David Halbfinger comes to the job after almost four years heading The Times’s Jerusalem bureau. “I just can’t think of a more important way that I could contribute,” he said of his new post.
Tag Archives: New York Times
I Love Eating Raw Onions. Turns Out Many Readers Do, Too.
I wrote an appreciation. Or maybe it was a confession. Either way, I was surprised by the outpouring of comments.
A Simple Directive Sparked a Storied Career: ‘Now, Take the Picture.’
A new retrospective honors Michelle V. Agins, a Pulitzer-winning New York Times photographer who captures stories that would otherwise go untold.
Writing for the Poor
A paper’s columnists should be like an orchestra, each playing a different instrument. I decided that I was going to play the banjo.
Here Are Some of the Photographs of 9/11
Photographers reflect on shooting the terrorist attacks of 9/11 and their aftermath.
9/11 Changed Us
People of my generation will never know again the innocence that my children’s generation only tasted.
Afghans Who Worked for The New York Times Arrive in Houston
The group, 124 people including families, flew to Houston from Mexico City after their escape from Kabul. One Afghan journalist in the group has not been cleared by U.S. border officials.
Mueller Scrutinized an Unidentified Member of News Media in Russia Inquiry
The scrutiny was one of several new disclosures the Justice Department made about investigative actions involving the news media during the Trump years.
Experts on Deaf Culture Help Times Explain Name Signing
To understand the process of name signing, a Times team turned to people who knew it best.
How Mexico Helped The Times Get Its Journalists Out of Afghanistan
A humanitarian effort led by Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard gave Afghans and their families a sanctuary that the U.S. government was unable to provide.
Naftali Bennett Backs Hard Line on Iran, Softer Tone With U.S.
In an interview before meeting with President Biden, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said he opposed U.S. efforts to restore a nuclear deal with Iran and ruled out peace talks with the Palestinians.
Kids and Covid: What to Know, a Times Virtual Event
As children head back for an uncertain school year, Dr. Anthony Fauci joins Times journalists for a vital Q&A for parents, educators and students everywhere.
A Rush of News: Behind The New York Times’s Live Coverage
When readers need information immediately, teams of journalists collaborate to tell a single unfolding story.
How News Organizations Got Colleagues Out of Kabul, Afghanistan
The evacuation of those who worked for outlets like The New York Times and The Washington Post came after a global rescue effort stretching from the Pentagon to Qatar.
How News Organizations Got Afghan Colleagues Out of Kabul
The evacuation of those who worked for outlets like The New York Times and The Washington Post came after a global rescue effort stretching from the Pentagon to Qatar.
Facebook releases a glimpse of its most popular posts, but we don’t learn much
Facebook is out with a new report collecting the most popular posts on the platform, responding to critics who believe the company is deliberately opaque about its top-performing content.
Facebook’s new “widely viewed content reports” will come out quarterly, reflecting most viewed top News Feed posts in the U.S. every three months — not exactly the kind of real-time data monitoring that might prove useful for observing emerging trends.
With the new data set, Facebook hopes to push back against criticism that its algorithms operate within a black box. But like its often misleading blogged rebuttals and the other sets of cherry-picked data it shares, the company’s latest gesture at transparency is better than nothing, but not particularly useful.
So what do we learn? According to the new data set, 87% of posts that people viewed in the U.S. during Q2 of this year didn’t include an outside link. That’s notable but not very telling since Facebook still has an incredibly massive swath of people sharing and seeing links on a daily basis.
YouTube is predictably the top domain by Facebook’s chosen metric of “content viewers,” which it defines as any account that saw a piece of content on the News Feed, though we don’t get anything in the way of potentially helpful granular data there. Amazon, Gofundme, TikTok and others also in the top 10, no surprises there either.
Things get weirder when Facebook starts breaking down its most viewed links. The top five links include a website for alumni of the Green Bay Packers football team, a random online CBD marketplace and reppnforchrist.com, an apparently prominent portal for Christianity-themed graphic T-shirts. The subscription page for the Epoch Times, a site well known for spreading pro-Trump conspiracies and other disinformation, comes in at No 10, though it was beaten by a Tumblr link to two cats walking with their tails intertwined.
Image Credits: Facebook
Yahoo and ABC News are the only prominent national media outlets that make the top 20 when the data is sliced and diced in this particular way. Facebook also breaks down which posts the most people viewed during the period with a list of mostly benign if odd memes, including one that reads “If your VAGINA [cat emoji] or PENIS [eggplant emoji] was named after the last TV show/Move u watched what would it be.”
If you’re wondering why Facebook chose to collect and present this set of data in this specific way, it’s because the company is desperately trying to prove a point: That its platform isn’t overrun by the political conspiracies and controversial right-wing personalities that make headlines.
The dataset is Facebook’s latest argument in its long feud with New York Times reporter Kevin Roose, who created a Twitter account that surfaces Facebook’s most engaging posts on a daily basis, as measured through the Facebook-owned social monitoring tool CrowdTangle.
By the metric of engagement, Facebook’s list of top-performing posts in the U.S. are regularly dominated by far-right personalities and sites like Newsmax, which pushes election conspiracies that Facebook would prefer to distance itself from.
The company argues that Facebook posts with the most interactions don’t accurately represent the top content on the platform. Facebook insists that reach data, which measures how many people see a given post, is a superior metric, but there’s no reason that engagement data isn’t just as relevant if not more so.
“The content that’s seen by the most people isn’t necessarily the content that also gets the most engagement,” Facebook wrote, in a dig clearly aimed at Roose.
The platform wants to de-emphasize political content across the board, which isn’t surprising given its track record of amplifying Russian disinformation, violent far-right militias and the Stop the Steal movement, which culminated in deadly violence at the U.S. Capitol in January.
As The New York Times previously reported, Facebook actually scrapped plans to make its reach data widely available through a public dashboard over fears that even that version of its top-performing posts wouldn’t reflect well on the company.
Instead, the company opted to offer a taste of that data in a quarterly report and the result shows plenty of junk content, but less in the way of politics. Facebook’s cursory gesture of transparency notwithstanding, it’s worth remembering that nothing is stopping the company from letting people see a leaderboard of its most popular content at any given time — in real-time even! — beyond the its own fear of bad press.
My Strange Journey in the Crypto World Creating a Hype Coin
I created a hype coin to show how risky an investment can be. The coin had other plans.
People Who Changed Their Lives Are Focus of New Times Series
Stories about people trying something different in their lives have always inspired me. Now, the Times series It’s Never Too Late offers readers more examples.
Laura Foreman, Reporter Whose Romance Became a Scandal, Dies at 76
The disclosure of her relationship with a source while at The Philadelphia Inquirer ended her journalism career and prompted the paper to develop an ethics code.
Pulitzer-Winning Critic Wesley Morris Captured the Moment
For his piercing insights on race and culture, Wesley Morris recently received his second Pulitzer Prize. But he won over colleagues long before that.
How (and Why) the Metro Desk Photographed 115 Service Workers
The New Yorkers who kept the city moving were often overlooked. Portraits put their faces in the center of the frame.
Attempt to Seize Washington Post Reporters’ Email Data Came Day Before Barr Left Office
Newly unsealed court files shed more light on a contentious leak investigation.
Richard J. Meislin, Times Editor and Web Journalism Pioneer, Dies at 68
He was both a computer whiz and an accomplished newsman when he began prodding colleagues and the newspaper itself to begin adapting to the online world.
Mexico’s President Says Carlos Slim Might Help Rebuild Collapsed Metro Line
A New York Times investigation found that poor work by Mr. Slim’s company led to the fatal accident. Mr. Slim may be willing to help fix it, but it is not clear if he would pay the costs.
Nikole Hannah-Jones Says She Won’t Join U.N.C. Faculty Without Tenure
A letter from Ms. Hannah-Jones’s lawyers said an unnamed “powerful donor” had contributed to the University of North Carolina Board of Trustees’ failure to grant her tenure.
Former Times Columnist George Vecsey Gets Tribute From Son
I had to share my father with millions of readers, but they never got hear the back stories over a Wendy’s hamburger coming home from Shea Stadium in the middle of the night.
Zimbabwe Releases Local Reporter Working for The New York Times
The government said that it would not oppose bail for Jeffrey Moyo, a freelance journalist in the capital, Harare, adding that there was evidence to show he had believed he was acting legally.
What Data About You Can the Government Get From Big Tech?
The revelations of a leak investigation started in the Trump administration are a reminder that Big Tech companies often hand over information about their users.
Garland Confronts Long-Building Crisis Over Leak Inquiries and Journalism
Prosecutors’ approach to unauthorized disclosures of government secrets has undergone a sea change in the 21st century.
Garland Confronts Crisis Over Leak Inquiries and Journalism
Prosecutors’ approach to unauthorized disclosures of government secrets has undergone a sea change in the 21st century.
Pulitzer Winners Include The New York Times and Buzzfeed News
The Pulitzer board recognized reporting on the murder of George Floyd, including a special citation for Darnella Frazier, the teenager who filmed the killing. The public service prize went to The New York Times for Covid coverage.
Hunting Leaks, Trump Officials Focused on Democrats in Congress
The Justice Department seized records from Apple for metadata of House Intelligence Committee members, their aides and family members.
CNN Lawyers Gagged in Fight With Justice Dept. Over Reporter’s Emails
The disclosure of the aggressive leak investigation tactic followed a similar revelation involving The New York Times.
New York Times Hires Stella Bugbee as New Styles Editor
Ms. Bugbee, who expanded The Cut into a top site for fashion and social issues, is scheduled to start later this month.
Things to Do in New York: A Times Newsletter on Tips Returns
The Summer in the City newsletter has returned to guide you on making the most of New York again, whether you’re looking to get out in a crowd or escape from one.
Times Requests Disclosure of Court Filings Seeking Reporters’ Email Data and Gag Order
Lawyers for the newspaper are asking how the Justice Department justified keeping the order secret since its leak inquiry was publicly known.
Biden, Congress and the Free Press
The Biden administration should break with Trump and Obama administration practices and stop targeting journalists.
Biden White House Disavows Knowledge of Gag Order in Leak Case
The Justice Department also said it was changing its policy to bar seizing reporters’ phone and email records in hunts for their sources.
U.S. Put Gag Order on Times Executives Amid Fight Over Email Logs
The push began in the Trump administration and continued under President Biden, and the Justice Department obtained a gag order to keep it from public view.
Times Ends Series on Covid Obituaries, ‘Those We’ve Lost’
A Times obituary series that made the pandemic’s toll personal is ending.
Trump Administration Secretly Seized Phone Records of Times Reporters
The admission by the Biden Justice Department followed similar recent disclosures to The Washington Post and CNN.
Reconstructing the Neighborhood Burned in the Tulsa Massacre
Using maps, newspaper clippings, testimonies and more, a team of graphics editors created an interactive 3-D portrait of the community that was burned down in 1921.
The Times’s At Home Print Section Closes as Society Reopens
The Sunday print section, born during coronavirus lockdowns, guided readers on how to cope with confinement, with a big assist from readers themselves.
Zimbabwe Authorities Arrest Local Reporter Working for The New York Times
Jeffrey Moyo, a freelance journalist for The Times who is based in Harare, was being held on charges of violating the country’s immigration laws. His lawyers say the accusation is spurious.
Nikole Hannah-Jones Weighs Legal Action Against U.N.C.
Nikole Hannah-Jones, a creator of the 1619 Project who is scheduled to start as a professor at the university this summer, has retained lawyers to represent her in a dispute over tenure.
‘Day X’ Audio Series Looks at Germany’s Resurgent Far Right
“Day X,” a new five-part audio documentary from The Times, examines the rise of a new brand of extremism, and one shadowy figure in the middle of it.
How The Times Acts When a Journalist’s Safety Is Compromised
After situations involving forceful detentions or worse, the organization seeks prompt accountability and change.
Nikole Hannah-Jones Receives Support in Tenure Dispute
More than 200 writers and cultural figures signed a letter opposing the University of North Carolina’s failure to give the Times Magazine correspondent tenure with her position there.
Ethiopia Expels New York Times Reporter
The government gave no explanation for the expulsion of the reporter, Simon Marks, who had extensively reported about the war and human rights abuses in the Tigray region.
Nikole Hannah-Jones Denied Tenure at University of North Carolina
Her hiring brought a backlash from conservatives concerned about her involvement in The Times Magazine’s 1619 Project, which examined the legacy of slavery in America.