With NYT on Strike, Let’s Revisit “Not the New York Times”

Suggested reading amid the New York Times walkout.

Picketers, Rupert Murdoch, bellbottoms.AP Photo

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More than 1,100 New York Times employees are striking for 24 hours after more than a year and a half of contract negotiations. But the Times website is still up and running, populated by prewrites, articles written by non-unionized staff, and a couple high-profile scabs

This reminded us of a relic of a famous newspaper strike: Not the New York Times.

Let’s remember the energy. It’s 1978 in New York. People didn’t have household internet access and were free of the 24-hour news cycle. For updates on current events, they tuned in for the nightly television news, turned on the radio, or picked up a newspaper. That year, for 88 days between August and November, the New York newspaper industry stopped.

When the New York TimesNew York Daily News, and the New York Post all shut down production amid a strike, Not the New York Times stepped in to fill the void.

An early precursor of The Onion, Not the New York Times looked convincingly like the real thing, with articles and ads created by striking newspaper writers and others in the media industry, including Carl Bernstein and Veronica Geng.

I was unaware of Not the New York Times until Mother Jones editor Marianne Szegedy-Maszak mentioned it (h/t to her), but I was delighted by the “Sprots” (not a sic) section. For whatever reason, the staff at my college—DIII except for fencing, no football team—newspaper called it the same thing.

You can find a PDF of Not the New York Times here.

Check it out.

THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

But you told us fundraising is annoying—with the gimmicks, overwrought tone, manipulative language, and sheer volume of urgent URGENT URGENT!!! content we’re all bombarded with. It sure can be.

So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

The upshot? Mother Jones does journalism you don’t find elsewhere: in-depth, time-intensive, ahead-of-the-curve reporting on underreported beats. We operate on razor-thin margins in an unfathomably hard news business, and can’t afford to come up short on these online goals. And given everything, reporting like ours is vital right now.

If you can afford to part with a few bucks, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones with a much-needed year-end donation. And please do it now, while you’re thinking about it—with fewer people paying attention to the news like you are, we need everyone with us to get there.

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THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

But you told us fundraising is annoying—with the gimmicks, overwrought tone, manipulative language, and sheer volume of urgent URGENT URGENT!!! content we’re all bombarded with. It sure can be.

So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

The upshot? Mother Jones does journalism you don’t find elsewhere: in-depth, time-intensive, ahead-of-the-curve reporting on underreported beats. We operate on razor-thin margins in an unfathomably hard news business, and can’t afford to come up short on these online goals. And given everything, reporting like ours is vital right now.

If you can afford to part with a few bucks, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones with a much-needed year-end donation. And please do it now, while you’re thinking about it—with fewer people paying attention to the news like you are, we need everyone with us to get there.

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