[hirundo]

Kudos to the Post for attempting to produce an objective list. The New York Times doesn't:

> In other words, The New York Times best-seller list is not a best-seller list -- which even The New York Times once acknowledged. In the early 1980s, William Peter Blatty, author of the monumental best-seller "The Exorcist," sued The New York Times for only listing his novel on the list one time, even though it sold in the millions. In defending itself before the court, as reported by Book History, the annual journal of The Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing (Penn State University Press), The Times said, "The list did not purport to be an objective compilation of information but instead was an editorial product."

https://townhall.com/columnists/dennisprager/2018/04/17/the-...

[chiefalchemist]

"The New York Times' Hopeful to be Sellers List"

Doesn't seem to have the same ring :)

[justinph]

The Times makes it clear what their methodology is: https://www.nytimes.com/books/best-sellers/methodology

One anecdote posted on a conservative website is hardly a debunking of The Times' 75+ year history of best sellers lists.

[SyneRyder]

Seems unfair to dismiss it that way. Here is the decision, Blatty vs New York Times Company, decided December 29, 1986:

https://caselaw.findlaw.com/ca-supreme-court/1843273.html

The Times won on First Amendment (freedom of the press / speech) grounds. Blatty couldn't win, since the list would need to be "of and concerning" him:

> "To begin with, the list does not expressly refer to Blatty or his novel. Nor does he contend otherwise. Quite the contrary: the failure of Legion to appear on the list is the very basis of his action."

Perhaps most interesting for me is that the Times survey of bookstores included a pre-written list of the books they want sales numbers for:

> "To obtain sales figures from bookstores, [the Times] sent to the bookstores forms which [it] prepared; the forms for works of fiction contain and contained a printed list of 36 ‘bestselling’ books which has and had the effect of encouraging reports as to sales of books listed on the forms and discouraging reports as to sales of books not listed on the forms”

[briandear]

> Institutional, special interest, group or bulk purchases, if and when they are included, are at the discretion of The New York Times Best-Seller List Desk editors based on standards for inclusion that encompass proprietary vetting and audit protocols, corroborative reporting and other statistical determinations.

So basically, they use editorial discretion when ranking bulk sales. Which means they are prone to exclude books they don’t like and include books they do like. Excluding some bulk sales but not others isn’t objective. Institutional and bulk sales should all be excluded from the counts.

[trentnix]

Does that apply to the rest of paper as well?

[phnofive]

Taking your question at face value, yes, and it’s true of every private news company. They are first and foremost entertainers, and even those who hold themselves out as agents of change require a large audience.

[ahartmetz]

Read Noam Chomsky's "Manufacturing Consent" if you want to know what motivates media companies. (Spoiler: Advertisers first and foremost)

[horsawlarway]

It applies to nearly every organization that's been advertising itself as news for easily the last 20+ years.

They are all - every last one of them - suddenly nothing but editorial opinion and entertainment as soon as they show up in a courtroom.

[jammygit]

Not sure why the downvotes. If a news provider can’t promise to try to tell the truth in a legally binding way, but just claims to be editorializing, it’s no wonder there is so much public distrust of the news.

[chillwaves]

> If a news provider can’t promise to try to tell the truth in a legally binding way

which news provider does this?

[spikels]

You see the point then...

[buboard]

> to tell the truth in a legally binding way

feels like these two are mutually exclusive