646 Comments

"A New York Times that sucked less." ROFLMAO. Just classic! Salute.

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I suppose this is a signal the censorship, blacklisting and persecution are underperforming.

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Here's an idea for the members of the corrupt MSM. How about asking Substack subscribers why they are willing to subscribe to, in my case, multiple Substack newsletters. I'm doing it with money I used to spend on traditional news sources. We, the readers, the news consumers, your customers, are not stupid. Your corruption is obvious and insulting. I have more respect for the PRAVDA writers. They had a gun to their heads. You MSM clowns all use the same words and phrases on the same day to describe some new threat to your comfy jobs or your political bosses comfy jobs. Won't one of you come clean and tell us exactly how that happens.You have no integrity. I feel like I'm being harangued not informed. You act like a holy priesthood that must not doubted. We overthrew one priesthood several hundred years ago and with the help of Matt and Glenn and Bari and Michael and others we will do it again. So FU and that over priced useless degree you'll never pay off. We, the readers, are tired of being told what words we can't use or what ideas we can't express. We're tired of being told what to think by people who were indoctrinated not educated. Please get out of the bubble and talk to people before it's too late. There are some pretty smart people out here with dirty hands who built everything around you and keep it all running. Their are folks who have devoted their whole life to protecting you. How about thanking them instead of deploring them. They make your easy life possible. How about thanking them for their service to society now and again. Read like your life depended on it. You might rediscover a new/old idea. I'm sure others here can add to the list. You won't beat the Substack bull pen (there I said it) any time soon with the same old play book that's ruined the formerly admired profession of journalism. Show some integrity, honesty and independence for a change. And Je_us Chr_st stop being such assholes.

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" If they really wanted to wipe us out, of course, they could just put out a New York Times that sucked less. In a million years, that won’t occur to them." "the overall quality level of mainstream news plunged so low so long ago, audiences were starved for anything that wasn’t rancidly, insultingly dishonest."

Heh. Kind of the same thing among the Morally Better/So Much Smarter ilk in all sections of society. They get angry at people getting the attention they think they should get, so they lash out ("ban Dave Chappelle!" "outlaw Fox!") instead of look inward at why no one wants to read their newspaper, laugh at their "comedy," trust their credentials, be around them...the people I encounter like that in life increasingly shriek that they're "experts" while saying some of the most absurd things and sneering at others in their increasingly impenetrable bubble of self-righteous cluelessness. The collective delusion is so, so tiresome.

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Taibbi, I like your thinking.

Do you have a newsletter I could subscribe to?

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“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”

― Upton Sinclair, I, Candidate for Governor: And How I Got Licked

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They could put out a New York Times that didn't suck, but it's too late for that. I am disillusioned with them to the point I was willing to pay you $50 a year. More voices would certainly be better, and that is what they use to offer, but I'd rather pay you to have a single truthful voice than any number of voices lying to me. Thanks for going on a limb and giving me an option. I really want to understand what is going on and the lying is so absurd these days I KNOW I'm being blatantly lied to... and it drove me to find you.

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"rancidly, insultingly dishonest". That single line says it all. All the lipstick in America can't transform these national media pigs into beauty Queens. They have lost peoples trust and their respect and won't be winning it back with their usual tricks and promises.

Their hearts and minds are just plain dishonest. They don't respect their audience and view them as uninformed sheep to be fleeced by their "betters" and intellectual superiors. Americans see through this charade and are fleeing the corporate media because they have seen what is behind the curtain and it is not a little man playing God but an evil manipulative elitist cabal of nasty control freaks without a moral bone in their flaccid snake like bodies.

In the age of the internet the falsehoods became too easy to recognize. So now they have gathered "faux fact checkers" and harnessed interned platforms to censor actual reality and information that exposes their pernicious agendas and political manipulation of voters.

Paid subscriptions have allowed people to choose their information sources or reject ones without merit. For whatever reason truth has a particular kind of beauty that reveals itself in many ways and like a well cut diamond reflects those truths in multiple shinning ways that can't be duplicated by falsehoods and skewered narratives. No intelligent person would ever pay for a platform access that consistently pushes lies and political narratives that are discredited over and over. The audience levels of CNN, MSNBC, NYT, WaPo and so many others are in death spiral caused by their lies and incompetence. Hopefully this new paradigm will wipe them from public conscious and history will record their demise as a plus for society.

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I think one of the issues is that these people have such a centralized mindset, that they cannot comprehend the concept of decentralization itself. To borrow a metaphor from Mass Effect, explaining a decentralized subscription service like Substack to a New York Times executive is like trying to explain color to a creature with no eyes. It just will not compute. The only way they can make sense of it is to centralize it which of course defeats the point in the first place.

The ruling elite are becoming increasingly irrelevant as more decentralized alternatives emerge. They are shocked to find out that people are demanding they put out something of actual worth and value. When something like Substack comes around and rewards people who do put out something of value, it is a direct threat against them. Right now, they are trying to minimize independent creators. Just wait until they get more desperate after their copy-cat attempts fail. They will get nasty, but they are dinosaurs and the meteor already hit.

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The media reacts to Substack's success the same way the Democrats react to the Virginia elections: By assuming that their product would be wildly popular if only they marketed it better.

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Nope, the threat is real and existential to legacy/corrupt/corrupt/pharma drug pushing media, it's not me -- it's you.

Cancelled the NYT....read only the WSJ Editorial page (and believe less than half of what I read)...support the Epoch Times for their stick it to the CCP stance, and several Substack writers from across the political gamut.

Moronic Mainstream Media is done -- all they are good for now is as a punchline.

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LOL @ The NYT... I scan it daily and still, nearly a year after Biden took office, there are more articles about Trump, than about Biden.

Will they never learn?

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You are a bargain! For about the cost of 1 gallon of gas ($4 -- give or take) per month, I can read an honest opinion and well researched articles. If the NYT really wants to attract readers, how about they actually print the truth?

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“â€Ĥtechnically human editorâ€Ĥ” LMAO

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You write good

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They hate Substack because it is real, bottom up truth from writers who don't want to be controlled by some fake big media editors or execs.

The NYT Substrack clone won't succeed because it is missing the key ingredients - truth and honest feedback.

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