The Gray Lady Winked - a focus on NYT

An author can boldly go where publishers fear to tread

If you’ve ever thought about the power of the New York Times in controlling narratives, you might want to have listen to The Michael Shermer Show Episode 211

While I’m looking forward to the Third Series of Succession , I’ve done very little follow up on the idea that Succession is based on the Sulzberger Clan

For me, the family portrayal in Succession shows us the lives of some of the most screwed up people we might imagine.

Well, the editorial policy might have a relationship with family dynamics.

For much of the world, the letters NYT recall many of the emotions that brand creators dream of. The ‘newspaper of record’. My (former) admiration for the brand and the publication has been taking a few knocks over the last year or so. Bari Weiss’ story is a case in point, IMO.

Today, as the podcast began, I was working away and listening in the background. Then, I was pulled to attention pulled into the podcast.

I heard about the idea that NYT falsely reported that Poland invaded Germany in the run-up to WWII.

I rewound the podcast and took it with me on my Covid Constitutional. What I learned about the NYT over the ~100 minutes had my eyebrows doing lots of push-ups.

If you know me at all, you’d know that I have a complex relationship with Skeptics generally. I saw some unexpected value in skepticism today - preparedness to question Grand Narratives. But more than this. To Poke the Bear.

Rindsberg describes the reasons for self-publishing The Gray Lady.

I would imagine that this book and the podcast I’m referring to will be ‘divisive’ in the extreme.

This would be the kind of post that would get me flagged on facebook.com (references to FB in the podcast).

The power of NYT is at the scale of Big Tech. But it’s older and more entrenched.

For me, it raises the question - who checks the checkers?