Ask The Sophist: May I keep my subscription to the horrid New York Times?
Indignity Vol. 5, No. 112
ASK THE SOPHIST
The Morally Gray Lady
Dear The Sophist,
I have been reading the New York Times since I was a child. Even in the periods where I lived in other regions of the country I was a subscriber to the national edition (my most annoying party trick during those times was to point to the paper they were reading on Seinfeld and be like, "That's not the New York paper! That's the one they print in California!"). It is the longest continuous relationship I have had with a publication in my life, and it's not even close.
Unfortunately, given recent—well, you see where this is going. From, let's say the 2016 campaign to last week's sotto voce endorsement of Andrew Cuomo and everything in between, it is becoming increasingly difficult to justify supporting this organization with my money. Yes, the paper invented "don't say gay" long before Ron de Santis reckoned it might make him president. I have no doubt there were all sorts of other omissions and distortions in the ’80s and ’90s that I didn't notice because I was too young to be aware of them. And there was that whole thing with Iraq. I am not saying that it is anything new, but the level and consistency of the bias toward power and against the marginalized, not to mention the sheer joy ownership and leadership take in deliberately refusing to engage honestly with the people who point out those biases, really gives me pause each time I'm about to renew my subscription.
But here's the thing: what used to be a great newspaper town is now essentially a one-newspaper town. The New York Post is basically a version of Elon-era Twitter that comes off on your hands. The Daily News is a shell of what it used to be, and even that shell is a day late with everything that the Post had the day before and was more vibrant about. (I don't even know if there's still a Newsday.) The Times has pretty much gutted its metro coverage, but it still has enough about what is going on in this town in terms of culture, business, and rich people doing idiotic things that I can't get anywhere else. Plus, I am sorry to say, I continue to play Wordle every day.
I'm aware there there are plenty of other places I can go for terrific local reporting (off the top of my head: The City, Hell Gate, Gothamist, a variety of neighborhood blogs), but I am just one man and that is SO MANY PLACES TO CLICK THROUGH. Plus, as at any large organization, there are a number of good people doing good work at the Times who do not deserve to be lumped in with the trolls who handle the politics coverage. It's not a paper full of Patrick Healys, for god's sake. But does sticking with the Sulzbergers make me analogous to one of those Midwestern moms who can't wait to hear how Sam Sifton barbecues his chicken or a Boomer dad who loves Sundays because “that Maureen Dowd really tells it like it is”? Am I abetting our slow roll into tyranny because I enjoy watching the videos they made famous people record before they died to accompany their obituaries?
I am not the greatest guy in the world, The Sophist, but I don't own a car, I take maybe one flight a year to visit my family far away, I don't eat meat, most of my travel is on foot or on public transportation: my carbon footprint is pretty low compared to most people elsewhere. I shop locally whenever I can, even if it means I'm paying twice as much for something that takes twice as long to get. Does this give me some sort of moral offset if I keep paying for the Times? [If it's a point in my favor I am an expert at doing that thing where you say you're going to cancel and they extend you another six months at a low price, so if you think about it I am helping to reduce their margins by stealth.] I guess literacy probably has a limited life left anyway, but can I keep getting the paper until it turns into nonstop Ezra Klein TikTok Abundance Dance Challenges?
Signed,
Pinched and Punched
Dear Behind the Times,
The Sophist had barely settled down to consider your question when the Supreme Court announced it was allowing Tennessee to ban trans health care for young people—a decision that the right-wing supermajority built not only on the most shameless illogic this side of Plessey v. Ferguson, but also, throughout Clarence Thomas' concurrence, on the authority of the New York Times ("M. Twohey & C. Jewett, Pressing Pause on Puberty, N. Y. Times, Nov. 14, 2022, pp. A14–A15...P. Paul, Gender Dysphoric Kids Deserve Better Care, N. Y. Times, Feb. 4, 2024, p. 9...S. Castle, Ban on Puberty Blockers for U. K. Teens Is Settled, N. Y. Times Int’l, Dec. 13, 2024, p. A11...A. Ghorayshi, Youth Gender Clinic Lands in a Political Storm, N. Y. Times, Aug. 26, 2023, p. A12...A. Ghorayshi, Biden Officials Pushed To Remove Age Limits for Trans Surgery, N. Y. Times, June 27, 2024, p. A17...R. Rabin, T. Rosenbluth, & N. Weiland, Biden Opposes Surgery for Transgender Minors, N. Y. Times, June 30, 2024, p. 22...A. Ghorayshi, Doctor, Fearing Outrage, Slows a Gender Study, N. Y. Times, Oct. 24, 2024, pp. A1, A23").
Who do these disingenuous bastards think they're fooling? And which collection of disingenuous bastards involved is The Sophist even talking about here, the Supreme Court or the Times?
With that, we arrive at the heart of your trouble: the problem with the New York Times is not unlike the problem with the United States. Both are organizations with long histories of doing a mix of unforgivable and superb things; both have lately taken a sharp turn for the worse. Yet unless you had the foresight to nail down a second passport, you can't just bail out on America. And you're telling The Sophist you can't just bail out on the Times.
How would you? The Times is not merely your hometown paper—an incredibly neglectful and uninterested hometown paper, one that won't even give you a box score for what the Yankees or Mets did last night, because they killed the entire sports desk and subcontracted out the remains, then pumped the opinion section up to 200 people—it is effectively your hometown. Most of what any person knows about the current events that shape their lives has been fully mediated, as in experienced through mass media, since long before either of us was born. And now most of that broadly shared consensus about what's happening, the information space in which we're accustomed to dwelling, has been left in uninhabitable ruins, broken up at first into advertiser-personalized algorithmic information silos and now washed away by a tide of outright synthetic replicant-generated slop.
Except for the New York Times. The paper's former self-appointed, self-important fantasy of being the Only Newspaper That Counts has unfortunately almost come true. It employs so many extraordinary, worthy journalists alongside so many gullible or mendacious dolts and reactionary buffoons because it employs so many journalists, period. Where else are they gonna work? What else are you gonna read? The Washington Post is being crudely rebuilt into a propaganda machine whose main purpose is to manage its centibillionaire plutocrat owner's relationship with the authoritarian regime. The Los Angeles Times is doing the same but for a pettier and more downmarket plutocrat owner. The Wall Street Journal news desk displays as much integrity and enterprise as anyone possibly could while sharing a roof and a banner with sleazy and bombastic opinion writers and, above all, being owned by Rupert Murdoch. The Chicago Tribune is more or less one of those vacant ghost brands like Bed Bath & Beyond.
Here, then, is your morning paper, floating in the void like Peakesville, Ohio, with Arthur Gregg Sulzberger as the misbegotten boy-child who has no one to check his powers and everyone around him cooing in support of his resentments. It's arrogant and comically vague and exterminationist and nothing else is there to replace what it does.
The Times' local news—except for the shameless and irreplaceable real estate coverage—is probably the weakest part of your justification for holding on to your subscription. Calling this a "one-newspaper town" is an overstatement; metro newspapering as metro newspapering basically doesn't exist here anymore. Some of whatever money you save through gaming the Times subscriptions absolutely needs to go to Hell Gate and The City, if only so that they keep doing the reporting that the Times will eventually be forced to catch up with.
Go ahead and click on those sites, too. There was a time, after all, when a certain kind of citizen would take multiple newspapers to stay informed, maintaining a skeptical and educated distance from the contents of each one. By extension, think of the clashing editorial purposes and attitudes of the Times as a bundle of papers in their own right—papers with wildly varying degrees of trustworthiness or reprehensibility.
One of those Timeses just ran this harrowing report about how black lung is surging back as coal gets played out and mining dust becomes a more dangerous mix of silica and coal—and how the Trump administration has defunded the people who would help do anything about it. Another one just ran a vacuous trend piece under the headline package "Is Donald Trump an Antagonist or a Champion of the Gay Community? / Gay backers of Donald Trump say he is blind to sexuality. Not everyone agrees." Yet another one ran a straightforward and savory recipe for seasoned ground beef (The Sophist upgraded to lamb) scorched in a heavy pot and served over cucumber-garlic yogurt.
The same subscription money that bought you "Critics Say Musk Has Revealed Himself as a Conservative. It’s Not So Simple" also bought you "On the Campaign Trail, Elon Musk Juggled Drugs and Family Drama." Or you could flip those around. Either way, you've purchased the whole thing.
And the Wordle. Doing puzzles is said to help stave off dementia. Maybe. Maybe the nation will be terrorized by a mad bomber whose devices are locked with a five-letter code and set to explode after the sixth unsuccessful attempt, and we’ll all get to be heroes. The point is—like the newspaper itself—the Wordle gives you a little activity to briefly keep the new day at bay. To EVADE it, if you will.
Yet it was also possible to live without the Wordle, back when the Wordle makers went on strike. It felt wholesome and right to draw that line, at LEAST. Returning to playing the Wordle after the strike was over, then, amounted to an act of solidarity with the workers, and an endorsement of the Times' belated willingness to bargain fairly with the STAFF.
That episode holds the key to your continued willingness to send your money to 620 Eighth Avenue. When you purchase the New York Times, you are purchasing something else precious: the power to complain about a product you're paying for.
So much of the aggrieved smugness of the contemporary Times revolves around its organizational creed that its critics are only complaining because they don't understand what the newspaper's mission is. But you are an expert on the Times! You were absorbing and understanding the ways of the Times when A.G. Sulzberger was off doing his mandatory princely rotation as cub reporter at the Oregonian. Hold it over them! Threaten—by all means, threaten—to cancel. Mail them typewritten letters telling them to pitch Ross Douthat into the Hudson with the tide running out. Write in to your favorite outside advice columnist to express your disgust in public. Remember, all that institutional pomposity is stuffed inside an exquisitely thin skin.
Get your money’s worth,
The Sophist
The Sophist is the columnist who is not here to correct you, but to tell you why you're right. Direct your questions to The Sophist, at indignity@indignity.net, and get the answers you want.
SIDE PIECES DEP'T.
Tom Scocca
FOR MY DEFECTOR column, I wrote about how the elected officials being handcuffed and arrested by the Trump administration are not carrying out protests or stunts:
These events were not symbols of something else. They were what's happening: local or Congressional authorities trying to check the federal government and being met by force. In May, Homeland Security officers handcuffed Ras Baraka, the mayor of Newark, on a public sidewalk outside a detention center in his own city, dragged him inside the fence, and held him for hours, after which one of Donald Trump's former personal lawyers turned federal prosecutor charged him with trespassing. The prosecutor's office later dropped those charges, and a judge rebuked the Trump administration for "a failure to adequately investigate, to carefully gather facts, and to thoughtfully consider the implications of your actions before wielding your immense power."
The Associated Press wrote that the detention center, Delaney Hall, was a facility that Baraka had "been protesting against." But Baraka—and three members of Congress, one of whom, LaMonica McIver, ended up indicted for assaulting federal officers—weren't at Delaney Hall to protest it. They were there because it had been converted into a detention center without the required city permits, and the Congress members were invoking their legal power to inspect the operations.
WEATHER REVIEWS
New York City, June 22, 2025
★★ Thunder broke in on the only unscheduled morning on the calendar—thunder with the sound of heavy furniture being dragged around overhead. Leaves showed vivid green as they whipped around in the morning dark. The rain ended and the afternoon brightened into soupy but not quite sweltering conditions. A couple in white robes posed for a photographer under the big plane tree on the way into the Park. Painters worked at easels in the rank odor at the foot of the falls into the Loch. A man called out "Ice cold water, water" as he rolled a cooler along the path. The pavement was still wet and a little slippery with decaying plant matter.
EASY LISTENING DEP'T.
HERE IS TODAY'S Indignity Morning Podcast!
Tom Scocca
HERE IS THE Indignity Morning Podcast archive!
TOM SCOCCA
SANDWICH RECIPES DEP'T.
WE PRESENT INSTRUCTIONS in aid of the assembly of a sandwich selected from Encyclopedia of Cookery; 1001 Recipes, Menus & Rules for Modern, Scientific and Economic Cookery (Vol. 4), by Eugene Christian and Molly Griswold Christian, published by the Corrective Eating Society in 1920, and available at archive.org for the delectation of all.
OLIVE SANDWICHES
Put Spanish olives through the chopper and add to them the green outside leaves of one large head of lettuce. Cut the lettuce in shreds, mix all with mayonnaise and spread on graham bread which has been buttered. Cut the crusts off. Cut sandwiches in half and serve.
If you decide to prepare and attempt to enjoy a sandwich inspired by this offering, be sure to send a picture to indignity@indignity.net .
SELF-SERVING SELF-PROMOTION DEP'T.
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