Opinion | Newman: Nuanced news
Tom Newmann Follow
“All the news that’s fit to print.” — A definitive sentence on the masthead of the New York Times.
The Times has been in print for almost 175 years — and its proclamation about what it purports to print has been up on the masthead for about 130 of those years.
The original idea for the slogan came from Adolph Ochs, who acquired the paper in a bankruptcy court in 1896. Ochs wanted to differentiate the content of his paper from the sensational yellow journalism of two of his major competitors, William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer. And what better way to take a dig at your sensationalistic rivals than to announce that you’d only be printing “all the news that’s fit to print.” Pretty heady stuff after coming out of bankruptcy.
Ironically, the Times is still going strong today, while the publishing empires of Hearst and Pulitzer have disappeared. But, possibly much to Ochs’ dismay, the bulk of the current news that’s fit to print in the Times is not printed. It’s digital. By the end of 2025, the Times had 12.2 million digital subscribers … and only 610,000 folks received the print edition. Maybe, if he was still around, Ochs would change the slogan to “All the news that’s fit to digitize.”
But, whether reading the hard-copy of the paper or checking it out online, there’s still a legitimacy to the Times. The same might be said for many of the current newspapers (many with digital platforms). Sure, they may not be in the political or social wheelhouses of everyone. But the bulk of the surviving papers still seem to have journalists who strive to accurately report facts rather than inuendo, have editors who oversee content and also publish opinion pieces and editorials that are not misrepresented as news. There are guidelines and guardrails. Of course, there are exceptions. But they do not seem to be the norm.
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However, one does not have to look far to find the opposite of “all the news that’s fit to print.” Or, perhaps more accurately, a bunch of stuff that’s not fit to print.
Enter, social media.
If Ochs thought he had a battle back in the day with the sensationalism of the Hearst and Pulitzer publications, one has to wonder how he’d react to the lunacy that now creeps up on today’s social media platforms, which generally have no guidelines. Or guardrails. Facts do not have to be facts. Content does not have to be overseen by … anyone. And opinion pieces and editorials — or, more accurately, rants and raves — are often represented as news. Or fact.
Perhaps we just need a latter-day Ochs to step out of the shadows, take over a bankrupt social-media platform (if such a thing actually exists), come up with a catchy slogan (“All the content that’s fit to post”)— and then create the legitimate guidelines and guardrails for a site that could blow the more “sensational” platforms out of the water. Wishful thinking, huh?
So maybe, instead, we need to continue to support any or all of the institutions that actually make an effort to supply us with the news that’s fit to print, broadcast or post.
And hope they can keep doing it for another 130 years.
Tom Newmann splits his time between Edwards and Queenstown, New Zealand. He has been going winter-to-winter since 1986. He was also a journalist in Missoula, Montana, at the Missoulian for quite a few years. Email him at tsnnz12@gmail.com.
