also hilarious that his unedited solo blog posts are straight up better prose without some schmuck NYT editor making them more pretentious and turgid
Reposted from Amanda Mull
It is very funny that NYT let noted trade columnist Paul Krugman walk like six months ago or whatever because he wanted to produce too much trade content for their taste

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I love the "retired" Paul Krugman. Wonderful analysis, great graphs, superb snark!
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He's so much better without the NYToast editors. I'm confused that he decided to publish at the nazi bar of newsletter platforms. The inescapable monopolist maw of google's algorithms regularly pitching me fascist shit is quite enough without a substack account promoting outright nazis.
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NYT is terrible in many ways but one that really grinds my gears is how its stick-up-your-ass house style often makes it incapable of describing reality https://bsky.app/profile/bobcalhoun.bsky.social/post/3lmui2xj5v223
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In the Newspaper of Record, Prose Obfuscates
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you just cannot describe Trump accurately if you have to sound like some Edwardian aristocrat making arch musings to his butler over the morning tea
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Wait. Thats not peter bakers real cadence?
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@thelouvreof.bsky.social nominee
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Reading the NYT reminds me of listening to the Past Times podcast. I imagine Dave Anthony Screaming, "What the fuck are you talking about."
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yeah it's worse than that actually, a real British aristocrat can drop cutting Swiftian jibes when the occasion warrants. the NYT is what a dimwitted Upper West Side nepo baby *thinks* an Eton grad would sound like https://bsky.app/profile/swolecialism.bsky.social/post/3lmuifsj7xk2g
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You could start almost any NYT article with the words "It's a funny old world.."
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Jeez, just the friggin headlines, sometimes - and the op-eds!
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everything is written with the understanding that the reader gets the IMPLICATION of what the writer is trying to convey, which means they literally never write down what has actually occurred
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they think they're writing posts for their friends who have the same backgrounds as they do, rather than providing coherent & digestible information to the world at large. (no wonder the old guard hates having to address any of the opinions forwarded by younger, blacker, less-affluent staff!)
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All of this is true, but also, they specialize in circumlocution to purposefully obscure facts.
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Whisky brand wanted survey research to better appeal to US consumers & wanted a “brand ambassador” & created some pretentious bow tied goob character which I roasted mercilessly. Haven’t bought their stuff since. Dunno what reminded me of that
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Eh, the Real British Aristocrat knows a lot less about the world than the Harvard legacy these days.
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That’s “Mr. Trump,” please.
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Every NYT writer is trying to be as flowery as possible to get a book deal and it drives me mad
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i've long thought the problem is that every one of their writers actually wants to be at the New Yorker
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It raises questions..
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it feels like the worst excesses of "politics-as-story," where you can't just read what people are saying and doing, it has to be this *journey* they take you on that makes it unreadable.
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So like what happened to recipes online? God, that’s bleak.
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Even those sites have a jump to recipe button.
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True dat.
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YES! I love reading them.
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Link to what I believe is his new site https://paulkrugman.substack.com
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Paul is much better unboxed. It is a good read/view.
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Turgid
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This was true back when the NYT gave him a sideblog to post more wonkish stuff.
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He doesn't have to fit any "one column's worth" sort of length standards, either.
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Yeah it's wild how much more and better content he's been producing since going independent
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Oof but yeah.

Makes me wonder how much of my Krugman hate over the years was actually NYT editor hate.
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Might be the first substacker to have shown a marked improvement by abandoning their editors
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i was skeptical but his substack is good as hell
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nobody tortures the language like the new york times, its incredible. at least the pretentious house style at the economist allows statement sentences
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I subscribed to the Economist decades ago and had my fill of sentences starting "To be sure..."
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Sometimes the SF Chron will syndicate an NYT story and side-by-side with the very straight ahead, direct-sentences Chron reporting, you realize how terrible a lot of NYT prose is--sentences with lots of adverbs and semicolons that run on for whole paragraphs.
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you're suggesting the Chron is a good paper though? its just as right wing and invested in sanewashing silicon valley, perpetuating moral crime panic and homelessness panic, etc
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I'm saying they produce crisp prose.

...and they do have Nuala Bishari covering public health and Soleil Ho writing about gender and race, which is far better than anyone at NYT covering those issues.
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He's been a great follow on substack
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Did you say "turgid"?
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