Does the New York Times read the New York Times push alerts?

President Joe Biden has dropped out of the race for President. 

Adam Schiff, Nancy Pelosi, and former president Barack Obama all gave weight to the idea that Biden should drop out. And after weeks of uncertainty following a lackluster debate performance — one he advocated for — Biden, in the middle of an active COVID-19 case, relented.

If you subscribe to the New York Times, you probably know this. In fact, if you subscribe to the New York Times, you probably know quite a bit about Biden and the speculation around his dropping out.

One player was always missing from the list of advocates in the Times coverage about Biden’s potential resignation: the New York Times.

The choice to repeatedly push out alerts centered on Biden’s mental acuity, rather than emphasize Trump’s threats to deport millions of Americans or dismantle the federal government, is a testament to the newsroom’s failure to live up to the idea of the fourth estate.

In May, Times publisher Joe Kahn told Semafor’s Ben Smith that the goal for the paper is to provide a realistic balanced take between the two candidates: “If you believe in democracy, I don’t see how we get past the essential role of quality media in informing people about their choice in a presidential election.”

Has the paper done so effectively?

No.

Relentless Times push alert after push alert about Biden became a running joke over the last few weeks. It’s obvious the front page of a publication is no longer primarily in print, but websites as a distribution mechanism are losing the attention battle to social media and, of course, push alerts. Fundamentally, the top brass at the Times fail to understand the weight of push alerts being driven to millions of phones, including policymakers’. It’s not just about the articles they write, but how they push those articles to their readers, and which articles they choose to prioritize in that distribution.

In beating this drum of coverage around Biden’s resignation — all the while there is a racist demagogue that echoes Hitler’s blood and soil ideology running for president — the Times is actually failing to recognize how it can shape democracy for the worse.

Biden’s campaign team commented thoroughly on this fixation in prior months. And the New York Times also pushed back. 

“No White House has ever been happy with our coverage and I don’t see why they should be. Our job is to hold power to account,” Elisabeth Bumiller, the Times‘ Washington bureau chief, told Politico in an April magazine article. 

It’s well and good to critique power. What’s strange, I think, is the flattening of this current moment: This White House is not like every other. Trump is an aberration and the tipping point. Trump winning the White House will radically alter the lives of Americans with the least amount of legal protections. 

While the New York Times Editorial Board — an opinion column separate from the newsroom — can freely say Biden should resign, the Times‘ newsroom should not need to put its thumb on the scale or advocate for any particular candidate. I am not advocating for that. They do need to, across the newsroom leadership, understand and communicate the precarity of the moment for Americans.

The Times may soon employ about 10% of the newspaper employees in the U.S. If the Times is the largest and most well-resourced pillar of the Fourth Estate, this moment — and how they respond to it — has severe implications for democracy in the United States.

We know that a large portion of Times subscribers come from high-income households, but what does their hyper-fixation say about who Times newsroom leadership don’t assume to write for? 

In Kahn’s interview, he said that “good media is the Fourth Estate, it’s another pillar of democracy.” And in another interview with the New Yorker, Kahn said the newsroom leadership was “constantly thinking about the hierarchy of the stories that we’re promoting.” 

By prioritizing a flurry of push alerts focused on Biden’s mental acuity and resignation, rather than the potential impact of a Trump presidency, they’re failing Americans who will be tangibly hurt by his policy.

The cultural and political weight of the most well-resourced newspaper in the country is not to be taken lightly. 

I don’t think leadership at the New York Times thinks they’re taking that responsibility lightly. But it’s silly for the masthead not to recognize the Times as a political player and pretend its priorities, and how they bear out in coverage, don’t alter the conversation.

One potential stop-gap solution here would be a public accounting of what push alerts the newsroom sends. It’s hard to hold the newsroom accountable without a database of what push alerts are being sent out (Slate attempted this in 2017).

This is not about whether or not Biden should have resigned or about being too harsh on a politician. This is a question about what the New York Times prioritizes and sends to readers.

In evaluating that, leadership at the New York Times might even do well to consider a popular proverb:

You think you just fell out of a coconut tree?

You exist in the context of all in which you live and what came before you.

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Gabe Schneider is the co-director of The Objective and a growth consultant for LA Public Press.