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326 lines
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[1][https]
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[2]The Contrarian
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The Contrarian
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The Contrarian
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Departing the New York Times
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Departing the New York Times
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I left to stay true to my byline
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[9]
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[htt]
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[10]Paul Krugman
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Jan 28, 2025
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11,237
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[12]
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[https]
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The Contrarian
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The Contrarian
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Departing the New York Times
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[14]
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As many people reading this know, last month I retired from my position as an
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opinion writer at the New York Times—a job I had done for 25 years. Despite the
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encomiums issued by the Times, it was not a happy departure. If you check out
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my [15]Substack, you will see that I have by no means run out of energy or
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topics to write about. But from my perspective, the nature of my relationship
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with the Times had degenerated to a point where I couldn’t stay.
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[16]
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[https]
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Charles Kaiser has written a [17]fair-minded article in the Columbia Journalism
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Review about my departure. What I want to do in this post is add more context.
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Let’s be clear: I am not planning to have a running feud with the Times: I
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came, I saw, I felt I had to leave, and I moved on.
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But I believe that the story of why I left says something important about the
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current state of legacy journalism.
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The background: until 2017 or so, I felt extremely happy with my role at the
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Times, for a couple of reasons.
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One, I felt that I had finally cracked the code of opinion column-writing. When
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the Times hired me at the end of 1999, I was an economics professor who wrote
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occasionally for a broader audience. And crafting 800-word plain-English essays
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for readers with no background in economics is, shall we say, a bit different
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from writing 5000-word academic journal articles full of equations and diagrams
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for a small professional community. For a while, I struggled with the
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transition.
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But eventually I figured it out. I actually took pleasure in the craftsmanship,
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in boiling an argument down to its essentials, expressing it in ordinary
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language, and making it interesting. Furthermore, I believe that my writing
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affected the national discourse, especially over issues such as George W.
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Bush’s attempt to privatize Social Security, the march to the Affordable Care
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Act (despite Obama’s initial reluctance), and the unjustified fiscal panic of
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the early 2010s.
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During my first 24 years at the Times, from 2000 to 2024, I faced very few
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editorial constraints on how and what I wrote. For most of that period my draft
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would go straight to a copy editor, who would sometimes suggest that I make
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some changes — for example, softening an assertion that arguably went beyond
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provable facts, or redrafting a passage the editor didn’t quite understand, and
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which readers probably wouldn’t either. But the editing was very light; over
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the years several copy editors jokingly complained that I wasn’t giving them
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anything to do, because I came in at length, with clean writing and with
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back-up for all factual assertions.
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This light-touch editing prevailed even when I took positions that made Times
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leadership very nervous. My early and repeated criticisms of Bush’s push to
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invade Iraq led to several tense meetings with management. In those meetings, I
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was urged to tone it down. Yet the columns themselves were published as I wrote
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them. And in the end, I believe the Times — which eventually [18]apologized for
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its role in promoting the war — was glad that I had taken an anti-invasion
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stand. I believe that it was my finest hour.
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So I was dismayed to find out this past year, when the current Times editors
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and I began to discuss our differences, that current management and top editors
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appear to have been completely unaware of this important bit of the paper’s
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history and my role in it.
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Two, previous Times management and editors had allowed me to engage in the
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higher-level economic debates of the time. The aftermath of the 2008 financial
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crisis led to a great flowering of economics blogs. Important, sophisticated
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debates about the causes of the crisis and the policy response were taking
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place more or less in real time. I was able to be an active part of those
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debates, because I had an [19]economics blog of my own, under the Times
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umbrella but separate from the column. The blog, unedited, was both more
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technical — sometimes much more technical — and looser than the column.
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Then, step by step, all the things that made writing at the Times worthwhile
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for me were taken away. The Times eliminated the blog at the end of 2017.
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Here’s my [20]last substantive blog post, which gives a good idea of the kind
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of thing I was no longer able to do once it was eliminated.
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For a while I tried to make up for the loss of the blog with threads on
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Twitter. But even before Elon Musk Nazified the site, tweet threads were an
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awkward, inferior substitute for blog posts. So in 2021 I opened a Substack
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account, as a place to put technical material I couldn’t publish in the Times.
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Times management became very upset. When I explained to them that I really,
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really needed an outlet where I could publish more analytical writing with
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charts etc., they agreed to allow me to have a Times newsletter (twice a week),
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where I could publish the kind of work I had previously posted on my blog.
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In September 2024 my newsletter was suddenly suspended by the Times. The only
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reason I was given was “a problem of cadence”: according to the Times, I was
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writing too often. I don’t know why this was considered a problem, since my
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newsletter was never intended to be published as part of the regular paper.
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Moreover, it had proved to be popular with a number of readers.
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Also in 2024, the editing of my regular columns went from light touch to
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extremely intrusive. I went from one level of editing to three, with an
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immediate editor and his superior both weighing in on the column, and sometimes
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doing substantial rewrites before it went to copy. These rewrites almost
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invariably involved toning down, introducing unnecessary qualifiers, and, as I
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saw it, false equivalence. I would rewrite the rewrites to restore the essence
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of my original argument. But as I told Charles Kaiser, I began to feel that I
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was putting more effort—especially emotional energy—into fixing editorial
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damage than I was into writing the original articles. And the end result of the
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back and forth often felt flat and colorless.
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One more thing: I faced attempts from others to dictate what I could (and could
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not) write about, usually in the form, “You’ve already written about that,” as
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if it never takes more than one column to effectively cover a subject. If that
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had been the rule during my earlier tenure, I never would have been able to
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press the case for Obamacare, or against Social Security privatization,
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and—most alarmingly—against the Iraq invasion. Moreover, all Times opinion
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writers were banned from engaging in any kind of media criticism. Hardly the
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kind of rule that would allow an opinion writer to state, “we are being lied
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into war.”
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I felt that my byline was being used to create a storyline that was no longer
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mine. So I left.
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That’s my story. What are the broader implications?
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“Words,” [21]John Maynard Keynes once wrote, “ought to be a little wild, for
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they are the assault of thoughts on the unthinking.” That was always my
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attitude toward opinion writing. Newspaper columns should be controversial,
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rubbing some people the wrong way, because the main point is to get people to
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rethink their assumptions. I used to say, only half-jokingly, that if a column
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didn’t generate a large amount of hate mail, that meant that I had wasted the
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space.
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Yet what I felt during my final year at the Times was a push toward blandness,
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toward avoiding saying anything too directly in a way that might get some
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people (particularly on the right) riled up. I guess my question is, if those
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are the ground rules, why even bother having an opinion section?
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Maybe there was a time when readers would sit still for sober, dull opinion
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pieces — history’s [22]most boring headline, “Worthwhile Canadian Initiative,”
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was the title of a Times op-ed — because they were seen as representing the
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views of The Establishment. And I have the feeling that Times management still
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thinks it’s living in that world. But in today’s wide-open information (and
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misinformation) environment, boring writing just vanishes without a trace.
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On a somewhat different issue, it became clear to me that the management I was
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dealing with didn’t understand the difference between having an opinion and
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having an informed, factually sourced opinion. When the newsletter was
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canceled, I tried to point out that I was almost the only regular opinion
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writer doing policy. Their response was to point to other writers who often
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expressed views about policy, economic and otherwise. I tried in vain to
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explain that there’s a difference between having opinions about economics and
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knowing how to read C.B.O. analyses and recent research papers. It all fell on
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deaf ears.
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So that’s the story of my departure from the Times. Despite the difficulties of
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the last year, I remain deeply grateful to the Times for hiring me and giving
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me decades of freedom to express my views to such a large audience. And I feel
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sorry about abandoning loyal readers who still rely on legacy media and who may
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not follow me to Substack. But my situation had become intolerable, and I
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haven’t felt a moment’s regret over the new direction and recovering my
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freedom.
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[33][ ]
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Subscribe
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11,237
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[36]
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[https]
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The Contrarian
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The Contrarian
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Departing the New York Times
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Copy link
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Facebook
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Notes
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[37]
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441
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1,023
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[38]
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Share
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A guest post by
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[39] [40]Paul Krugman [41]Subscribe
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[https] Professor, CUNY Grad Center, Nobel laureate and former to Paul
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columnist, NY Times
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Discussion about this post
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CommentsRestacks
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[ht]
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[ ]
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[ ]
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[ ]
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[ ]
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[45]
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[ht]
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[46]Meg
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[47]5d
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Liked by Domenica Alioto
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Good to hear the background. And good for you for leaving. Its not the same
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paper I’ve been reading for decades. Your word is your truth.
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[50]1 reply
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[51]
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[ht]
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[52]Gary
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[53]5d
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As a previous subscriber to both the NYT and WAPO, I am delighted to see two of
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my favorites, Paul Krugman and Jen Rubin, here on Substack. Unleashed opinions
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from knowledgeable editorialists work best here. Mr. Krugman is a truly
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professional economist with valuable insights.
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Expand full comment
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Reply
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[55]4 replies
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[73]Privacy ∙ [74]Terms ∙ [75]Collection notice
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[76] Start Writing[77]Get the app
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[78]Substack is the home for great culture
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References:
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[1] https://contrarian.substack.com/
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[2] https://contrarian.substack.com/
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[8] https://substack.com/home/post/p-155937919?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
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[9] https://substack.com/@paulkrugman
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[10] https://substack.com/@paulkrugman
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[12] https://substack.com/home/post/p-155937919?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
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[17] https://www.cjr.org/analysis/paul-krugman-leaving-new-york-times-heavy-hand-editing-less-frequent-columns-newsletter.php
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[18] https://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/26/world/from-the-editors-the-times-and-iraq.html
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[19] https://archive.nytimes.com/krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/
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[20] https://archive.nytimes.com/krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2017/12/04/leprechauns-of-eastern-europe/?module=BlogPost-Title&version=Blog%20Main&contentCollection=Opinion&action=Click&pgtype=Blogs®ion=Body
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[21] https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Maynard_Keynes
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[22] https://prawfsblawg.blogs.com/prawfsblawg/2023/09/worthwhile-canadian-initiative.html
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[36] https://substack.com/home/post/p-155937919?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
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[39] https://substack.com/profile/26817325-paul-krugman
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[40] https://substack.com/@paulkrugman?utm_campaign=guest_post_bio&utm_medium=web
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[46] https://substack.com/profile/59144975-meg?utm_source=substack-feed-item
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[47] https://contrarian.substack.com/p/departing-the-new-york-times/comment/89289247
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[50] https://contrarian.substack.com/p/departing-the-new-york-times/comment/89289247
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[51] https://substack.com/profile/116054490-gary?utm_source=comment
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[52] https://substack.com/profile/116054490-gary?utm_source=substack-feed-item
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[53] https://contrarian.substack.com/p/departing-the-new-york-times/comment/89294574
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[55] https://contrarian.substack.com/p/departing-the-new-york-times/comment/89294574
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[73] https://substack.com/privacy
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[78] https://substack.com/
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[80] https://enable-javascript.com/
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