Groupmember, on Ira Stoll:

It’s funny that this issue is portrayed as one common to all traditional newspapers facing an uncertain digital future. I would venture to say that the NY Times’s biggest problem is editorial. The paper really seems to have lost its bearings, its vaunted objectivity, and with that, much of its readership. Me, anyway. Dick Cavett as a blogger? Is this someone’s idea of freshness? Charles Blow? Since when did someone get appointed to a columnist’s position from graduating from a stint as an art director? Do I need to be told to “Think Again” by Stanley Fish, an attention-mongering academic? Is anyone editing Roger Cohen? I believe he described Ireland as having been a “beer-soaked backwater.” Did nobody find that offensive at the paper?

My guess is they feel that they are riding the wave of post-Obama leftism: letting younger, less seasoned voices have a prominence that they would not have previously had. The upshot is that they have made themselves into just another thin-skinned, reactive, partisan publication, trading reliable fact-gathering for currency, and staid impartiality for whimsical personality, and the fleeting insignificance that comes with it.