I agree it’s gone downhill, I’m finding it really bizarre and somewhat sad to watch. It seems to me the pillars of legacy media like the NYT realized in the past decade they’re going to be outdone by newer internet-native ways of obtaining information (Substack, Twitter, etc. which do have their own issues), and their recent wave of SV tech industry bashing reeks of desperation. I’m not sure what’s going to rise to replace the idea of a “Paper of record”. Balaji is big on the idea of a “ledger of record” on some blockchain, but implementation difficulties aside, I’m skeptical that such a system would really solve the problem here.
Does there need to be a replacement? It's my understanding that it's always been this way in for example the UK; they have well-regarded newspapers pushing out strong reporting (as the NYT continues to do), but there's no expectation that the papers won't be biased. In many ways, it could be healthier for a society to not have outlets that everyone uncritically trusts.
