After Midnight

I haven’t yet reached a saturation point reading—in the wake of The Washington Post’s semi-Waterloo (final fate yet to be determined, although I can’t think of anyone who’d take the company off Jeff Bezos’ hands, except for scraps)—about The New York Times’ deft, tech-driven rise in the past decade to impressive profitability. It’s a remarkable business story. I was embarrassingly wrong in 2012 for suggesting that still-fawned-upon Mark Zuckerberg navigate the complicated Times ownership (two kinds of stock) by waging a hostile takeover bid of say $15 billion that non-Sulzberger family stock holders would readily accept. That probably wouldn’t have worked as well as current publisher A.G. Sulzberger (young, smarter and less sentimental than his father Arthur Sulzberger Jr.) given the guts of the website to create cash-creating gimmicks, and, useful features. The Times Company’s market cap, as of this month, is $11.7 billion. That’s not in the same league as the crazy, and risky, valuations of some tech companies, but it’s likely more solid for investors.

As all but the most brainwashed media observers know, the Times’ “news” content—what’s in the print edition and digital front-page—is window-dressing (in the worst kind of pandering) that plays third-tuba to the backend ATM of puzzles, “Wirecutter,” video and cooking. (And I hope my onetime colleague at New York Press, Sam Sifton—who’s worked at the Times since 2001—is getting rich for his early stewardship of the recipe franchise. I’ll add that in the 1990s, Sam, either at his Brooklyn apartment or visiting my family in Nantucket or Bridgehampton, was a hell of a chef.)

My short-winded argument is this: The Times could, out of fiscal prudence and one imagines a dislike of employee “dead wood,” lay off a third of its staff, like the Post, and, aside from union catcalls and #IStandWithTheWorkers nonsense that’d last two weeks, reap enormous savings, good for a rainy day when consumers tire of “Wordle” and the awful “Athletic” sports section which the company bought in 2022 and ditched its own.

There’s so much fat at the Times that you could put on a blindfold, toss a dart at the paper, and hit on a section that needs an emergency diet. That starts with the obese op-ed columnist roster, although that’s a problem that could take care of itself once Thomas Friedman, Ross Douthat, Maureen Dowd and Michelle Goldberg join David Brooks at The Atlantic’s deluxe Retirement Home (where a never-ending loop of Crosby, Stills and Nash and the Eagles plays) if the money’s enough, and it will be. Don’t replace those tired nags (or hire younger pundits at a third of the salary), but keep entrepreneur/con man Ezra Klein since his output can (and probably is) “monetized.”

Even easier would be cutting back the stupid “lifestyle” articles that are filler, and 30 years ago wouldn’t be printed. My choice this week is Sam Corbin, a columnist in the paper’s “Games” section, who wrote, under the ludicrous headline, “Why Kids Are Starting to Sound Like Their Grandparents,” a weeks-old croissant that anyone who’s awake couldn’t have taken seriously. This passes for insight: “The spread of a new word, or the rebirth of an old one, begins when a group of cool kids starts using it.” That’s internet-language, as when posters, some who should know better, gratuitously throw in a derisive comment about “the cool kids’ table” as if anyone with moderate intelligence is perpetually traumatized or basking in high school days.

Corbin makes it worse by writing, “I don’t know whether I’d be brave enough to use a word that wasn’t already in use among my peers.” Sheesh (a word she claims has made a comeback; although it never went away), that’s really “dumbing-down” bravery. She claims that words like “yap,” “skedaddle” and “diabolical”  get a “double-down” today at the cool kids’ table. I’ve used all three in the past year, but I’m exponentially cool! No mention of “scram,” “hot tomato” (maybe that’s cancelled, but ready for a revival), “tattle-tale,” “stinker,” “rascal,” “rapscallion” (a Mencken favorite), “creep,” “fatso,” “shake a leg,” “he who smelt it, dealt it” (kids’ version), “spazz out” or “varmint.”

I didn’t know, but do now, thanks to chicken-little Corbin, that the word “meme” has been in use for 50 years. That was worth a nickel for my thoughts.

—Follow Russ Smith on Twitter: @MUGGER2023