Timing issues

The New York Times ran a notice titled “If You See Disinformation Ahead of the Midterms, We Want to Hear From You.”

It read in part, “As November’s midterm elections approach, the New York Times is looking for examples of online ads, posts and texts that contain political disinformation or false claims and are being deliberately spread on internet platforms to try to influence local, statewide, and federal elections.” It gave information on what did and did not fit this description and instructed readers how to report such things.

The problem was, instead of running in, say, January, it ran on Sept. 17, when nearly all the primary elections were over and only seven weeks of the general election campaign remained. In Nevada, most of the general election campaign was past.

Meanwhile, on the other coast, with 12 days remaining before election, the Los Angeles Times sent out an email offer—“Essential election coverage: 3 months for $1.” That was in the evening, half a day after the newspaper’s corporate cousin, the Chicago Tribune, had made the same offer.