The first couple paragraphs make it clear that The NYT is still smarting from having been overshadowed by the Guardian and Intercept for the Snowden era leaks. The author gleefully dances on the conviction of Winner while lambasting the Intercept as having broken NewsRule No.1.
As seems to be the case with most of the NYTs stories in this year, the source for this article is concealed as well. NYT proposes that they have a couple pdfs of leaked internal emails that explain the internal tumult for this event. Two questions arise for this though: “Are we supposed to just blindly trust the NYT with their continued “anonymous sources” programme?”, and also “What of it?”
What of it that a public failure led to internal tumult in a firm? I’m sure it happens a lot at the NYT as well. Is this really what journalism has gotten to? Petty reporting about another outlets infighting?