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And by what standards have you determined that these outlets are circling the drain?

The work of independent journalists is more important than ever before.

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>The work of independent journalists is more important than ever before.

Correct, and they're stealing viewers from these corporate media orgs like NYT. A lot of young people are getting their news from independent journalists on Youtube like Nick Shirley.

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More important than ever before and less market value than ever before. :(
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It’s kind of shocking to read what you wrote, and realize those big media brands used to be independent journalism.
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Are we considering the NYT and USA Today "independent journalism" still? Seems dubious...
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I don't know about USA Today. NYT at least seems independent if left leaning. I've not seen them be unfairly biased or bend over backwards to cater to outside corporate interests just yet. They're certainly not bending the knee to the current administration.

They have a robust paying subscriber base that supports them and don't have an owner whose last name rhymes with Pesos who can axe a story just because he doesn't like what it says.

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That a Democrat-leaning paper would criticize Republican politicians is not surprising. A better test of independence would be whether they criticize Democratic politicians (when they do things deserving criticism, that is: I don't expect them to criticize policy positions that they agree with, but all politicians do some things, in some cases many things, deserving of criticism).
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The point is that they shouldn't be criticizing anyone which I think is the point of independent journalism.

That they publish articles that put Republicans in an unfavorable light is I think because Republicans are doing things that put themselves in an unfavorable light.

To your point, there have been at least a few articles I've seen that put Democrats in an unfavorable light as well.

And for what it's worth I consume news outlets that lean both ways. What's more important to me is factual accuracy.

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> the clearest signal of their irrelevance

NYT had $2.82B in revenue in 2025.

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> It's not like anyone is committing these rags to microfiche anymore.

I recommend you actually go and read those fiches. The press was not historically high quality. Mass media has had the same problems for decades.

What it used to have was genuine independent competition.

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