[Despegar]

After the GFC, besieged bankers had a similar sentiment about the press. How to frame it in your mind is that you're now the bankers.

Read all the threads on HN about the Boeing 737 MAX, many from the same publications writing about Big Tech like the NYT, you never see any commentary about the publications and their motives like you do in the Big Tech threads.

The Occam razor's explanation for the difference is that the reaction to critical coverage when it's about your industry will be different in a predictable way.

[malvosenior]

The Occams razor is that Facebook and Google threaten The New York Times business model where bad banking and faulty jets do not. Big media is way too involved in these stories to report them objectively.

[Despegar]

That's certainly not true for the NYT. The NYT's stock has done very well in recent years and it's solely because their digital subscription business has taken off. It's one of the few publications that doesn't really depend on Facebook and Google for revenue.

[malvosenior]

They do threaten it though. They could elevate competitors voices or choose to filter the NYT from results of weigh them lower. I'm sure social media and search both drive a huge amount of NYT traffic. The only time I ever read it is when it's linked here.

[Despegar]

Facebook already made that change a long time ago to emphasize sharing of photos, status updates, etc over news.

NYT, WaPo, WSJ have all done fine while other publications that were founded on the premise of social traffic have gone out of business.

They're destination sites and brands in and of themselves, they don't rely on third party referral traffic.

[malvosenior]

This is incorrect. I assure you they get a large porition of their traffic from referrals and Google search results (and Google News). They were literally just complaining about this yesterday:

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/09/business/media/google-new...