The Left Must Fight The New York Times’ Monopoly Too

The paper’s editorial vision is out of step with the robust liberalism needed today.

The New York Times has a massive, almost hegemonic influence on the political discourse among liberals in America. That’s a bold statement, and not one I can easily prove. But I think that’s the reality. The Times’ Nikole Hannah-Jones’s piece on her struggles to find a racially diverse and academically strong school for her child single-handedly created a weeks-long debate about the state of K-12 education that eventually Mayor Zohran Mamdani was forced to weigh in on. Ezra Klein’s podcasts and columns are often quoted by Democratic activists and elected officials. Pundits treat the polls that the Times conducts with Siena University as the definitive account of who’s ahead in key races and how various demographic groups are shifting politically. Maggie Haberman is considered the nation’s chief authority on President Trump’s thinking. The guest op-eds in the Times are widely quoted and debated. 

And while I know that the overwhelming majority of Democrats don’t subscribe to the Times, they are still influenced by the paper’s perspectives. Why? Because other news outlets that Democrats consume, both left-leaning places like MS NOW and more centrist ones such as ABC and CNN, take their cues from the Times on what to cover and how. (The Times isn’t so important among Republicans, who tend to distrust both the paper itself and other mainstream media.) 

The power of the Times isn’t new. But American politics has changed in fundamental ways. And that makes the American left’s attachment to the Gray Lady more problematic. A liberalism that forcefully confronts authoritarianism, oligarchy, climate change, and the numerous other enormous challenges that we face will almost certainly be one that is less attuned to the views of America’s most influential paper. The Times implicitly and at times explicitly advances a centrist, status quo politics, and that’s exactly what liberals must abandon to save the country. 

The Times has been the most influential news outlet in America for decades. But when I started out in journalism in the early 2000s, that power was more contested. Back then, I remember people would say a story was really important if it were “on the front page of the Post or the Times.” But The Washington Post’s influence had waned even before owner Jeff Bezos shifted the op-ed pages rightward and the paper laid off dozens of journalists the last couple of years. I worked at the Post from 2021 to 2025, and our pieces got nowhere near the same attention from the public or follow-up from other outlets as those in the Times. 

I am not sure exactly how or why the Times became the national news outlet. My theory is that the American political economy of today creates one megawinner in every industry. That’s Google in web search, Apple in smartphones, and the Times in national media. 

But the problem isn’t that........

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