(2018-10-30) Rosen Next Time You Wonder Why New York Times People Get So Defensive Read This

Jay Rosen: Next time you wonder why New York Times people get so defensive, read this. The readers of the New York Times have more power now. They have more power because they have more choices

readers are paying more of the costs. Their direct payments are keeping the Times afloat. This will be increasingly so in the future, as the advertising business gets absorbed by the tech industry. The Times depends on its readers’ support more than it ever has.

When I say the readers have more power I mean the core readership, the loyalists

The subscribers. That’s about 4 million people out of a monthly readership of more than 130 million. More than 60 percent of total revenue comes from them.

Recently the publisher of the New York Times, AG Sulzberger, said something that I believe touched on this anxiety. We won’t be baited into becoming ‘the opposition.’ And we won’t be applauded into becoming ‘the opposition.’

these people are perceived as a threat by the Times newsroom. The fear is that they want to turn the Times into an opposition newspaper. This is not how the Times sees itself. The fear is that they want the Times to help save American democracy. This too is not how the Times sees itself.

Navigating these tensions and sensing what needs to be done— that is the job of leadership

Well, you don’t do it by eliminating the public editor. You don’t do it with a flippant, “sounds like the next Batman movie” when a rival (the Washington Post) is trying to stake out territory as democracy’s defender.

They are tempted to look right and see one kind of danger, then look left to spot another, equal and opposite.

The threat to truthtelling — to journalism, democracy, the Times itself — is not symmetrical. They know this. But the temptation lives.