These stealth edits are unacceptable. They are tantamount to the NYTimes shouting about their cowardice from the rooftops. Do they really think people won’t notice? Clearly they underestimate how satisfying it is to catch them in a lie, which is ironic for a newspaper whose reputation has been bolstered by exposing (some) lies.
I thought correction notices were standard practice. It’s not like they can correct the hard copy, so fuck all their online readers I guess? Infuriating, but we shouldn’t expect anything better from them at this point in their downfall.
To add some context, one nice thing about the independent model 404 Media has gone with is that they tell us exactly what their motivations are, in their own voices (it’s only four people). On their podcast they’ve been very open about what they want, and maximizing profit is not it. They’ve talked honestly about what it costs to operate, and they’ve said the infinite growth model is not what they want to emulate. They just want to keep doing good journalism, they are not in it to get rich. Since I believe and trust their journalism, I’ll choose to believe them on the business side too, and that’s up to everyone to decide.
I think they’re in touch with their readership enough to know that they’d lose a ton of subscribers if they sold out or started making terrible profit-driven decisions.
But who knows, I don’t know them personally so they could just be really really good liars.