James Bennet Is A Dumdum

I don't really have anything to add that Ashley doesn't cover. As the kids say, read the whole thing.

If Bennet held his December meeting in an effort to win favor with the newsroom, it seems to have backfired, according to some people in the room.

“People were not satisfied with his answers,” one staffer who attended the meeting told HuffPost in a text message, “since his answers were equivocal bullshit that didn’t really address that the opinion section abuses fact and elevates white male conservative voices under the guise of ‘diversity of thought.’ And that he admits to making mistakes without any concern or even acknowledgement of what the consequences of those ‘mistakes’ actually are.”

As for what those consequences might be, the employee cited “erosion of trust in the rest of what the NYT does, people coming to conclusions based on incorrect facts and then never seeing the correction (if there is one), and choosing to pay money and give a platform to these white dudes instead of marginalized voices who wouldn’t otherwise get their story told (and marginalizing them even more by publishing their bad takes).” A Vanity Fair piece published on Monday quoted a senior newsroom figure who said, “The newsroom feels embarrassed.”