Do you remember a few years back when, during the massive rioting that took place after the death of George Floyd, Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton took to the pages of The New York Times with an op-ed calling for then President Trump to mobilize the National Guard to bring order to the streets of America's cities? The publication of Cotton's piece caused quite the kerfuffle at the time, leading to several fraught all-hands-on-deck meetings, and eventually the ouster of then NYT Opinion editor James Bennet. It's a story that has been hashed and rehashed many times in the intervening years, most notably by Bennet in a piece he wrote for The Economist's 1843 magazine last December, but as with any story there are always other players with experiences to share... and today one of those players, Adam Rubenstein, dropped a story in The Atlantic detailing his role in the whole ordeal and his experiences as someone on the political right working at the New York Times.
While Rubenstein's account is really eye opening as to what was going on in the swirl of madness that accompanied Senator Cotton's op-ed, what's caught the eyes of many is the story that Rubenstein tells of his orientation onto the staff of the New York Times and how it presaged much of the insanity that would follow during his tenure at the paper.
"What's your favorite sandwich?"
— Charles C. W. Cooke (@charlescwcooke) February 26, 2024
“The spicy chicken sandwich from Chick-fil-A.”
"Wrong!" pic.twitter.com/4A72FSL11N
If you wrote this into an SNL skit people would call it a ham-fisted strawman pic.twitter.com/ZmI8Sj2GAP
— Alex Griswold (@HashtagGriswold) February 26, 2024
Apparently the boys and girls down at the New York Times have a really visceral reaction to the mention of Chik-Fil-A, huh? Which of course doesn't even get in to the whole weird ritual they were participating in to begin with, a strange kindergarten-esque 'getting to know you' session that apparently included... snapping (?) to indicate agreement?
The @nytimes new hire orientation meetings be like… pic.twitter.com/73jfctkL7i
— Kimberly Ross (@SouthernKeeks) February 26, 2024
This actually is a thing in lefty circles, along with a whole other panoply of weird hand signals and noises to indicate agreement or disagreement, so it's not surprising that people were doing it... What is surprising is that it's something serious 'journalists' were doing in a professional workspace. But then again maybe we need to move on past the point of being surprised by the immature antics of the clearly immature people on the left. Professionalism has it seems long since been thrown to the wind as a concept by most members of the Democratic Party.
You aren't going to reform institutions that are holding Maoist struggle sessions over fast food
— Auron MacIntyre (@AuronMacintyre) February 26, 2024
You can destroy them or make them irrelevant
Those are the only options https://t.co/9To8lMJRKW
activists have wormed their way into almost every institution
— 🇺🇸PRIMExGarrett🇺🇸 (@GXvictory) February 26, 2024
They seem to be doing a good job of destroying themselves, based on layoffs this year.
— Chris Karabats (@Zaphoid) February 26, 2024
Layoffs are often what happens when you put things other than doing the job you're hired to do, in this case journalism, as the most important thing you're doing professionally. If you had any wonder why traditional journalism is dying as an institution this should give you some clue.
I am in favor of extending the Castle Doctrine to that behavior.
— Charles C. W. Cooke (@charlescwcooke) February 26, 2024
"People started snapping their fingers in acclamation"
— Name cannot be blank (@realchrishynes) February 26, 2024
I'm sorry, they did what?
Somewhat concerned that a major media organization acts like the People's Temple.
— El Magnífico (@MagnificoIX) February 26, 2024
Concerning yes, but if upon surveying the landscape of organizations like the New York Times, LA Times, and Washington Post you weren't already concerned about the weird simulacra of religious fervor that seems to have occupied every walk of life that has been taken over by the left you probably weren't paying enough attention.
Great piece in The Atlantic. As a reporter myself, I'm glad you 'named names' of some of the current NYT staffers who completely crossed over into advocacy from journalism with their internal attacks over the Cotton op/ed
— Mike Glenn (@MikeRGlenn) February 26, 2024
Great write up. If papers/sites want to be taken seriously, they need real journalists, not activists.
— josh (@DrMixerGED) February 26, 2024
Before Google Gemini there was The New York Times HR Department. https://t.co/5vngKh3nct
— Blame Big Government (@BlameBigGovt) February 26, 2024
The idea of people that work at the New York Times doing that Starburst/sandwich thing seems bizarre. I would have thought you would just walk in on your first day to a room full of people wearing fedoras and feverishly hammering away at typewriters whilst smoking.
— Paul Crust. (@ghosteggs) February 26, 2024
Those days are long gone, we're all much too serious for that. Everybody snap if you agree!
https://t.co/kFRugP5bCm pic.twitter.com/mlq6X2srKw
— Magills (@magills_) February 26, 2024
This seems like more of a struggle session than an orientation session. https://t.co/NFQSQF4C43
— Boo (@IzaBooboo) February 26, 2024
It does, doesn't it?
I once inquired with the Times comms folks whether there was an onboarding process that included anything about the importance of free speech. The answer was a link to this page. Speech is unmentioned, but they apparently have chicken wrongthink covered. https://t.co/WUyiFsdBIP https://t.co/rEFCgCFTDS
— Mary Katharine Ham (@mkhammer) February 26, 2024
There is no way to salvage a journalistic community this far gone into degenerate totalitarian ideology. It must be burned to the ground and then regrown, this time with real journalistic standards, real reporters, and no crackpot left-wing ideological programming. https://t.co/531kkFMnzS
— John Hayward (@Doc_0) February 26, 2024
Are these organizations too far gone? Maybe. Certainly few currently on staff seem like the kind of people you want holding down a serious job... honestly it's an open question if they're even useful for working at Chik-Fil-A, much less at the New York Times.
This whole thing has been a mess ever since it went down in 2020, and the more we learn about what the inner workings at organizations like the New York Times and the Washington Post the more we can understand how completely captured they've been by an extremely aggressive and identitarian population of young journalists being pumped out of our higher education system. There's a reason that alternative media organizations like Bari Weiss's 'The Free Press' and... Twitchy have seen such a relative rise in success over the past few years. The only people who trust the legacy media organizations to be presenting a reasonable view on the news of the day are the choir to whom they are preaching, and that isn't as large a choir as one would think.
Is it possible that the New York Times can be salvaged? Maybe, but as detailed by both James Bennet and Adam Rubenstein it seems that it's unlikely to happen under the current leadership at the organization, who seem to be unwilling to stop what's happening either through fear of their own staff or agreement with the way things are going. But at least there are alternatives now, and no matter how much these newspapers try to tar them and make them seem fringe you can be sure that they'll keep growing in number and readership. After all, look at the alternative.
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