"NY Times to Readers: Drop Dead"

It's not often that I agree with a HUffington Post blogger (although it has happened a few times in the case of John Ridley) but I find myself almost completely in accord with this Craig Stoltz BLOG titled, "NY Times to Readers: Drop Dead." One of the great things about the Web is that it allows us to see the Inner Loon in most liberals. Before the web, we got a sanitized version of concerned "progressive" liberals carefully filtered for our public view by the MSM. However, the Web has allowed us to see the liberals for what they are: completely deranged as evidenced by their very own crazed rantings. Until recently such rantings were pretty well confined to their insular Leftwing blogs such as DUmmieland and KOmmieland. However, with the opening up of comments in various MSM online forums, the general public now gets to see the liberal Inner Loon. Such was the case recently when we were able to READ the sanity-challenged rabid rants responding to Karl Rove's first Newsweek blog in their comments section. Of course, this trend towards opening up of the comments section by some of the MSM is great for the DUmmie FUnnies since it provides us with tons more of comedic material to DUFU. However, the New York Times appears very nervous about completely opening up their story comments sections which I will allow Craig Stoltz to describe in Bolshevik Red (his great, great uncle was Bolshevik Yakov Sverdlov) while the commentary of your humble correspondent, welcoming all the new liberal loons (including Jason Leopold) who have started arriving in droves to the DUFU comments section in the past few weeks, is in the [brackets]:

NY Times to Readers: Drop Dead

[NY Times to Liberals: Don't expose yourselves as loons.]

The New York Times has opened a few of its stories-tentatively, selectively-to comments from the public. Between the public and these stories the Gray Lady has installed four part-time staffers whose job it is to uphold the quality of public discourse.

Quoted in Editor & Publisher, Martin Nisenholtz, senior vice president for digital operations of The New York Times Company, said: "A pure free-for-all doesn't, in my opinion, equal good. It can equal bad."

In the same E&P story, Kate Phillips, editor of the Times' Caucus blog: "I almost wish we could go back to the days when we never heard their [readers'] voices."

NYT public editor Clark Hoyt told Editor & Publisher that the paper finds itself "struggling with a vexing problem...How does the august Times, which has long stood for dignified authority, come to terms with the fractious, democratic culture of the Internet, where readers expect to participate but sometimes do so in coarse, bullying and misinformed ways?"

To which I say, to adopt the sort of uncivil language Sulzberger & Co. would never permit on their site: Bite me, you LOSERS!!!!!

[LOL! Continue Craig...]

Ahem.

To recede back into reasoned discourse: the Times' employees' diction and thinking betray an institutional viewpoint that suits it very poorly, in the first instance, for the Internet: Get this: The new medium has obligated the Times to comes to term with a democratic culture! Far worse, it's a...fractious one! Oh, how vexatious! After all, the Times is "august," and it stands for "dignified authority"!

[It stands for keeping its readers from seeing what the liberals are REALLY like: flat out Moonbats.]

Frankly, the Times also betrays an institutional self-infatuation that suits the paper very poorly for...well, just about anyone with self-respect.

Nisenholtz, Phillips, and Hoyt ooze supercilious condescension. Readers - unlike the staff members of the New York Times, except maybe Judith Miller, Jayson Blair, and... [you get the idea] - can be misinformed!

[OUCH!]

Readers can be coarse!

[Liberals can be loons!]

And the culture can be-absolutely unlike the Times, which has never used its power to beat up on a weaker opponent that can't protect itself-full of bullies!

I have previously praised the Times for its sophisticated use of web technology: Its Debate Analyzer tool is a breakthrough product. Its My Times feature demonstrates advanced understanding of the need to provide user control of content in the digital age.

[Also a terrific cafeteria in their new building.]

But its policy regarding reader comments reveals a very important way its current management is poorly prepared for the rising era of communication.

At a time when the newspaper is shedding veteran reporters, and in need of developing highly skilled multimedia journalists, devoting 2 slots to sweeping back the sea with a broom is a bad decision. It's sort of sweet, or silly, or just plain batty. It's the stockholders' money, and if they'd rather spend it shielding reader comments from view rather than funding journalism, that's their business.

[Pinch Sulzberger qualified himself to become the NY Times publisher by living through birth.]

But the paper's motivation for vetting the comments, as summarized by Hoyt - to uphold the appearance of dignity or augustitude or whatever - betrays a withering contempt for readers.

[The primary motivation of the NY Times is to keep their readers from seeing what the Left is REALLY like.]

It shows a lack of confidence in the very people the Times' advertising group is always bragging about: the national intelligencia, the "thought leaders," the discriminating cosmopolitans and patrons of the high arts.

It is a rather transparent form of censorship - the Fourth Estate squelching the voices of the undignified masses in the name of political and economic self-interest-and vanity.

It is a window into an institutional culture that is made ill, deep down, by the unpleasantness of contemporary public life.

[Tell me about it! Last night we were playing the slot machines at the casino and some incredibly annoying little old lady kept sticking her face in front of us and peppered us with dopey questions about how we were doing. I had to tell her to STFU in a semi-polite way. Perhaps NY Times editors and writers need to accompany us to the casino so as to get a flavor of the "common herd."]

It is, in the end, not an expression of dignity. It's an expression of cowardice.

[Correct. The NY Times is afraid to allow their readers see what liberals are really like when unfiltered. And now on to some unfiltered comments from the HUffPo HUffies...]

The times shouldn' tbe so stodgy and should be more open to readers' comments like the Washington Post is. The WP allows readers to take down more than a few pegs some of their right-wing White House propagandists and that's not only fun but a good thing. The NYTimes needs to know it's now the 21st century and not the 19th.

[The DUmmie FUnnies has already done a DUFU about the leftwing loon rantings in one of the WaPo's stories. Hey, NY Times! If you want to make the bigtime by being DUFUed here, you need to completely open up your reader's comments without ANY filters.]

The problem with the Times is not its political slant but rather the fact that it is dry and boring. It also panders to New York yuppie culture, one of the least attractive elements of American life.


[Actually more of a pander to the Bo-Bo Bohemians who wear berets and walk their dogs in Central Park.]

would love to see the whole range of thoughts on NY Times articles. Some damn smart readers,and a lot of crazy ones too I am sure.

[Crazy liberals are FUn to watch!]

New technology or not, I appreciate some civility on-line. Even on Huff Post, too many people sink into insults and flames rather than informed discussion.

[Which is why I often DUFU the HUffies.]

Get ready NYT - there's going to be a lot of bad punctuation and grammar headed your way.

[And lots of howling Moonbat rantings.]

It's that insufferable socialite mentality, or in its most inbred preppy manifestation, the disdain of the debuttante whose party has been crashed by those uncouth, uninvited outsiders. They just don't get it.

[My friend from way back, John Geak, specialized in crashing just such parties. He is legendary to a bunch of us down here for taking his clothes off in a Fountainbleau Hotel elevator and then flashing the entire lobby stark nekkid when the elevator doors opened up. Okay, a bit of a digression here...]

And someone might say something negative about Israel and the NYT can not stand for that

[Or about "neocons."]

Beautifully worded! I hate to be censored, and when I am, I avoid that particular site.

[You are welcome to post liberal loon rants anytime on the DUmmie FUnnies.]