I think a plausible defense for Kahn here is that he demands readers be more than "casual" consumers of the news.
It's not a smart take, IMO, but it's defensible: We don't write for you to skim it, we write for you to *read* it.
It's not smart because it calls your readers dumb or lazy.
Somehow, highly classified documents were found at Mar a Lago, long after Trump denied he had them AND after he claimed to have returned them, and yet we never see any "Here's how that's bad news for Trump" headlines.
Instead, the baseline is "it's bad for Biden that his DoJ is prosecuting Trump."
I hate this defense. I mean *somebody* writes the headlines, if I’m directing my rage in the wrong direction can I at least get mad at them?!!? But the answer to that is also no
I think it's entirely fair to say that you shouldn't judge an author by their headlines. They're usually not the one picking them.
Not to judge the NYT, as an organization, for the headlines their editors pick, though? That's dumb. They deserve to be judged for their choices.
Is this NYTimes Pitchbot material or just fake? Because otherwise, well, the pitchbot should get paid as an editor.
Like, we aren't fucking six years old how did you assholes get thru JHS.
FWIW, I don't think it's a good idea to judge any source solely by its headlines. But @nytimes.com doesn't often summarize the complexities of a story before demonstrating them. Worse, they seem to speak with many voices in their headlines (as above), despite many folks seeing those as digestive.
