I’m an unpopular figure among a certain swath of media professionals. Newspaper folks, mostly, or people who started their careers working for newspapers. They don’t like me because I’ve spent a good chunk of the past decade arguing that it’s bad when old establishment media folks coast on their reputation, credentials and presumed authority and that the old media companies are flawed to the extent they are unable to quickly adapt to new information or ways of thinking, causing them to roll forward on inertia. 

In other news, the former Executive Editor of the New York Times has written a book largely about how new, online-based media is bad and irresponsible and will lead to the ruination of society. The book has been found to include multiple, significant plagiarized passages and a plethora of errors that were likely overlooked because the author was deemed too important and established to edit and fact-check. Meanwhile, the book’s old school publisher is standing behind the author, saying it’ll fix what can be fixed. It’s hard not to see that as an admission that, plagiarism and errors notwithstanding, it’s simply not practical or viable for them to stop publication at this point.