What’s the deal behind Dealbook?

Alex Pareene writes for The Baffler about The New York Times‘ Dealbook, which is run by Andrew Ross Sorkin and Pareene argues is soft on Wall Street.

Pareene writes, “Until a decade or so ago, the Times had flattered and entertained its audience with generous coverage of culture, arts, food, real estate, and travel (rich people interests) but had essentially abandoned the world of finance to its (formerly) downtown competitor, the Wall Street Journal. This is the opportunity Sorkin saw when he first pitched DealBook back in 2001, and it’s worked phenomenally well for him and the paper. After all, finance coverage in the mainstream press is intended for an audience of financial professionals, not the consumers of financial products—in much the same way that, say, the paper’s real estate coverage isn’t exactly intended for people who find housing arrangements on Craigslist. (This is the only possible explanation for something like DealBook’s lovingly detailed ‘Vows’-style account of the March 2013 wedding of Lloyd Blankfein’s son: by treating the investment bank scion as a bold-faced name-cum-nuptial-tastemaker, Sorkin’s shop was reminding the members of the financial elite, yet once more, that they were an invaluable breed apart.)

“There is a slight tension, though, between the (ideal) rich, liberal Times reader and the Wall Street titan who religiously refreshes DealBook. The Times reader, while rich, is more likely to accept the notion that Wall Street is corrupt, destructive, and far too powerful. But finance professionals could not function without the delusion that their jobs are beneficial, indeed essential, to society as a whole.

“This tension has colored the Times’ coverage of business and economics for years, and it has expressed itself in some weird hiring choices. Some of those hires seemed almost designed to repel the paper’s natural longtime audience. A partnership with the Freakonomics guys—University of Chicago economist Steven D. Levitt and his journalist/amanuensis Stephen Dubner—made a certain kind of sense. But having arch-libertarian John Tierney write a sort of science column for years (with a two-year stint on the op-ed page) seemed like high-level trolling. Or sometimes very low-level trolling—as when the Times sent Tierney to Zabar’s during the 2004 Republican National Convention to badger rich liberals about their ‘consciences.’ Tierney concluded that Republicans, while perhaps zealots, were ‘less smug than the Upper West Siders.'”

Read more here.