescuers happened to be fans of Korean food and had a pantry stocked with assorted specialties. The stranded travelers took advantage of this wonderful situation and cooked a variety of Korean foods for their hosts.
Incredible luck, and perfect example of Buffalo as the “City of Good Neighbors.”
Having lived through many of the snowstorm/blizzards (1977, 1985, 1995, 2022) there is no better example of what humanity can offer than Buffalonians during a snowstorm!!
Peter Baker, NYTimes yesterday: "Trump’s Efforts to Control Information Echo an Authoritarian Playbook": Better than in the past, but controlling information does not "Echo" an authoritarian playbook. It IS the action of an authoritarian.
On July 31, Paul Krugman's newsletter was titled, "The Media Can’t Handle the Absence of Truth." I believe this has been the basis of the problem since 2016.
Be fair, that's " bold" coverage of tRump, especially by an overly cautious, bothsides-ist reporter such as Peter Baker. Perhaps he has been influenced by his wife, Susan Glasser, writing in the New Yorker and who pulls no punches in her tRump writeups. We can only hope.
Yes! Talk about coming late to the party! Re: masked gunmen kidnapping people off the streets, deporting people without due process, ignoring court orders
News coverage in this country, especially of international events, has become so pathetic I no longer bother with US newspapers. Most are now untrustworthy in ANY reporting. Forget WAPO, NYT and WSJ. I used to depend on the WSJ when I worked on the Street back in the day. It’s now a shadow of its former self. I depend most on the European press now. Moving soon anyway. If it’s somehow not in line with Trump’s policies it either won’t get covered, will get downplayed, or basically gets misrepresented.
I agree. Reading international papers provides superior coverage to events. The U.S. press is nearly gone, done in by downplaying Republican authoritarianism and corruption.
I will say that my hometown Chicago Tribune, despite being right-leaning on most issues, has done a spectacular job of drawing attention to the suffering of ICE raids and deportations, doing frequent front-page stories that dive deep into the humanity of the victims.
Chicago is my hometown too. But I haven’t lived there in many years. I always did enjoy reading the Tribune. We had a whole Sunday morning ritual as a family back in the day. I just find it depressing these days how many of the major papers lean so far right these days. And they no longer even try to hide it.
“And when memory failed and written records were falsified—when that happened, the claim of the Party to have improved the conditions of human life had got to be accepted, because there did not exist, and never again could exist, any standard against which it could be tested.”
This can only happen via a complicit, captured, media.
What’s pissing me off about the press right now is the assumption that everything Trump does is real, legit and legal when it is often clearly none of the above. Take his “trade deals” - as observers from Paul Krugman to Ben Meiselas have pointed out, these are press releases, not written, detailed deals, and ones which both sides have openly interpreted differently - including vague commitments likely to never happen. Yet the media covering them as reality has genuine political consequences - see John Fetterman desperately trying to play to the mythical “both sides” as he praises these vaporware “deals”: https://www.alternet.org/trump-fetterman-jobs/
I agree with you. They don't call out his declining health. They don't call out him saying that prescription prices are going down 1500% as if that could even happen.. They don't call out that foreign countries are saying they are not giving the US billions of dollars and the Trade deals are not even finalized. They don't call out the fact he referred to the job numbers as dollars instead of jobs. I wonder how they would have covered Hitler. It is pathetic. AND... If I lived in PA I would be hoping someone steps up to Primary John Fetterman if he chooses to run again. What happened to him? I feel sorry for the people in PA who supported him and didn't get anything they voted for.
Exactly as I point out in my reply to Margaret, the "Beltway Brain" filter means it would be considered terribly impolite for a reporter to point out that saying "1500 percent" means the president of the United States doesn't understand grade-school arithmetic.
"Sir! Sir! Are you aware that 1500 percent would mean that the drug company would pay YOU 15 times what the drug costs today? Do you even understand percentages?"
I'm still of the mindset, which appears outdated, that readers can determine that for themselves. A reporter doesn't need to "point out that saying '1500 percent' means the president of the United States doesn't understand grade-school arithmetic," when they can just write that Trump made the claim, and then write a follow-up sentence that explains the error. Let the reader figure it out. We're beyond the age, though, of trusting the reader — reporters today insist on spelling it all out, which leads to the (not unfounded) accusations of political bias.
It's sanewashing. I saw it this week when the press reported on Trump's claims that European countries would be paying the US hundreds of billions of dollars in "deals" nobody could explain. It was obvious that this was all Trumpian bullshit, but nobody said so.
And Fetterman has mental health issues. I think it was either ProPublica or The Intercept that did a detailed report on it.
Coverage of Cory Booker’s response to the policing bill last week just about drove me over the cliff, as every headline quoted his line about Democratic complicity but not a single one mentioned that he called the current admin “totalitarian,” which is a strong and correct identification of what we are dealing with. And only one source I read even contained the full quote. The whole approach served only to reinforce the “Dems in disarray” bullshit machine.
A little more about this "volatile" headline in the Globe. It originated in the NYT (a Zolan Kanno-Youngs story the day before).
The NYT headline was: "Lashing Out Over Russia and Jobs Data, Trump Displays His Volatile Side," and the subhead was "The president had been on something of a winning streak. But when faced with facts and foes that wouldn’t bend to his will, he responded with impatience and disproportionate intensity."
The "winning streak" the subhead refers to was the president's golf trip to Scotland, described in the story this way: "Just days earlier, Mr. Trump had returned to the United States from a golf trip happily flexing his political and diplomatic power." Norm Ornstein's "fixed it for you" corrected ABC News similarly fawning take on the Scotland jaunt.
I think that "journalism" as we knew it is dying, if not already dead. The NYT, WaPo, WSJ, and many major city newspapers are doing whatever they can to stay on Trump's "good side", so their copy editors and headline writers massage the facts in whatever way will please him. I think Rupert Murdoch, Roger Aisles and many others, too numerous to mention, succeeded in destroying honest reporting. I know there are many good reporters, great reporters, but we have come to a place where more people value entertainment over information. I constantly think about how prescient Postman's "Amusing Ourselves to Death" was. It is all very frustrating.
Margaret, as someone that grew up in East Aurora, (I left after college) has a sister that lives in the Elmwood Village (and will never leave), and a sister that lives in Clarence, I can't agree more with your defense of Buffalo. It is a beaustiful city. The architecture alone is worth planning a trip around, not to mention the bars and restaurants. The sense of community is strong and vibrant. Sure,s ometimes the winters are tough, but with climate change, who knows they could soon be tropical!!
That headline about Buffalo drove me nuts. I grew up in the Buffalo area, left for school and jobs, and came back here to retire. Why? Because there is so much to love. Everything you mentioned, and more. Our town is a well-kept secret, and I guess it will remain so.
I was born in Batavia and have lived in many places in my lifetime. I'm settled now in North Chili, just west of Rochester. I lived in North Tonawanda and worked in Buffalo. There was a tiny restaurant located inside the Convention Center (I worked across the street). I still think about the amazing lunches I had from that restaurant.
Margaret Sullivan: as a child, i was a devoted newshound, and this passion for the news, and for journalism continued through my entire life. despite being a scientist, i often dreamed of being a journalist, and would have gotten training in journalism if i had enough money to pursue this discipline.
that said, i'm horribly disappointed in american journalism and journalists. what sort of damage is this careless journalism doing to history itself? will future generations even know what the historical truth is when current generations are so clueless? at this point, i refuse to read any news by major american news outlets, although i do read and support propublica. i get my news from a variety of international sources, although i admit i'm now quite suspicious of the guardian (where i used to write), because of the massive "donation" they received from bill gates a few years ago (bill gates and his fake charitable foundation use money to buy a positive reputation for himself.)
i agree with your copy editor-friend's assessment of the MSM situation: “The U.S. network TV divisions have lost their mind, nerve and soul all at once.”
I trust the Guardian more than any other newspaper here, and aside from Mark Cuban, I trust Bill Gates more than just about any other obscenely wealthy technocrat
carla: you should read this book, The Bill Gates Problem, a meticulously researched investigation into the financial misbehaviours of bill gates and his fake foundation, the gates foundation, and then let's chat about bill gates and how trustworthy he is
Visiting Buffalo next week for the first time on a road trip. Looking forward to Martin House, art museum, Olmsted park, historic district, walking around areas that have houses that would have been open for garden walks last month, Roycroft campus. Any other suggestions?
Yes! Check out The Richardson Hotel named after starchitect Henry Hobson Richardson who designed the sprawling facility as an insane asylum. The campus is on Olmsted designed grounds. It’s awe inspiring. And don’t forget the newly reopened Albright Knox (now AKG) and historical center built during Pan Am expo. Stunning.
Good call-the Basilica is free and has long hours; right next Botanical Garden which is reciprocal for members of AHS. Think we’ll do this. Short road trip that sees us turning around after overnight to Rochester, so can’t do everything…😊
The tech industry ruined the news business with the relentless blitz of training everybody to accept algorithmic advertising. People now pay for entertainment engagement instead of news. Even the NYT has realized this since its revenue is because it is a gaming company.
Buffalo is indeed great. One of my clients opened an office in the downtown, so now I get to make the trip up from Connecticut more often.
Connecticut is on my last 3 states I have not visited-RI, CT, and ND so will be looking for recs there as well (a RI trip fell through, but I did lots of research and still have my grids). My partner knows how to spend a weekend in ND (probably involving fish and nature)
As a former reporter, I realize that "many readers don’t get any farther than those initial words," but I sure wish headline writers did. It's frustrating to write a story and have it appear with a hed that suggests the editor didn't read it. At least in the days of the inverted pyramid, someone could read the first graf and come up with a hed that approximated the content, but with narrative writing, you've no idea what misleading nonsense is going to appear over your work.
Thanks for this comment. I spent 25 years as a news reporter and editor, then another 25 as a writer and editor for other organizations (mainly federal). Your analysis is spot on.
I really like Parker Molloy’s work — I’m a paying subscriber — but I’ll tell you what I’ve told her.
The argument that “many people don’t read past the headlines” plays into the Times’s hands. It lets them stand there, arms folded, with that Timesian smirk and say “Well, you should read past the headlines. In fact you should subscribe!”
I worked in newsrooms for 30 years. The first day, I was told that headline writers were the best and most important writers in the newsroom, because of the responsibility they have. My fellow trainees and I then went through two weeks of work on editing but mostly on writing headlines. And the real point of that training — even beyond writing better headlines — was to look at each other’s work and realize that every story could have five different headlines, none of them technically incorrect, that could mean wildly different things. And to show us the power and responsibility that we had.
So when someone from the Times, or someone defending the Times, says it’s “just a headline,” I think the proper response is “don’t give me that. You know %^*+ing well what you’re doing there.” There’s no such thing as a default headline. Each and every one is a conscious choice by multiple people.
Thanks for this. It makes a lot of sense.
Normalizing and sane-washing are media preoccupations these days, all in the service of deflecting the public's exposure to tRump's madness, incompetence, and cascading dementia. And at that they are excelling...we're yet again at the "tRump says...Democrats say..." stage of reporting, if that's what that failed journalism is called.
Also spent 30 years at newspapers and yes.
One has to wonder what is being taught in journalism schools these days. Anyone got a clue?
Yep. I was my college paper's headlines editor, and you better believe I was aware of the power.
It's a lot of power to hand to an adolescent, I'll leave it at that.
My absolutely favorite story about Buffalo occurred in late 2022 when a devastating snowstorm hit the city around Christmas. A group of 10 Korean visitors was stranded and rescued by a Buffalo family, who housed the visitors for several days. The rescuers happened to be fans of Korean food and had a pantry stocked with assorted specialties. The stranded travelers took advantage of this wonderful situation and cooked a variety of Korean foods for their hosts.
Incredible luck, and perfect example of Buffalo as the “City of Good Neighbors.”
Very Buffalo.
Having lived through many of the snowstorm/blizzards (1977, 1985, 1995, 2022) there is no better example of what humanity can offer than Buffalonians during a snowstorm!!
I still have my “I survived the blizzard of “77” T-shirt.
Peter Baker, NYTimes yesterday: "Trump’s Efforts to Control Information Echo an Authoritarian Playbook": Better than in the past, but controlling information does not "Echo" an authoritarian playbook. It IS the action of an authoritarian.
On July 31, Paul Krugman's newsletter was titled, "The Media Can’t Handle the Absence of Truth." I believe this has been the basis of the problem since 2016.
I noticed that Times headline too. Echo? How about follow? Almost cancelled it right then.
Be fair, that's " bold" coverage of tRump, especially by an overly cautious, bothsides-ist reporter such as Peter Baker. Perhaps he has been influenced by his wife, Susan Glasser, writing in the New Yorker and who pulls no punches in her tRump writeups. We can only hope.
Yes! Talk about coming late to the party! Re: masked gunmen kidnapping people off the streets, deporting people without due process, ignoring court orders
, etc.
The word "echo" suggests something from long ago, and also something that has faded.
Trump is now.
Loving Buffalo is Easy. Staying Away is Hard.
Fixed it.
News coverage in this country, especially of international events, has become so pathetic I no longer bother with US newspapers. Most are now untrustworthy in ANY reporting. Forget WAPO, NYT and WSJ. I used to depend on the WSJ when I worked on the Street back in the day. It’s now a shadow of its former self. I depend most on the European press now. Moving soon anyway. If it’s somehow not in line with Trump’s policies it either won’t get covered, will get downplayed, or basically gets misrepresented.
I agree. Reading international papers provides superior coverage to events. The U.S. press is nearly gone, done in by downplaying Republican authoritarianism and corruption.
I will say that my hometown Chicago Tribune, despite being right-leaning on most issues, has done a spectacular job of drawing attention to the suffering of ICE raids and deportations, doing frequent front-page stories that dive deep into the humanity of the victims.
Chicago is my hometown too. But I haven’t lived there in many years. I always did enjoy reading the Tribune. We had a whole Sunday morning ritual as a family back in the day. I just find it depressing these days how many of the major papers lean so far right these days. And they no longer even try to hide it.
“And when memory failed and written records were falsified—when that happened, the claim of the Party to have improved the conditions of human life had got to be accepted, because there did not exist, and never again could exist, any standard against which it could be tested.”
This can only happen via a complicit, captured, media.
What’s pissing me off about the press right now is the assumption that everything Trump does is real, legit and legal when it is often clearly none of the above. Take his “trade deals” - as observers from Paul Krugman to Ben Meiselas have pointed out, these are press releases, not written, detailed deals, and ones which both sides have openly interpreted differently - including vague commitments likely to never happen. Yet the media covering them as reality has genuine political consequences - see John Fetterman desperately trying to play to the mythical “both sides” as he praises these vaporware “deals”: https://www.alternet.org/trump-fetterman-jobs/
I agree with you. They don't call out his declining health. They don't call out him saying that prescription prices are going down 1500% as if that could even happen.. They don't call out that foreign countries are saying they are not giving the US billions of dollars and the Trade deals are not even finalized. They don't call out the fact he referred to the job numbers as dollars instead of jobs. I wonder how they would have covered Hitler. It is pathetic. AND... If I lived in PA I would be hoping someone steps up to Primary John Fetterman if he chooses to run again. What happened to him? I feel sorry for the people in PA who supported him and didn't get anything they voted for.
Exactly as I point out in my reply to Margaret, the "Beltway Brain" filter means it would be considered terribly impolite for a reporter to point out that saying "1500 percent" means the president of the United States doesn't understand grade-school arithmetic.
"Sir! Sir! Are you aware that 1500 percent would mean that the drug company would pay YOU 15 times what the drug costs today? Do you even understand percentages?"
I'm still of the mindset, which appears outdated, that readers can determine that for themselves. A reporter doesn't need to "point out that saying '1500 percent' means the president of the United States doesn't understand grade-school arithmetic," when they can just write that Trump made the claim, and then write a follow-up sentence that explains the error. Let the reader figure it out. We're beyond the age, though, of trusting the reader — reporters today insist on spelling it all out, which leads to the (not unfounded) accusations of political bias.
In a growing cult of personality, feeding them lies is like giving fertilizer to a plant.
Fetterman had a serious mental breakdown in 2023. Last year, due to his erratic behavior, most of his staff resigned.
https://www.mediaite.com/media/news/5-most-shocking-details-from-intelligencers-bombshell-expose-on-john-fetterman/
It's sanewashing. I saw it this week when the press reported on Trump's claims that European countries would be paying the US hundreds of billions of dollars in "deals" nobody could explain. It was obvious that this was all Trumpian bullshit, but nobody said so.
And Fetterman has mental health issues. I think it was either ProPublica or The Intercept that did a detailed report on it.
Coverage of Cory Booker’s response to the policing bill last week just about drove me over the cliff, as every headline quoted his line about Democratic complicity but not a single one mentioned that he called the current admin “totalitarian,” which is a strong and correct identification of what we are dealing with. And only one source I read even contained the full quote. The whole approach served only to reinforce the “Dems in disarray” bullshit machine.
My current favorite terrible headline, in Boston Globe 8/3/25:
"Trump shows volatile side, lashes out over jobs data, Russia"
(Does he have another side?) Subhead: "Anger sparked as things don't go his way"
And the whole article continues in that vein, as though describing the man to a recently arrived Martian.
S D. Arlington MA
Great point.
A little more about this "volatile" headline in the Globe. It originated in the NYT (a Zolan Kanno-Youngs story the day before).
The NYT headline was: "Lashing Out Over Russia and Jobs Data, Trump Displays His Volatile Side," and the subhead was "The president had been on something of a winning streak. But when faced with facts and foes that wouldn’t bend to his will, he responded with impatience and disproportionate intensity."
The "winning streak" the subhead refers to was the president's golf trip to Scotland, described in the story this way: "Just days earlier, Mr. Trump had returned to the United States from a golf trip happily flexing his political and diplomatic power." Norm Ornstein's "fixed it for you" corrected ABC News similarly fawning take on the Scotland jaunt.
I think that "journalism" as we knew it is dying, if not already dead. The NYT, WaPo, WSJ, and many major city newspapers are doing whatever they can to stay on Trump's "good side", so their copy editors and headline writers massage the facts in whatever way will please him. I think Rupert Murdoch, Roger Aisles and many others, too numerous to mention, succeeded in destroying honest reporting. I know there are many good reporters, great reporters, but we have come to a place where more people value entertainment over information. I constantly think about how prescient Postman's "Amusing Ourselves to Death" was. It is all very frustrating.
Margaret, as someone that grew up in East Aurora, (I left after college) has a sister that lives in the Elmwood Village (and will never leave), and a sister that lives in Clarence, I can't agree more with your defense of Buffalo. It is a beaustiful city. The architecture alone is worth planning a trip around, not to mention the bars and restaurants. The sense of community is strong and vibrant. Sure,s ometimes the winters are tough, but with climate change, who knows they could soon be tropical!!
The NYT in many ways is better than ever,
Examples, please!
In SOME ways. Its political reporting has been bad at least since Whitewater, so for decades, now.
That headline about Buffalo drove me nuts. I grew up in the Buffalo area, left for school and jobs, and came back here to retire. Why? Because there is so much to love. Everything you mentioned, and more. Our town is a well-kept secret, and I guess it will remain so.
I was born in Batavia and have lived in many places in my lifetime. I'm settled now in North Chili, just west of Rochester. I lived in North Tonawanda and worked in Buffalo. There was a tiny restaurant located inside the Convention Center (I worked across the street). I still think about the amazing lunches I had from that restaurant.
Margaret Sullivan: as a child, i was a devoted newshound, and this passion for the news, and for journalism continued through my entire life. despite being a scientist, i often dreamed of being a journalist, and would have gotten training in journalism if i had enough money to pursue this discipline.
that said, i'm horribly disappointed in american journalism and journalists. what sort of damage is this careless journalism doing to history itself? will future generations even know what the historical truth is when current generations are so clueless? at this point, i refuse to read any news by major american news outlets, although i do read and support propublica. i get my news from a variety of international sources, although i admit i'm now quite suspicious of the guardian (where i used to write), because of the massive "donation" they received from bill gates a few years ago (bill gates and his fake charitable foundation use money to buy a positive reputation for himself.)
i agree with your copy editor-friend's assessment of the MSM situation: “The U.S. network TV divisions have lost their mind, nerve and soul all at once.”
I trust the Guardian more than any other newspaper here, and aside from Mark Cuban, I trust Bill Gates more than just about any other obscenely wealthy technocrat
carla: you should read this book, The Bill Gates Problem, a meticulously researched investigation into the financial misbehaviours of bill gates and his fake foundation, the gates foundation, and then let's chat about bill gates and how trustworthy he is
https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-bill-gates-problem-reckoning-with-the-myth-of-the-good-billionaire-tim-schwab/19693643
Biased tripe.
Visiting Buffalo next week for the first time on a road trip. Looking forward to Martin House, art museum, Olmsted park, historic district, walking around areas that have houses that would have been open for garden walks last month, Roycroft campus. Any other suggestions?
Yes! Check out The Richardson Hotel named after starchitect Henry Hobson Richardson who designed the sprawling facility as an insane asylum. The campus is on Olmsted designed grounds. It’s awe inspiring. And don’t forget the newly reopened Albright Knox (now AKG) and historical center built during Pan Am expo. Stunning.
She said art museum so I assume she meant AKG, though she could have meant Burchfield Penney.
The AKG is our major reason for going, but when we found out it wasn’t open on Wednesday, we learned about Martin House. Doing AKG on Thursday
It was one of my fave places to go with my grandmother. When I got married I did so at the Historical society which overlooks the AKG.enjoy!!
OLV Basilica, Explore Buffalo tours.
Good call-the Basilica is free and has long hours; right next Botanical Garden which is reciprocal for members of AHS. Think we’ll do this. Short road trip that sees us turning around after overnight to Rochester, so can’t do everything…😊
Regardless of what you do, I think you will have a nice time.
Been looking forward to it-one of the best art museums we have not yet been to in this country
The tech industry ruined the news business with the relentless blitz of training everybody to accept algorithmic advertising. People now pay for entertainment engagement instead of news. Even the NYT has realized this since its revenue is because it is a gaming company.
Buffalo is indeed great. One of my clients opened an office in the downtown, so now I get to make the trip up from Connecticut more often.
Connecticut is on my last 3 states I have not visited-RI, CT, and ND so will be looking for recs there as well (a RI trip fell through, but I did lots of research and still have my grids). My partner knows how to spend a weekend in ND (probably involving fish and nature)
Ping me offline, and would be happy to share places in Connecticut you might be interested in.
As a former reporter, I realize that "many readers don’t get any farther than those initial words," but I sure wish headline writers did. It's frustrating to write a story and have it appear with a hed that suggests the editor didn't read it. At least in the days of the inverted pyramid, someone could read the first graf and come up with a hed that approximated the content, but with narrative writing, you've no idea what misleading nonsense is going to appear over your work.
Thanks for this comment. I spent 25 years as a news reporter and editor, then another 25 as a writer and editor for other organizations (mainly federal). Your analysis is spot on.
Worked in newspapers for 30 years and I’m so appalled.
It isn’t the old-timers pulling this shit. We would never!
But we were all laid off long ago.