There is a group of 10 friends in Charlotte, North Carolina, all women, all in their 50s, all white. They’re college educated with successful careers, and they have a message for The New York Times: Come visit us.
There is a group of 10 friends in Charlotte, North Carolina, all women, all in their 50s, all white. They’re college educated with successful careers, and they have a message for The New York Times: Come visit us.
They voted for Donald Trump and don’t consider themselves homophobic, racist or anti-Muslim. But now, they say, thanks to The Times and its fixation on Trump’s most extreme supporters, most people think they are. They would like a chance to show otherwise, and one of them, Cindy Capwell, wrote my office to extend the invitation.
Since the election, I have been on the phone with many Times readers around the country, including Capwell, to discuss their concerns about The Times’ coverage of the presidential election. The number of complaints coming into the public editor’s office is five times the normal level, and the pace has only just recently tapered off.
My colleague Thomas Feyer, who oversees the letters to the editor, says the influx from readers is one of the largest since Sept. 11. Many people are commenting on the election, but many are venting about The Times’ coverage. Readers are also taking to the comments section of Times articles to talk about it, says the community editor, Bassey Etim.
Others are calling into customer care at multiple times the usual rate. They have a variety of concerns, including the election coverage. Last week, Trump jumped in, tweeting that The Times had lost thousands of subscribers since the election. The paper said quite the opposite is the case: It reports having the largest one-week subscription increase since the first week of the digital pay model, in 2011.
I assume that The Times has more accurate data than Trump. But I hope any chest thumping about the impressive subscriber bump won’t obscure a hard-eyed look at coverage. Because from my conversations with readers, and from the emails that have come into my office, I can tell you there is a searing level of dissatisfaction out there with many aspects of the coverage.
Readers complain heatedly and repeatedly about the forecasting odometer from The Upshot that was anchored on the home page and predicted that Hillary Clinton had an 80 percent chance or better of winning. They complain that The Times’ attempt to tap the sentiments of Trump supporters was lacking. And they complain about the liberal tint The Times applies to its coverage, without awareness that it does.
Few could deny that if Trump’s more moderate supporters are feeling bruised right now, the blame lies partly with their candidate and his penchant for inflammatory rhetoric. But the media is at fault too, for turning his remarks into a grim caricature that it applied to those who backed him. What struck me is how many liberal voters I spoke with felt so, too. They were Clinton backers, but, they want a news source that fairly covers people across the spectrum.
Horst Gudemann of Jackson, Wyoming, says he doesn’t want to be spoon-fed opinions that The Times thinks he should have, and he doesn’t want his primary news source to stereotype half the country as racists. “We shouldn’t judge Black Lives Matters by its most extremist members, and we shouldn’t judge Trump followers by theirs,” Gudemann told me.
The national desk of The Times has correspondents around the country, and they filed a steady stream of compelling stories from voters between the coastal U.S. And yet between the horse race and the campaign drama, much of their work was simply drowned out.
That left many of the readers I spoke with feeling like The Times was a swirl of like-mindedness. Gudemann and other readers said The Times’ liberalism sounds the loudest the closer you get to the Opinion section, perhaps not surprisingly. Still, too many of the voices, of the regular columnists and even guest writers, are from people with similar views.
“I’ve read The Times for 50 years, and I’m tired of the old guard,” said James Harris, of Great Barrington, Massachusetts. He said he’d welcome some fresher voices.
Judy Barlas of Silver Spring, Maryland, raises a different issue. She supported Bernie Sanders in the primary. But she told me she saw evidence early on that The Times believed Clinton would win the nomination and kept pushing that scenario. It anticipated an outcome, and it stuck with it. “When Sanders would have a victory, they would cast it in terms of what it meant for Clinton,” Barlas said. “It was the same approach through the election.” In her view, editors and reporters developed a story line, and that’s the only perspective they presented. “I expect more from The Times,” she said.
I also hope someone will pay a visit to Cindy Capwell and her friends in North Carolina. They’d welcome a chance to reflect back on The Times’ coverage from a living room full of Trump backers.
Capwell and her husband considered canceling their subscription to The Times, but they’re holding off for now. “We’ll give The Times a chance,” she said. “I hope you guys will give people like us a chance too. It’s time to lay down our arms.”