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1/ The fact that Dean Baquet doesn't see this moment in American history as particularly aberrant--citing Edwin Edwards and the Vietnam War--is far more troubling than the headline in a print version that relatively few @nytimes readers read.
cjr.org/public_editor/…
cjr.org/public_editor/…
2/ FWIW, I actually think the NYT generally does an excellent job conveying how aberrant Trump is. What it doesn't do nearly well enough is convey the dangerous normalization--how an entire party has so quickly & completely reconciled itself to uniform embrace of the horrifying.
3/ That said, I also think the NYT's sharpest critics underestimate how little it matters how the Times covers Trump and the GOP. What's scariest, and most aberrant, of all, is that even if the Times and all the rest of the "mainstream" press ...
4/ ... regularly and vividly and unequivocally described what's happening as an existential crisis, that would have virtually no impact on how the GOP, and thus our political system, operates: The Times now speaks only to the half of America that already acknowledges the crisis.
5/ Its impact on what the government does is no more than that of the "Never Trump"ers, viz., practically nil. What determines our fate now is how Hannity and Fox & Friends cover the news--not how the NYT does. *That* is what's most aberrant, and most alarming.
6/ Of course the @nytimes should improve how it reflects and analyzes the institutional crisis we're now facing, if only for the sake of the historical record. The far greater problem, however, is not the impact the Times is having, but that it no longer has much impact at all.
