Leaving New York Times

To many people reading this know, last month I retire from my position as a New York Times opinion author – a job I have done for 25 years. In spite of the encomiums released in times, it is not a happy leave. If you check my SubsendeYou’ll see that I don’t have a reason without strength or subjects to write. But from my sight, the nature of my relationship with times damaging a point where I couldn’t stay.

Charles Kaiser wrote a Dadrehan Dear Dear To review Columbia journalism about my departure. All I want to do with this post is to add more context. We will be clear: not Plan to have a run in times: I came, I saw, I felt I left, and I went on.

But I believe the story is why I leave something important about the current state of journalism in the status of the legasy.

The background: until 2017 or more, I enjoy my role in times, for a couple of reasons.

One, I felt that I finally crashed the writing code in opinion. If I was hired in times by the end of 1999, I was an economic professor who wrote sometimes for a wider audience. And making 800-word simple-English essays for readers with no economic background is, as different from writing equalical and diagrams for a small professional community. For a moment, I struggled to move.

But finally I think about it. I actually enjoyed the blacksmiths, to boil an argument to its necessity, which declared it in the ordinary language, and it was interesting. In addition, I believe that my writing affects national discourse, especially for issues as social security), and unreasonable social care), and the unreasonable research of care of the year.

In my first 24 years in times, from 2000 to 2024, some editorial restraints are how and what I wrote. For most of that time my draft goes directly to a copy of the copy, which sometimes suggests I will make changes that are more clear facts, or reinforcement in a path that does not understand the editor , and which readers may not be. But editing is light; Within many years many copy edits jokingly complain that I didn’t give anything to do, because I was going to be in the long run, with clean writing and with back-ups for all the real to declare.

This editing of light edits exceeds even when I take positions that make the leadership hours very nervous. My early and repeated criticism of pushing the bush to invade Iraq causing many tense management meetings. At meetings, I was prompted to wipe it. However the columns published themselves as I write them. And in the end, I believe in times – that is eventually apologize For its role in the development of the war – glad I got an anti-inasion standing. I believe this is my best time.

So I was dismayed to find out this past year, when the current times editors and I began to discuss our differences, that current management and top editors appeared to have been completely unaware of this important bit of the paper’s history and my role in it.

Two, past time management and editors allow me to participate in higher levels of economic debates. After the 2008 financial crisis is causing a good bloom of economic blogs. Important, sophisticated debates about crisis factors and answer policy occurring more or less in real time. I have become an active part of debates, because I have Economics blog In my own, under an umbrella umbrella but blind in column. The blog, unknown, both technical – sometimes more technical – and more than column.

Then, throw away, all things that make up writing times useful for me. Times eliminates the blog at the end of 2017. Here’s my Last post post blogthat gives a good idea of ​​the type of thing I have never done once it is eliminated.

Within a while I try to keep for loss of blog with twitter threads. But even before Elon Mozifed on site, Threet Threet is an awkward, lowest replacement of blog posts. So in 2021 I opened a sprosstrack account, as a place to put the technical material I do not publish in times. The management of the times is very angry. When I explained to them that I was really, an outlet really needed to publish a lot of analysis with charts and other, where I was able to publish my job to post my blog .

In September 2024 my newsletter was suddenly suspended in times. The only reason I was given is “a problem with control”: according to times, I often write. I don’t know why it is considered a problem, because my newsletter is not intended to be published as part of the usual paper. In addition, it has proven to be popular with many readers.

Also in 2024, editing my usual pillars came from the light touching the more intimidating. I keep from a edit level to three, with an immediate editor and his superior both weighed in the column, and sometimes making many write before it copies. These modifications are almost always involved with tonnes, identifying unnecessary qualifications, and, as I see it, false companionship. I will rewrite modifications to restore the meaning of my original argument. But when I told Charles Kaiser, I felt like I was training – especially emotional strength – to repair editorial damage than writing the original articles. And the last consequence of the back and often often feels flat and colorless.

One more thing: I am facing trials from others to dictate what I can (and not) write, usually in the form, “as you are still in a column to cover a column title. If that is the rule of my first tenure, I will never force the case for Obamacare, or against Social Security Privatization, and mostly alarming Iraq. In addition, all the time Author of opinion is prohibited from participating in any kind of media criticism. It is difficult for the rule to allow a writer in the opinion to declare, “we are lying in the war.”

I feel used my byline to make a storyline that is no longer mine. So I left.

That’s my story. What are the wider implications?

“Words,” John Maynard Keynes Once written, “You must be a little wild, because they are the assault of minds of impurity.” That’s how often my attitude towards writing opinion. Newspaper columns NEED Controversal, wipe some people in the wrong way, because the main point is to get people to break their thoughts. I used to say, only half a joke, which if a column did not generate a large amount of hate mail, meant I was wasted in space.

Although I feel in my last year of times is a push of the valuable, to avoid saying anything directly in a way that people can (especially to the right) are possible. I thought my question was, if that were the rules of the land, why even bothering even though there was a section of opinion?

There may be a time that readers still sit for graceful, motivated features of opinion – history Most boring headline“Canada’s essential initiative,” is the title of a time op-ed – because they are found to represent construction views. And I feel the feeling that management times still think it lives in that world. But in the most open information (and misinformation) around, boring writing has disappeared without a trace.

In a somewhat different issue, it is clear to me that the management I deal with does not understand the difference between having an opinion and has an informed opinion. With the cancellation of the newsletter, I tried to focus that I was nearly regularly regular authors of opinion made by policy. Their response is to teach other writers who often express views about policy, economy and otherwise. I have tried useless with a difference between having the opinions about the economy and knowing how to read analyzes of CBO and recent research papers. Falls all over the deaf.

That’s the story of my departure from times. Despite the difficulties of the last year, I remained very grateful for the times for hiring me and giving me decades of freedom to express my views such a great audience. And I feel sorry for leaving loyal readers who rely on hereditary media and may not follow me to waste. But my condition became unbearable, and I did not feel sorry for the new direction and recovered my freedom.