NY Times Email From Editor Regarding My Cancellation [View all]

[TomCADem]

I cancelled my subscription from the NY Times a few weeks ago because they hired a climate denialist writer who advocated against taking climate change seriously. His rationale? Experts thought Hillary would win. She didn't. Therefore, we should be skeptical of climate scientists:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/28/opinion/climate-of-complete-certainty.html?_r=0

In the final stretch of last year’s presidential race, Hillary Clinton and her team thought they were, if not 100 percent right, then very close.

Right on the merits. Confident in their methods. Sure of their chances. When Bill Clinton suggested to his wife’s advisers that, considering Brexit, they might be underestimating the strength of the populist tide, the campaign manager, Robby Mook, had a bulletproof answer: The data run counter to your anecdotes.

That detail comes from “Shattered,” Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes’s compulsively readable account of Clinton’s 2016 train wreck. Mook belonged to a new breed of political technologists with little time for retail campaigning and limitless faith in the power of models and algorithms to minimize uncertainty and all but predict the future.

The NY Times certainly has the right to hire a climate change denialist in order to appear fair and balanced. But, why should I pay for a subscription for such an apologist for the right wing? I would like to support the NY Times, but if they want to abdicate journalism in favor of simply providing a he said, she said forum, then they really are no different from any other media outlet.

Our customer care team shared with me that your reason for unsubscribing from The New York Times included our decision to hire Bret Stephens as an Opinion columnist. I wanted to provide a bit more context. Every subscriber to The Times is a stakeholder in our work and, as such, you are entitled to an explanation of our strategy and actions.

First, it’s worth underscoring that The Times’s newsroom, which functions separately from our Opinion department and is led by executive editor Dean Baquet, has sharply expanded the team of reporters and editors who cover climate change. No subject is more vital. Here are a few recent examples that demonstrate the depth of our commitment to this story:

Our architecture critic, Michael Kimmelman, worked with the photographer Josh Haner to show, quite vividly, how rising waters threaten China’s cities.

We featured a detailed look at nearly two dozen environmental rules, regulations and other Obama-era policies rolled back during President Trump’s first 100 days in office.

The reporters Damien Cave and Justin Gillis presented a devastating firsthand account of the profound trouble facing Australia’s Great Barrier Reef.

A recent issue of the Sunday magazine dedicated to the climate’s future asked: “How do we live with the fact that the world we knew is going and, in some cases, already gone?”

And the reporters Nadja Popovich, John Schwartz and Tatiana Schlossberg expertly distilled public opinion data about climate change into a series of six maps.
This journalism is unrivaled in its sophistication and imagination. The support of our subscribers is what allows us to pursue such ambitious stories all over the globe. I encourage you to sign up for a free newsletter from our climate desk to discover future stories and insights.

Meanwhile, The Times’s Opinion pages remain an independent and unblinking forum for debate from a wide range of viewpoints among open-minded, informed writers and readers. I don’t think, in these polarizing and partisan times, there’s anything quite like it in American journalism.

As on so many consequential questions these days, Americans on the right and left are talking past each other about how best to address climate change, and we are determined to put these different points of view into conversation with each other in hopes of advancing solutions.

We feel very fortunate to have a principled, independent-minded conservative writer like Bret Stephens join our team. Bret’s work has joined a running debate in our pages that has also recently included Bill McKibben, a founder of the climate advocacy platform 350.org, warning that, “President Trump’s environmental onslaught will have immediate, dangerous effects,” as well as the Times editorial board arguing for a carbon tax. We have, as always, invited our readers into this conversation, too, publishing their letters and comments as the debate has unfolded.

Our editorial page editor, James Bennet, and I believe that this kind of debate, by challenging our assumptions and forcing us to think harder about our positions, sharpens all our work and benefits our readers. This does not mean that The Times will publish any commentary. Some points of view are not welcome, including those promoting prejudice or denying basic truths about our world. But it does mean that, in the coming years, we aim to further enrich the quality of our debate with other honest and intelligent voices, including some currently underrepresented in our pages. If you continue to read The Times, you will encounter such voices — not just as contributors, but as new staff columnists.

I’m grateful for the support you have provided to our journalism in the past, and I hope you may consider supporting it again in the future. You’ll always have a home here at The Times and we welcome your feedback at [e-mail].

Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr.
Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr.
Publisher
The New York Times