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Civics: Times Pushes Don McN-Word Out

Rod Dreher:

McNeil conceded in his parting statement that he used the N-word, and explained the context. I think he’s wrong: I think that context is forgivable, if still poor judgment. If he doesn’t believe in the concept of white privilege, so what? One is not allowed to dissent from an ideological idea? As to using “stereotypes about Black teenagers,” what does that even mean?

From the Beast’s latest report:

McNeil’s behavior on the trip had been hotly debated among Times staffers, including some who took part in a meeting with executive editor Dean Baquet and assistant managing editor Carolyn Ryan last Friday. At that meeting, Pulitzer Prize-winner Nikole Hannah-Jones said she planned on calling the parents and students on the trip to determine what McNeil had said and in what context, according to people familiar with the situation.

Ah, so Nikole Hannah-Jones is now in the position of determining who does and does not get to stay at the paper. Useful to get that learned.

Remember Bari Weiss’s resignation letter?Remember this part?:

Twitter is not on the masthead of The New York Times. But Twitter has become its ultimate editor. As the ethics and mores of that platform have become those of the paper, the paper itself has increasingly become a kind of performance space. Stories are chosen and told in a way to satisfy the narrowest of audiences, rather than to allow a curious public to read about the world and then draw their own conclusions. I was always taught that journalists were charged with writing the first rough draft of history. Now, history itself is one more ephemeral thing molded to fit the needs of a predetermined narrative.

My own forays into Wrongthink have made me the subject of constant bullying by colleagues who disagree with my views. They have called me a Nazi and a racist; I have learned to brush off comments about how I’m “writing about the Jews again.” Several colleagues perceived to be friendly with me were badgered by coworkers. My work and my character are openly demeaned on company-wide Slack channels where masthead editors regularly weigh in. There, some coworkers insist I need to be rooted out if this company is to be a truly “inclusive” one, while others post ax emojis next to my name. Still other New York Times employees publicly smear me as a liar and a bigot on Twitter with no fear that harassing me will be met with appropriate action. They never are.

There are terms for all of this: unlawful discrimination, hostile work environment, and constructive discharge. I’m no legal expert. But I know that this is wrong.

I do not understand how you have allowed this kind of behavior to go on inside your company in full view of the paper’s entire staff and the public. And I certainly can’t square how you and other Times leaders have stood by while simultaneously praising me in private for my courage. Showing up for work as a centrist at an American newspaper should not require bravery.

If Weiss is telling the truth — and I believe her — then she was expected to put up with harassment like that from the Wokesters inside the Times, but they cut loose one of their most valuable and distinguished reporters for ill-advised (but not hatefully intended) comments made on a field trip. Who the hell would want to work at that paper? Nearly half a century of work for the Times, some of it award-winning, and being its lead reporter on one of the most important stories of the century, counted for nothing when the woke mob demanded his scalp.

I am glad that none of my children want to follow their father’s footsteps into journalism. It is a rotten field, ruled by Jacobins, prisspots, overgrown children and zealots. Some of the most interesting journalists I’ve known in my career have been deeply flawed human beings. But they knew how to find a story, and they knew how to tell a story, and they had humanity. These are not commonly distributed gifts. If they failed in some minor way, there would be forgiveness for them, because people gave others grace then, especially if they were a valuable member of the team. There would be no place for men and women like this in what American journalism has become.

A friend asked the other day: why not start a magazine in which the most interesting writers — he mentioned Andrew Sullivan, Glenn Greenwald, Matt Taibbi, and Bari Weiss, but there are many others — who cannot work in contemporary newsrooms because they won’t kowtow to wokeness, write columns? Why not create a magazine, he said, that celebrates writers who are free-thinking, rough around the edges at times, but always interesting?

Good question. Greenwald, Taibbi, and Sullivan are all making a small fortune now on Substack, but if I were a billionaire, I would start that magazine, and screw the quivering mandarins of the journalism industry.

The Times sealed its fate when it committed itself to The 1619 Project — an ideological lie. Of course they’re going to send Donald McNeil packing when he offends Nikole Hannah-Jones and her newsroom mob, and given him no chance for redemption. McNeil won’t be the last one, either (I’m only sorry he didn’t go out with his head held high). This Twilight Zone episode surely captures what it’s like to work at the Timesnow:

David Reaboi:

The most punishing thing Rhodes said in his long-form confession to manipulating and subverting the press is that the journalists he encounters today “literally know nothing.” We need to look at the full quote to appreciate the importance of this to Samuels. Here is Rhodes:

All these newspapers used to have foreign bureaus. Now they don’t. They call us to explain to them what’s happening in Moscow and Cairo. Most of the outlets are reporting on world events from Washington. The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old, and their only reporting experience consists of being around political campaigns.That’s a sea change. They literally know nothing. (emphasis added)

Now let us look at another quote, this one from Samuels himself in an interview given in 2012.

I believe the catastrophe has already happened. The magazine world I entered almost 20 years ago was a rich, commercially-viable world. For a reasonably broad audience of people it was a fun way to spend two hours in the afternoon. That world is gone. The Washington Post hires 26-year-old bloggers to fill the pages that were filled by reporters who had bureaus in Nairobi that were paid for by their newspapers. That entire substructure has now been blown up.(emphasis added)

Rhodes’ insight is, in other words, almost verbatim the complaint Samuels was raising four years ago. Samuels described this shift, rightly, as a “catastrophe.” When he heard Rhodes say the same thing, it was an opportunity to force America to look at the harm done American journalism’s collapse.