Calacanis: NYT pivoted to partisan activism to drive subscriber growth
Jason Calacanis · E106: SBF's media strategy, FTX culpability, ChatGPT, SaaS slowdown & more · Dec 3, 2022 · at 47:36
Jason Calacanis argues that legacy news institutions like the New York Times abandoned objective reporting during the Trump presidency to pursue subscriber revenue through activist coverage.
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“When Trump came in, a generation of new journalists became activist journalists. They didn't want to tell stories and take it straight down the middle and let the facts tell the story and let the audience make their own decision. They felt an existential risk. When Trump came into office, they got Trump derangement syndrome. They picked a side like MSNBC and Fox did, and the business model became, for the New York Times, pick a side and get the subscribers. It was a deliberate Cynical choice on the New York Times part to go full MSNBC or full Fox, the two extremes in mainstream media, in order to get the subs, and they literally rallied the troops there to do anti-tech, anti-Trump, ah, coverage, and they became activists, and when journalists become activists, they are no longer journalists, they're activists or commentators, and that's the problem. It's being presented as journalism when in fact it's activism.”
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