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How is The New York Times Really Doing? (om.co)
Wired magazine did a profile on The New York Times in its this month's issue. Talking about the paper's transition from print to more digital-focus than ever, author Gabriel Snyder wrote, "It's to transform the Times' digital subscriptions into the main engine of a billion-dollar business, one that could pay to put reporters on the ground in 174 countries even if (OK, when) the printing presses stop forever." Veteran journalist Om Malik analyzes the numbers: -> The company reported revenue of nearly $1.6 billion in 2016 -- remarkably consistent with prior years.
-> Print advertising revenue dipped by $70 million year-over-year to $327 million in 2016.
-> Digital advertising revenue, while a meaningful portion of the Times' revenue, did not grow enough to offset vanishing print ad dollars.
-> Total digital ad revenue in 2016 was $206 million, up only 6% from the prior year.
-> The key revenue driver for the New York Times has been its digital subscription business, which added more than half a million paid subscribers in 2016. Thanks in part to interest around the presidential election, the newspaper added 276,000 new digital subscribers in Q4, the single largest quarterly increase since 2011 (the year the pay model was launched).
The Times' digital success is hinged upon two major drivers: affiliate revenues from services like the Wirecutter and digital subscriptions. Advertising might be a good short term bandaid, but the company needs to focus on how to evolve away from it even more aggressively. The Times needs to simplify their sign-up experience and make it easier for people to pay for the subscriptions. As of now, it is like the sound you hear when scratching your nails on a piece of glass.
-> Print advertising revenue dipped by $70 million year-over-year to $327 million in 2016.
-> Digital advertising revenue, while a meaningful portion of the Times' revenue, did not grow enough to offset vanishing print ad dollars.
-> Total digital ad revenue in 2016 was $206 million, up only 6% from the prior year.
-> The key revenue driver for the New York Times has been its digital subscription business, which added more than half a million paid subscribers in 2016. Thanks in part to interest around the presidential election, the newspaper added 276,000 new digital subscribers in Q4, the single largest quarterly increase since 2011 (the year the pay model was launched).
The Times' digital success is hinged upon two major drivers: affiliate revenues from services like the Wirecutter and digital subscriptions. Advertising might be a good short term bandaid, but the company needs to focus on how to evolve away from it even more aggressively. The Times needs to simplify their sign-up experience and make it easier for people to pay for the subscriptions. As of now, it is like the sound you hear when scratching your nails on a piece of glass.
>if (OK, when) the printing presses stop forever
Yeah, and this is the year of Linux on the desktop.
"->" in 2017, while we have these nice unicode arrows...
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
Who the fuck cares!
nobody likes bad news and thats what the papers have pushed hard for the last 20 odd years which coincidently marked a declining press, yes years before the internet even came about. If they were to go back to their roots and report the news in all its forms, stop only reporting politically correct items and focus on all the news like the stuff wikileaks has to leak because the press doenst do its job, then the people may return. They wont so news will die because the younger generation never got into new because its all false crap nothing true.
New York Times reports FAKE NEWS! Terrible.
@donaldjtrump
Isn't this sort of thing just kowtowing to Trumps use of "failing" every time he mentions the New York Times in tweets or press conferences? We all know why he does that - spread enough misinformation about a companies situation and eventually enough people get spooked to make it true. The numbers don't show a failing company, they merely show a transitional one.
The GOD EMPEROR spoke. HIS word is law. All praise Trump!
Trumpmen!
The NYT also has their award-winning liberal bias where everything Liberal Democrats do is awesome and anything Conservative Republicans is bad-bad-bad. They're no better than Gawker in many ways with their dead-tree version of click-bait and character smearing.
But yeah, lets throw some numbers around to make it look they might survive into the digital world.
Outdated legacy "news" outlet, now more correctly referred to as Carlos Slims Blog. And the new york times is to news as Cheez-Wiz is to cheese. It's not "news" it's processed news product with a side of establishment boot-licking.
Reality is stranger than fiction now.
So fiction is now news!
if you like fake news with a liberal spin
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
NY Times, a bastion of truth.
Override the Slashdot CSS to use a font like FiraCode then.
When I saw the headline, my first thought was that slashdot had picked up the story about the major newspapers buying fake clicks from Chinese bots to increase their page rank and advertising revenue.
See here and here (or here).
See that "Preview" button?
They've got to get over their hatred of Trump before they can succeed. Even anti-Trump people want to hear about something else once in a while.
NYT does not strike me to be a failing business. At least NYT does not have to resort to stiffing contractors like Trump to turn a profit.
It shouldn't be "arrows" anyway, this is a list.
#DeleteFacebook
Or just wait for slashdot to use a modern encoding, like UTF-8, like everybody?
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
Really, I have to give them credit where credit is due: by repeatedly pointing out errors (however trivial) out of the tens of thousands of news stories that are published every day, they've managed to get their supporters to the point where they'll trust a new story on www.siteiveneverheardofbefore.com/newishstuff/hillaryclintonpedophilering.html more than they will an actual newspaper. It's a real masterstroke in terms of controlling the narrative. "Anything negative you hear about me, it's fake, because there exist cases where newspapers have made errors, and we've selectively presented you only with those cases to create a narrative for you that newspapers are packed full of fakery." Not just newspapers - fact checkers, peer-reviewed articles, even official government statistics - all fake, because they've been presented with every case people can get their hands of of error, without the balancing context of the 10000x more that wasn't in error.
In the words of XKCD: "Dear God, I would like to file a bug report". ;)
It's the same thing that contributed to the Challenger explosion. They had a nice clean graph in front of them that plotted O-ring failures vs. temperature. There was no clear trend visible on the graph. The problem was that they omitted the successes, the cases where there were no O-ring failures. Here's what it looked like with that added in. All of the sudden there's a very clear trend of failure increasing at low temperatures - in fact, every low temperature launch had had O-ring failures, while very few high-temperature launches had. By being selective in what data you present (accidentally in that case, on purpose in the present case), you can get people to believe precisely the opposite of what is true.
I'll never forget the last thing grandma said to me before she died: "What are you doing in here with that knife?!?"
My wife and I started subscribing to the (digital) NYT a couple years ago. (I don't want to contribute to the pro- vs anti-NYT aspect of the thread, so I'll just say we legit like reading the NYT and think it is worth the cash.) I don't remember sign up being that difficult; in fact I don't remember it at all. I am willing to believe it could be better (I read about how hard companies work for 'frictionless payments' all the time), I'd just be surprised 'sign up too hard' is a driver. Maybe it's good I don't work in that industry, then, because I apparently don't know anything.
They do have a neat joint spotify/NYT digital subscription promotion going on right now. It may be enough for me to cancel my subscriptions and restart them in my spouse's name.
Isn't this the same strategy the Russians use with their media, and in-fact are rumoured to put out fake stories to keep the public guessing.
Or at least be like British newspapers and admit your fucking bias.
Which "British newspapers"? There are any "newspapers" in Britain left?
In Britain there are
* Prince Ruprecht Murdoch's empire of disinformation "papers"
* Racist elitist unrepentant fake news Guardian
* Daily Hate Mail
* Daily Torygraph
Where's the mythical "newspaper" to be found?
Slashdot posts a couple of articles a week that invite Trump bashing. This one is a perfect example, you see "New York Times" in the headline and you know there will be a couple of hundred posts, most of which will mention Trump.
You don't want to be holding your breath on that one.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Here, you can go right to the source: buggy.com
No need to thank me. :)
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
are actually just spooks trying to sell their agenda. And how many different countries / agencies is a newspaper like this infiltrated by? And most importantly of all why no-one talks about this despite a huge number of testimonies, is it taboo?
Bankruptcy is merely a tool used in the business world. You stigmatize it because you think bad poor white people declare bankruptcy to get out of debt. However, it's one of he very few avenues for ending an S corporation, and the only one for ending a corporation when the shareholders don't have a majority agreement with the bond holders and debt holders on who should get what.
Worse, though, you're the sucker. You really believe that his business ventures have all failed because the news told you that he declared bankruptcy a few times.
Guardian admits to be leftist. Hell, they even joke about it.
E.g. David Mitchell complained on a talk show comedy slot (Mock the week?) about some health food stuff (maybe volvos, but some hippie leftie trope shit) and he was told that he'd best hope that never gets aired or there would be guardian readers throwing granola at him in protest the next day.
The news is viewed with mostly skepticism, but only reserved skepticism, a slight distancing from believing the news, but not a disregard for it.
David Rose, however, really doesn't get it, he's just pandering because there's a profitable ring on the USA RWNJ circuit to play to.
Or at least be like British newspapers and admit your fucking bias.
Which "British newspapers"? There are any "newspapers" in Britain left?
In Britain there are
* Prince Ruprecht Murdoch's empire of disinformation "papers"
* Racist elitist unrepentant fake news Guardian
* Daily Hate Mail
* Daily Torygraph
Where's the mythical "newspaper" to be found?
The point is the Brit papers admit they're biased - and own it.
The NY Times risibly tries to claim that they're objective.
Which is why Donald Trump is more believable than the NY Times. Donald FUCKING Trump!
That's how the NY Times is really doing - more people believe what comes out of Donald FUCKING Trump's Twitter feed than believe the "news" in the NY Times.
Trump is a broken clock on this issue - the NY Times is FAILING.
by repeatedly pointing out errors (however trivial) out of the tens of thousands of news stories that are published every day
In other words, exactly the same thing the New York Times (and others) do with Trump's utterances. Please don't pretend that this is a one-sided thing.
"Prince Ruprecht Murdoch" ...uh, *who*?
You forgot to mention Fox News there. I think it outclasses NYT in all the aspects you have mentioned.
> It's the same thing that contributed to the Challenger explosion. They had a nice clean graph [wordpress.com] in front of them that plotted O-ring failures vs. temperature. There was no clear trend visible on the graph. The problem was that they omitted the successes, the cases where there were no O-ring failures. Here's what it looked like [wordpress.com] with that added in. All of the sudden there's a very clear trend of failure increasing at low temperatures - in fact, every low temperature launch had had O-ring failures, while very few high-temperature launches had. By being selective in what data you present (accidentally in that case, on purpose in the present case), you can get people to believe precisely the opposite of what is true.
Wow. Just wow. So the Challenger explosion happened because they didn't use the concept of probability. WOW. I can't believe this.
They were supposed to plot the PROBABILITY OF FAILURE versus temperature. Not just a scatter plot of individual data.
It would be nice to find a good news outlet that actually reported the news, as opposed to spinning a partisan taint, or even making a narrative that has no factual basis in this reality whatsoever. However with the rift of politics so deeply dividing the US, actual -truth- will be torn apart by one or both sides because it doesn't fit their narrative.
If a news article from a completely new news source comes out, and the story doesn't fit your narrative, how do you know if it's fake or not?
Why was parent voted down?
Actually, that kind of makes the world a lot more reasonable if you take that perspective.
The problem is that the NYT no longer meets their motto of "all the news that fits, we print" (apparently it's not "fit to print", but that's a quibble).
Rightly or wrongly (and I'd argue wrongly), they've embraced "advocacy journalism". Having a monoculture is never a good thing, because it renders the entire organization vulnerable to a common flaw. The NYT embraces diversity in every way, except in the most important one: thought. Politically, they are a monoculture, and that hurts them.
The problem isn't that lockstep ideology renders their editorial positions predictable; that's fine. It's the fact that it affects their news coverage, and it affects it negatively. When I'm reading a news story, I shouldn't be able to tell what the writer's opinions on the matter are, and yet in far too many cases, it's obvious. Worse, it's not only affected how stories are covered, but whether they get covered at all.
The most damning criticism of the NYT I've heard was a friend of mine who cancelled her subscription a few years ago. Her reason was that she was "tired of hearing people discussing controversies I'd never heard of". When newspapers decide not to report on a story because they feel it might empower their ideological opponents, they're not being reporters, they're being advocates. There's nothing wrong with advocacy, but you should at least be honest about it.
And, as the saying goes, "that's how you get Trump". How could an organization the size of NYT get the election so wrong? Because they were looking at it with blinders on. They may have put on the blinders intentionally, but their readers didn't. And yet their readers still suffered the effects of the blinders, too.
To be fair the daily mail does put out a good article once in a blue moon and the Guardian uses really nice fonts,
Don't forget Tufte's Challenger graph, which provides really the best visualization of the data. He's a master of visual communication.
If the information was presented in his fashion, a no-launch decision would have clearly been a no-brainer. This is why the soft arts are essential for engineers too.
https://groups.nceas.ucsb.edu/...
"You have liberated me from thought."
They didn't need that graph. Glass transition temperature in polymers is taught to just about every engineering student on the planet in first year materials science subjects.
As Feynman showed it was a management fuckup of ignoring experts.
There were a lot of contributing factors, but yes, this sadly was one. The Thiokol engineers were against launch, but they failed to make a sufficient case as to why exactly they felt the O-rings were unsafe (there actually was a Thiokol document showing that not only was O-ring failure high at low temperatures but that the second O-ring ceased to be redundant - but they didn't have the document available to them). The Shuttle program managers were getting mad at them for insisting on delays due to the low temperatures without being able to back it up (one of them said something along the lines of "My god, Thiokol - when do you want me to launch, April?") and eventually the Thiokol management dropped their objections (even though the engineers were still strongly against launch). The engineers all gathered round to watch the launch on TV, thinking it was going to explode on the pad. When it lifted off they all breathed a sigh of relief, only to have it dashed during the explosion.
I'll never forget the last thing grandma said to me before she died: "What are you doing in here with that knife?!?"
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Check the sources. If sources aren't provided, then you have to assume they are lying until this news source has built up a reputation. Even then, basing your reporting on anonymous sources is shitty reporting, but it should go in your favor in the end if it is actually true.
DJT's transgressions are a helluva lot more frequent and more significant than MSM's. Some are just stupid (e.g. "Biggest electoral college win since Reagan," "Just look at what happened last night in Sweden!"), but every day there are new ones.
How do we fix this?
Seems like either we have to fight harder to make people see fake news and these dodgy blog sites/social media posts for what they are, or we have to give in and use all the same tactics to create a counter-narrative.
The same technique is being used to try to influence the up-coming French election, to get a far right candidate elected. Do we start posting counter-memes and creating blogs full of lies about her and linking to them on Facebook.fr?
Perhaps there is a third way, but it's risky. Create memes and fake stories supporting the far right candidate, but make them so bad and so obviously fake that they make people more critical and likely to reject them. The danger is that people are so stupid they believe them anyway. That already happened in the UK with stories about the EU.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
What if the people think the sources are against them as well, even if you think it's reliable?
Showing numbers like how many people are affected by terrorism vs how many citizens kill each other... Shows terrorism is a non issue... BUT MUSLIMS
like the sound you hear when scratching your nails on a piece of glass.
Now we all know that Trump, Putin, Ali Khamenei, and Kim Jong-un are all going to put their ego trips away and play together nicely! What could possibly go wrong?
"The Times needs to simplify their sign-up experience and make it easier for people to pay for the subscriptions. As of now, it is like the sound you hear when scratching your nails on a piece of glass."
In general, it seems to me that the New York Times is poorly managed.
And this will be a fair comparison the moment when:
a) Trump prints retractions of his errors when they're pointed out to him
b) The signal-to-noise ratio of the Times approaches anything near Trump's utterances
Last post!
I don't think it was ever more objective, certainly not since William Randolph Hearst in the 1890s. Newspapers used to be more honest about their political leanings. For example, the Austin American Statesman used to be called the Austin American Democrat. Similar names can be found in smaller cities, the newspaper will be named Middletown Liberal Times or whatever.
The LA Times had a very clear policy of simply not reporting anything that didn't support their political leanings. In 1884 the ignored Grover Cleveland's election to president for several days, pretty much pretending it didn't happen.
I'm curious, how much are the Russians paying you to post pro-Trump bullshit all day? Can anyone get in on it? Are you paid per post or an hourly rate?
Where do you think they got it from?
Felix Sater.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
The user experience for NTT digital subscriptions is The Worst. I wonder why.
Does trump a) apologize for his mistakes or b) blame someone else & double down?
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
Which is why Donald Trump is more believable than the NY Times
Only if you are a self-insulated, ignorant non-reader who only wants to hear your point of view from anyone willing to tell it.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
I see no votes on parent. As of this posting (Score:0). Click on the word Score and the modal displays "No comment history available." Anonymous Cowards start with a score of 0 here. Always have.
Really, I have to give them credit where credit is due: by repeatedly pointing out errors (however trivial) out of the tens of thousands of news stories that are published every day, they've managed to get their supporters to the point where they'll trust a new story on www.siteiveneverheardofbefore.com/newishstuff/there_are_no_wmds_in_iraq.html more than they will an actual newspaper
Absolutely those morons!
"In the words of XKCD: "Dear God, I would like to file a bug report". ;)"
You can try but even God I suspect would be unable to rewire those well trodden neurons.
by repeatedly pointing out errors (however trivial) out of the tens of thousands of news stories that are published every day
In other words, exactly the same thing the New York Times (and others) do with Trump's utterances. Please don't pretend that this is a one-sided thing.
Only with Trump, you can just wait for the next 4 sentences he utters, and at least 3 of them will have at least 1 error each. The fourth will be 100% opinion (It will be the GREATEST 'x'!)
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
There are so many free sources of news, it may be impossible to sell it in the near future.
It may also be impossible for commercial news sources to compete with the millions of "news enthusiasts" that post and analyze news simply for the fun of it.
Events are posted in near real-time on youtube and thousands of people dissect and analyze Wikileaks releases the instant they hit the internet.
There is no commercial news room that can scale out to that size.
Yes, the availability of so much news does force the consumer to filter out bullshit for him/her self - but many times you are getting bullshit from paid mainstream media - so you have to do the due diligence anyway if you want to stay informed.
Good luck MSM - you are competing with the entire internet - and I don't think you will win.
Breitbart managed to get $40million taxpayer dollars spent on the Clinton-Lewinsky investigation and that was long before the year 2000.
What did we get from it all? "News" that was more hype than substance, a toothless impeachment, and a confirmation that presidents lie.
And ye "thorn" character. Don't forget a venerable part of the English alphabet annihilated by ye importation of cheap thorn-less foreign German and Italian typefonts into England.
Bring back ye thorn! Make ye Empire Great Again!
This is probably the most insightful post I've read on Slashdot in about 5 years.
It's a great post, but sadly it says more about the decline of Slashot than anything else. I guess there still are some non-blowhards on this site, but they're few and far between.
Slashdot recently had an article regarding a law suit against Apple. The summary went something like this:
Google's lawyers said blah blah blah on Friday in the appeal they filed ABC's to law suit. Google says they blah blah blah. According to Google's lawyers, they are right because blah blah blah.
Not a single word about what the other company's position is. Does that sound like a fair and objective story?
Does such reporting *work*, does it strongly influence opinion? ALL of the comments posted on Slashdot were based purely on the claims in the summary (Google's claims) and therefore supportive of Google. I'm the only one who pointed out that Google made these in an APPEAL - the jury, after listening to evidence from both sides, had already decided that the other company was right. Therefore the other company most likely has a fair point or two - no mention in the Slashdot summary of what the other company said (and the court ruled was correct).
In almost all disagreements, both sides have a point, or a legitimate concern. One side may have a *stronger* point, but there *are* two sides - otherwise there wouldn't be a dispute. If a source fails to present both sides of an issue they are reporting on, it's probably a source of opinion, not news.
I correctly said "Google" five times in my comment, but I see I accidentally typed "Apple" in the first sentence.
It's because the NYT is more likely to lean on "trust us, we're the NYT" and list a bunch of anonymous sources who could tell anyone whatever story they want, whereas the other site in your example would have to link to actual, verifiable docs before anyone with any sense would believe it.
So quite how you equate "Won the electoral college" with "Trump must be popular" when the facts state otherwise can only be ascribed to insanity.
-> The key revenue driver for the New York Times has been its digital subscription business,
You forgot the ongoing program of the whole paper being a blatantly hardcore left wing proaganda rag. Thats gotta be worth quite a few undercover $$millions from the Democrat party, the Clinton Foundation and god knows which groups of billionaire social manipulators.
Report facts and give a list of verifiable sources. Don't expect people to believe that anonymous people told you what you wanted to hear.
It's terribly simple and they'd know it if they hadn't fallen down into the clickbait hellhole, but random internet comments often have better sourcing than stories from corporate media outlets.
Shut up, you fucking liar.
Last post!
quit trying to enforce your morality on me. not everyone uses it, or wants to. this is 'murika pal, back the fuck off.
and that is exactly the problem. The AP and every major United States news outlet is more then just 'selective' about what data they present.
They may 'pretend' what they are giving you is the news, but what they really give you is 'the news' they think 'should be' .
Here is a good example that was given to me by a ex-girlfriend who was a catholic and worked in a local news room.
Standing orders, if there was a story that came across the wire and it involved child molestation and a priest it would be presented if not a lead story that night. Anything else the involved molestation of a child, by a rabbi, a pastor, or a teacher was not newsworthy.
The girl quit when she was given footage taken at a peaceful prolife march and given the orders 'cut this footage to make these people look nuts'.
For another example, go back and watch the news footage of Clinton loosing. Note the emotional content of the 'news' being presented. It is obvious that every major news outlet , ( fox is only half a major outlet) is entirely staffed by people who considered it a 'tragedy' that Clinton didn't win.
Not that there are any 'unbiased' alternative outlets. Heck even Slashdot shows some bias it is hard to get away from, the problem is all of the American news outlets I'm aware of are much more interested in ratings and viewership then truth or objectivity. That is in many ways the fault of the consumers who have stopped demanding it and instead consume whatever is more 'pleasing' to them.
âoeTolerance applies only to persons, but never to truth. Intolerance applies only to truth, but never to persons.
The last time Slashdot tried anything Unicode-related, vandals used control characters in comment subjects to mess with the layout and spoof moderation scores. The administrators had to put in a strict code point whitelist to prevent these code points from appearing in comments posted thenceforth.
You suck, asshole. The story about Obama prosecuting his opponents in Times that you linked is:
1) 2 years too late
2) Page 20
3) Calls it "IRS mismanagement"
4) Nixon was impeached for trying to do what Obama did here. Not a word in the New Jerk Slimes about that.
Sorry, asshole, that's no longer good enough. Americans are tired of being brainwashed by the libertard stream media. You just don't get that we are onto your dirty tricks now. This is why you guys are called FAKE NEWS.
The Swedish thing was correct. Trump made no claims about any terror attacks: he just happened to watch a segment on FNC b/w Tucker Carlson and Ami Horowitz regarding the law & order situation in Sweden, particularly when it comes to immigrants and rape/murder. There has been a bit of discussion about that, and since in Sweden, and in much of Europe, it's considered hateful to even bring up issues like the impact immigrants have on crime, that stuff goes on unrepentant.
If the media or you wanna demonstrate that Trump's statements on this are false, pull out the statistics of rapes/murders in Sweden for any length of time backwards starting this year (or last), show how they co-relate to the number of immigrants who've come in (meaning Muslim immigrants from the Middle East and North Africa, not native European people from Denmark or Holland or Switzerland), and demonstrate that when the number of immigrants went up, violent crime went down!!!
Uh, Fox News is a TV channel that one can also listen to on Sirius XM. Question of reading only comes in when one visits their website for the articles, which are typically word to word for what was narrated on the air. So where exactly does the question of readability arise?
I'd started a long rebuttal, but you're not worth the effort if you're not willing to attach your name. I'll just settle for this: Show any evidence whatsoever that:
a) There really was an IRS witchhunt for the tea party (hint: there wasn't, they also targeted keywords like "progressive" and "occupy")
b) Obama ordered it
Last post!
See, now that post of yours is misleading.
Terrorism is not a non-issue. It is statistically unlikely but that does not make it a non-issue. It is even more an issue if you consider the societal implications.
Riddle me this Batman. Criticism about Trump saying Sweden is having trouble like they never had before makes my Google Top story news RSS.
Monday rolls around, and Sweden having riots does not.... I have to see it in my Zerohedge RSS, and then manually search to read more stories on it.
I'm not a fan of Trump or the right, but I know horse shit when I see it.
They don't deserve "successes" acting as a fake news brainwashing organizations pushing fake narratives.
Would you say it's a failure if the weather forecast, on a particular occasion, predicts a 20% chance of rain, and it rains? If so, why?
Riots, that's happening in Sweden!
Really, I have to give them credit where credit is due: by repeatedly pointing out errors (however trivial) out of the tens of thousands of news stories that are published every day, they've managed to get their supporters to the point where they'll trust a new story on www.siteiveneverheardofbefore.com/newishstuff/hillaryclintonpedophilering.html more than they will an actual newspaper.
This is why the majority of Americans do not believe people with your views - you just cannot accept the role of "your side" in anything you perceive as negative. People don't believe the press because they press lies or prints stories without verifying them? Trump's fault. There's no possibility that press like the New York Times or Washington Post could be at fault for their own credibility gap with the American public. It's not their fault that the publish inaccurate and/or biased news, it's those right wing people's fault for pointing it out (those nefarious forces of evil). The left still doesn't get it. They have learned exactly nothing from their resounding defeat. Even when you're trying to convince people how right you are, all you're really doing is further eroding your own credibility. The left needs to learn how to tell when they're in a hole and how to stop digging.
There is nothing unreasonable about distrusting news sources that repeatedly demonstrate their willingness to discard journalistic standards in order to pursue a specific political/social agenda. In fact, there is something wrong with NOT distrusting them. A reasonably intelligent person being aware that the NYT and Washington Post in particular have repeatedly outed themselves as mouthpieces of the political opposition has reason to distrust them. Perhaps they're more trusting of other "alternative" news sites that haven't yet repeatedly demonstrated an unrestrained zeal to villify opposition to the point of compromising the truth.
By being selective in what data you present (accidentally in that case, on purpose in the present case), you can get people to believe precisely the opposite of what is true.
Not really. The New York Times and Washington Post (and CNN) tried that technique to get Hillary elected, and it failed. The people didn't buy it.
Sure, I guess, but he just skews it decisively toward what he knows actually happened. There is no meaningful way to say that his extrapolation holds under any circumstances whatsoever. Also, he isn't the best follower of his own advice a lot of the time.
Yawn! Fake rage.
That story in 2015 came out about the time the FBI cleared the IRS of any crimial activity. There were news stories in may of 2013 I found from the nytimes when I did a search, so either you are blatantly ignorant or willfully ignorant. Also when groups that claim they hate paying taxes are scrutinized even more it makes sense. The only thing those egg heads at the IRS failed to consider were the political ramifications of doing such. So try to use a bit more intelligence in your outrage and chose one of the Obama controversies that you can actually have a chance of a winning argument.
The signal-to-noise ratio of the Times approaches anything near Trump's utterances
Perhaps my experiences are different than yours, but it seems quite the opposite. Can you cite specific data demonstrating your claim? Variations of "it's just obvious" are not valid data. I might also point out that Trump is not a news organization whose sole mission is supposed to be reporting events with utmost accuracy and without bias. He's a fucking politician, not a reporter.
GP was pointing out a general error with humans. I think everyone on slashdot who isn't a alt-right troll would admit that NYT is real news while fox is not, sure. But convincing ourselves that we're immune because our media is better than that would be the worst thing to do.
For instance, there are plenty of slashdotters who don't believe wiki citations when wiki disagrees with them. It's not perfect, sure, but neither is anything else.
A good number of Trump supporters I know personally don't question the unethical things Trump or the right wing does because they've firmly established in their minds that the right wing is the correct wing and Trump is a good guy. They are willing to ignore when Trump says wildly innacurate stuff because they've convinced themselves he's the honest one. If we convince ourselves that because our media is at the moment more accurate, we're always right, we're liable to do things that might damage the country like the right wing is now.
When a Trumper goes spurting about how the news is 'Fake news' when all they do in some cases is post his exact words. I just don't bother with such blatant idiocy. And unfortunately I have been encountering the concept of 'You can't fix stupid' a lot lately.
a) Here is one: http://www.forbes.com/sites/robertwood/2015/07/23/19-facts-on-irs-targeting-president-obama-cant-blame-on-republicans/
b) "What did the President know, and when did he know it"
I do sincerely hope that Trump gets to appoint a special prosecutor to find out just how deep Obama went into it. If he has nothing to hide...
c) Ask yourself why would any government (e.g. IRS) employee move an inch unless directly ordered to do so e.g. by the President. Why would they target conservatives unless ordered by the resident?
d) remember the Black Panthers Philly voter intimidation investigation that Eric Holder ordered shut? After the evidence/testimony/facts of voter intimidation were in? Do you think Holder did it himself, or was Obama involved? Why wasn't Holder fired by Obama afterwards? I got 10s of examples like this, literally.
Understanding probability and statistics is not "wearing blinders". It's taking the blinders off.
They assigned a lower probability to Trump winning based on the polls, and Trump won. That does not mean they were wrong in any way, any more than stating that the probability of a dice roll coming up anything but six is higher than the probability of rolling six. If you roll the die just once, and it comes up six, it doesn't make the probability statement wrong, biased, or based on incorrect assumptions. It just means events with non-zero probabilities of happening still happen.
Here you go: https://www.treasury.gov/tigta/auditreports/2013reports/201310053fr.pdf
start on page 11 where they admit the targeting of conservatives was improper
The question is why nobody got fired/jailed for improper persecution of conservatives at the IRS. Why did e.g. Lois Lerner get to resign and keep the pension, instead of ending up in jail. Did Obama intervene, or was it somebody else? Who covered it up?
Pres. Trump, it's not too late to appoint a special prosecutor! Subverting the Constitution using administrative powers is no small feat. Heads of these eggs should roll. Obama may be immune, but the underlings can still be indicted to stop these kinds of crime in the future.
Neither is the WaPo. The sooner they both fail, the better.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05...
This one was on Page 11 and drafted 2 years earlier. Make you feel any better, you shill?
Go jack off to Alex Jones and enjoy your bubble of ignorance.
I'm a Trump supporter, and you don't know what the fuck you're talking about.
I know Trump is a narcissistic asshole who doesn't give a shit about the truth. He's playing the game your ilk invented, and doing it better than you ever imagined possible. You're just angry that your side lost, but you know they're all playing the same game.
You're either a moron or intellectually dishonest if you actually believe that Hillary or the Democrats have some kind of moral superiority. They lie, cheat, and steal just as much, if not more.
He believed that NASA's delusional bureaucracy was ultimately to blame and it needed to be torn down entirely and rebuilt. The other members of the commission disagreed, which is pretty much why two decades later the crew of the Columbia died. Sadly, a narrative of organizational incompetence is extremely hard to keep alive in the mainstream media, so in the minds of most people they're still just random tragedies... an unavoidable price of space flight.
Two other things worth noting about Feynman's assessment: he was strongly impressed by the software systems of the Shuttle, considering it to be much more robust than the hardware (not the sort of thing one often hears these days), and the coda to his appendix is, of course, a timeless one worth quoting:
For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.
Expertly trolled. Ah yes, we all remember that time when Jeff Bezos bought the NYT. I think that happened in the alternate universe I'd love to live in right now...
The government finds the government not guilty, hardly surprising.
This is just like Hillary and her emails. She broke the law and everyone knows it but the FBI wouldn't act "because Hillary".
Or like the AHA with Obama warning the Supreme Court that overturning his precious law would be "unprecedented".
Or like Benghazi where we still don't know what the hell happened or who ordered our assets in the area to stand down.
Or like the BP spill where the Mines and Minerals Service wasn't held to account for not enforcing existing regulations.
Etc..
Plenty of rage we're coming off of that is valid rage.
Not to mention.. if you like your plan you can keep it and the average working family will save $2000 on their premiums.
This is a race to the bottom the left cannot win. The right is used to and will tolerate an astonishing quantity of lies and bullshit. The left, as we've already seen, will become demoralized when faced with a candidate who is only a blandly, typically-horrible politician.
The Times has already reached "bad enough" in my estimation, along with every other news publication I've ever looked at in any detail. And unlike the millions of evangelicals who watch Fox News and reluctantly voted for Trump, I don't grade on a curve.
The mainstream media needs to aggressively, forcefully hold Trump to account. Given the amount of material they have to work with, this should be an easy task. Unfortunately, they have conclusively demonstrated that they cannot separate out lies from truth, much less the absurdly sensationalist and irrelevant from the reasonable and important. They've fallen prey to the greatest troll[1] the world has ever seen and it will destroy them in the end, once the lurid headlines lose their charm.
And history will record the moment of their downfall, of course, as the moment they tried kill two birds with one stone with their "fake news" non-story[2], too busy drinking their own kool-aid to realize that mainstream news has always been a pretty damn sketchy enterprise, even during its supposed golden eras.
1. Albeit probably one who is operating mostly on a subconscious level.
2. Fabricated news websites and chain emails and conspiracy theories obviously exist, but they've been around for a long time and are more of a symptom than a disease in their own right.
Grow up.
For another example, go back and watch the news footage of Clinton loosing. Note the emotional content of the 'news' being presented. It is obvious that every major news outlet , ( fox is only half a major outlet) is entirely staffed by people who considered it a 'tragedy' that Clinton didn't win.
There comes a time when respecting traditions is at odds with one's moral obligation to help society. This is an ongoing tragedy; in 2016 many media outlets, including hundreds of newspapers who have never made an endorsement before, broke with tradition in numerous ways in a desperate bid to avoid putting a dangerous demagogue into power. It wasn't enough, and now they continue to fight. It's only natural.
Dude, he lied and said there had been an attack in Sweden when there had not been. Something happening after-the-fact does not make his lie true in retrospect, that information is irrelevant. And we generally care less about riots in Sweden than our own president telling us lies, while in the same breath accusing the media of being completely faked.
Sigh, the orange one is the poster child for the Dunning Kruger effect.
Hey, Windows users, there is no such thing as "forward" slash, there is only slash and backslash.
If I felt inclined to prove interkin3tic's point by conjuring some overused talking points, I'm unsure I could have come up with anything better than what I just read. Well done, AC, well done.
If you like your doctor you can keep your doctor
If you like your plan you can keep your plan.
All politicians lie, a lot. The fact that Obama was a smoother liar than Trump is not nearly as laudable as you think it is.
How hilarious that you post something completely accurate and are modded a troll.
Just goes to show that people who are brainwashed with narratives are not only completely hoodwinked but also addicted to those narratives. They have exchanged their self worth and individuality for a story thought up in a think tank. As drones they cannot conceive of anything other than how they are programmed. They are fearful of anything that approaches the truth. Contradicting their world view is considered an assault.
Poor simple bastards.
When the only tool you have is a claw hammer every problem starts to look like the back of someone's skull.
Point to ANY non-minor, non-retracted error in WaPo or NYT. Show me ONE. Maybe you'll point out the time NYT said he hadn't talked to Xi, because he hadn't talked to Xi, but Trump didn't read it until after he talked to Xi so he called it "fake news." I would love to see what you consider to be a fake or misleading article coming from the NYT or Washington Post.
Same could be said for the reverse, you're not helping your point. There have been ridiculous lies on every side.
Or if you understand that there are 2 sides to every story, especially in politics, and that you can still lie by stating all the facts i.e. lies of omission.
The media and government do not have an authority on truth.
How about the recent controversy with Pewdiepie on youtube? The WSJ alleged he was antisemitic by putting a bunch of off-color jokes he made in a video without any kind of context. Then most of the mainstream media, including the two you mentioned, repeated the same thing as if it was fact, misguiding their audiences into thinking he was a racist. So you have a situation where the mainstream media says one thing and where everyone who knows him and know the context behind what he said says the opposite. Seems to me this is a situation which shows the media is full of shit and will gladely slander someone if they know it will get them clicks.
The media is not a monolithic entity, but composed of tens of thousands of people each with their own agenda and subject to those rules and agendas of their thousands of editors and hundreds parent organizations from dozens of countries... Just like it has always been, which is why accusations raised about "the media" have always been silly distractions by scheming assholes attempting to support their own agenda.
Point to ANY non-minor, non-retracted error in WaPo or NYT. Show me ONE.
Forty lies from the mainstream media last week. WaPo tells some whoppers.
45% of people believe Trump is credible
42% of people believe the mainstream media is credible
The MSM did that to themselves.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Here's a fact: more people find Trump credible (45%) than the mainstream media (42%). BTW, Trump supporters take him seriously, but not literally. They aren't parsing his words for nuance and subtlety.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
We're in this situation because millions of people lack basic skills in critical thinking. People who are unable to name a single logical fallacy are being encouraged to go out and vote.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Citation needed. I really don't believe that NYT or any other media outlet has been excessively harsh on the man. I listened to the entire Israel/US joint press conference the other day. I feel like it was portrayed in the media fairly, and in some cases too nice. Trump came off sounding like a buffoon and a charlatan, and his counterpart was a typical slippery politician. But even NPR and NYT went to spin it as if Trump and Netanyahu came up with some master plan that will finally bring peace to the middle east. Nevermind the fact that Trump refused to call on a single reporter from a traditional media outlet. That being said, I'm actually OK with the media portraying Trump as more competent than he really is. No matter who actually resides at 1600 Penn, I want the office of the President to be seen across the globe as a station of power, respect, and wisdom.
No, not better. A front page, and an apology from Obama might have mattered. Indictments/resignations at the IRS would have mattered. An independent prosecutor would have mattered, but we all know why it never happened...
At least to prevent these types of government abuses by the Democrats (hell, even Republicans) in the future, we need all those responsible to go to jail, or at least be indicted.
If you don't understand why it is even an issue (no victims here, only conservatives suffered, right, right?), then go back to your Fake News, asshole.
The engineers all gathered round to watch the launch on TV, thinking it was going to explode on the pad. When it lifted off they all breathed a sigh of relief, only to have it dashed during the explosion.
Wow.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Just because people believe something doesn't make it true.
BTW, Trump supporters take him seriously, but not literally. They aren't parsing his words for nuance and subtlety.
And yet he constantly shows everyone that he should be taken exactly literally.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
The skeptical Left believes only half what it reads in the papers. The Right disbelieves all of it.
china = Chinese bots
But never mind the CEO is associated with known pedophiles and has previously defended pedophilia. Including an article in the NYT.
"They assigned a lower probability to Trump winning based on the polls"
You were so close to defining the problem with that statement.
fivethirtyeight doesn't simply perform statistical probability analysis. If that was the case, you could simply run the data through SPSS and be done with it.
Nate Silver and his group of hacks is supposed to look at the ENTIRE process. If you do your analysis on bad data - you will have a bad result. Nate Silver's blinders came from believing that the polls weren't biased - and they absolutely were.
NYT, Washington Post, fivethirtyeight and others simply did not question polls that jived with their pre-defined political beliefs....and as a result practically no one trusts their analysis.
I totally agree. There's little distinction between the political parties. They just have different special interest groups. The Republicans have fundamental/extremist Christian groups, big oil, and finance. The Dems have big pharma, insurance, and tech companies. They both manipulate the game to get federal funding for their pet projects, don't really give a shit about the ethical issues they claim to represent, and both really, really hate the poor.
Ah, the "seriously, not literally" defense. In despair I tried to rationalize Trump using this argument as presented pretty well by Peter Thiel shortly before the election. I thought wow, maybe they're right, and maybe Trump really can buck the establishment and do some great things!
What a fucking farce. He's worse than I had originally feared. He is a brainless troll that has packed his cabinet with billionaires and is executing (ineptly, at least) the establishment GOP plan to a tee. Oh, and on top of it attempting to literally implement his bizarre campaign promises, e.g. the idiotic wall.
Completely disregarding the Russian conspiracy circlejerk - I absolutely believe the man is not of sound mind and therefore unfit for any public office, let alone the presidency. There is no other adequate explanation.
while [ 1 ]; do echo -n -e "\xe2\x95\xb$((($RANDOM&1)+1))"; done
many predictive failures - yes.
The last few years have shown the weakness in the predictive power of polls. (Brexit and the like: http://www.newsbusters.org/blo...)
Polling has turned in to a partisan activity in an apparent attempt to sway the outcome of the very thing being polled.
It is completely unlike predicting the weather.
Uhhh, if you're getting your information from somewhere other than the media or government then I don't think you understand what "media" means. The media and government do not have an authority on *narrative*, but they sure as hell have a lockdown on facts outside your personal experience. Fortunately, neither one of them are the monoliths you imply, and there are always competing narratives in both sectors.
Quit acting like you're some underground warrior fighting the Illuminati and maybe I'll start to look into the facts behind your narrative to see if there's a grain of truth somewhere.
What's even more funny is the fact that people actually think facts are flamebait.
1. Allow comments only from subscribers. People love to opine, and will pay for the privilege. 2. At the same time, allow comments on a larger range of articles. Particularly aggravating is that they don't normally allow comments to guest editorials. Why? If they can't take criticism, they shouldn't be writing editorials. 3. Allow subscribers only to turn off animated ads. NYT blocks at least some ad blockers, but without an ad blocker it is all but unreadable due to distraction from animated ads all over the page.
Comparison between Trump and New York Times is not fair.
Trump is now in the profession of lying. He's a politician if you haven't noticed. The tendency of politicians to lie is well known. Such is life. Luckily, we have a counter balance: news media. Which brings me to point out the obvious:
New York Times is in the profession of telling the truth. That is the sole purpose of its existence. The fact that New York TImes lies (or even have a clear bias) is worse that Trump lying. He's a politician and NYT is trusted news media. You can assume Trump lies but you should also be able to assume that NYT tells the truth.
The fact that you are even comparing NYT and Trump in this regard, means that we all have already lost. NYT is not credible anymore.
The NY times is in the profession of making money. If it requires they tell a modicum of truth and fact check then they will. If they can get by making stories up and going on 4 martini lunches then that will work as well.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
I want my comics with a digital subscription, otherwise I'll stick with the local rag in print, with syndicated comics, and get my digital news from the reposting sites, e.g. here.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Than to tweet and be proven a fool by anyone with a computer.
Other NYT stories tell a different side but you have your ideological blinders on I see.
Sigh, the orange one is the poster child for the Dunning Kruger effect.
Not really. Dunning-Kruger requires you to actually be an expert at something. Being born rich is not an expertise. We need another name for the syndrome where having lots of money makes people think they're experts at everything.
man, what's with these republicans and anecdotes. For every statistic, they respond with a story about a brother, a college roommate, a girlfriend or a carpet cleaner... sir, that's not news thats gossip.
There really was an IRS witchhunt for the tea party
They admitted to it.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/11/us/politics/irs-apologizes-to-conservative-groups-over-application-audits.html
th-they a-also t-targeted other stuff!!!!!!!
uh huh...
Now try to explain, in simple terms, why there were literally 100 articles in the NYT about Christie's Bridge for every article written about the ARMS TRAFFICKING FROM A SENATOR THAT WAS TRYING TO PASS CALIFORNIA BILLS TO MAKE ARMS TRAFFICKING MORE LUCRATIVE (Leland Yee). Oh, that's because Christie was an (R) and Yee was a (D), and while the Bridgegate claims never went past "alleged", Yee actually got put away because of all the evidence mounted against him. Fewer than 20 articles.
Yeah, fuck you and the blind eye you turn toward everything you disagree with. Fuck you with a chainsaw.
I was referring to the tendency of the cluelessly wrong to double down when confronted with contradictory, factual evidence instead of changing their position.
Hey, Windows users, there is no such thing as "forward" slash, there is only slash and backslash.
I don't want to read the NY Times online. I want a paper. I would pay for a timely, daily subscription, but I cannot have it delivered. I CAN, however, have the Wall Street Journal delivered. Sure, its in my mailbox, and the mail doesn't come until after 5 pm most days, but I have so much more time in the evening while cooking. How the NY Times managed to screw this up is beyond me. I can read the WSJ digital edition, but I don't. The WSJ can manage to have a paper in my mailbox in small town, middle of nowhere Texas everyday, and my kids don't see me staring at a tablet.
Fucks sake, why is it you precious snowflakes need constant acknolwedgement that politicians on both sides are have sins?
Democrats at the moment DO have a moral superiority. Self-dealing with buisiness interests, fake charities, discriminating against people based on religion, endangering the freedom of the press... Hillary didn't do anything like that, nor has any democratic president.
Fucking trolling nazi racist cunt International Libertarians now calling themselves Alt-Right led by Donald atrump and Steve Bannon have been trying to take down OUR EXCELLENT NEWS MEDIAso that these racist fucks can start up their own and have no challenge to their racist propaganda. Trump Network is coming! AWC is already here. RT is here too. Go buy a newspaper and see what Bannon and Trump don't want you to know!
If the Grand Old Girl wants to survive it has to become more moderate. They were cheerleaders for Hillary and made Drumph out to be the devil. Every. Chance. They. Got. Add in 'you are all *ists for daring to speak out against XYZ... and poeple move on. People are stupid.. but they dont want to be called stupid IF you expect them to buy your product.
IMHO You can be biased in your opinions but reporters are SUPPOSED to reign themselves in and not put their world view first. Report the facts as colored as little as possible and both sides will read it. Don't and you loose half the readers. With so many options the only LONG TERM solution is to be moderate. Report both sides and NYT could be the leaders again in 'print' news.
" thing is a perfect example of how Trump makes unhinged and false statements,"
No, it's actually true.
Sweden has had 3 major riots due to muslim immigrant violence.
Their serious crime rate, especially rape has jumped significantly.
As a result, Sweden has stopped actually stopped tracking whether the criminals are immigrants.
The darndest part is that if you report this in Sweden, this is considered hate speech, and you are liable for prosecution.
That's a terrible fit of the data and the trend that Rei refers to isn't even that convincing. All that you can get from these data are that conditions at and above 66F were well-sampled and predominantly (though not entirely) associated with non-failure. There are nearly as many non-zero points above 66F as below. Drawing conclusions from sparse data, especially in retrospect, is silly and unscientific.
The plot you link to gives a ridiculously high weight to the sparsest data and deviates greatly from the best-sampled data. The page it's from seems to be down, but is his fit to any particular model or is it just a scary looking curve?
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.
trump won. Get over it.
No fucker, CHEATING is how we got trump. Everyone knows it too but his supporters simply don't give a fuck. Party over people!
That's a very very poorly researched set of half-assed lies you are pointing at, Mr Trumpansee