Thursday, November 10, 2016

New York Times executive editor: 'New York is not the real world'...but, will his realization change the way the Times reports? I doubt it!

New York Times executive editor: 'New York is not the real world'



New York Times Executive Editor Dean Baquet said his newspaper's insular world view is at fault for so wrongly misreading the election that saw Donald Trump become the president-elect.
In an interview with Times media columnist Jim Rutenberg, Baquet said he and his publication at large did not see Trump's coming success on Election Day because they do not understand much of the country's voters.
"If I have a mea culpa for journalists and journalism, it's that we've got to do a much better job of being on the road, out in the country, talking to different kinds of people than the people we talk to — especially if you happen to be a New York-based news organization — and remind ourselves that New York is not the real world," he said.
Baquet's apologia was a refrain of what many journalists and reporters have said since it was clear that Trump would likely win the nomination in the early months of 2016. But even up until Election Day, most news outlets predicted a win for Clinton.

The media "expected Trump to fizzle because we were not socially intermingled with his supporters and did not listen carefully enough," Times columnist David Brooks wrote in March. "For me, it's a lesson that I have to change the way I do my job if I'm going to report accurately on this country."

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