Former NY Times Columnist Says His Last Years ‘Weren’t My Most Pleasant’
Former New York Times columnist Charles Blow, who spent some three decades at the Grey Lady, lamented how his time at the paper ended in his new Substack blog.
“My last years at the paper weren’t my most pleasant. My job went from being one I would say, earnestly, I would do for free, to one I struggled to justify doing for pay.”
He also commented on about the content of his columns as his time wore down.
“The zombie thing that came to be published under my name had a dwindling trace of my breath in it. It was no longer fully my voice.”
Blow said that while he wished the Times well and future success, he departed “without sorrow.”
Substack has become the haven for journalists who have either been laid off, took voluntary buyouts or retired from their posts as newspapers continued their march to becoming leaner companies in an effort to survive in a world where newsprint continues to shrink and making a profit online is a continual struggle.
The last straw for Blow may have been the re-election of Donald Trump. He noted in his final column in February 2025 that he covered the 2016 election of Trump, stating that he considered it a racial event. He called Trump a racist in 2018 and like most black liberals would play the race card against Trump and the Republicans because it sold well with his audience.
Liberal journalism is not en vogue under Trump 2.0 and is unlikely to return to its dominant position in the near future, if ever.
Don Irvine
Donald Irvine is the chairman of of Accuracy in Academia (AIA), a non-profit research group reporting on bias in education. Irvine follows his father’s legacy, Reed Irvine, to critically analyze the liberal media’s bias and brings over thirty years of media analysis experience. He has published countless blog posts and articles on media bias, in context of current events, and he has been interviewed by many news media outlets during his professional career. He currently hosts a livestream weekly show on AIA’s Facebook page which discusses current events.
Irvine graduated from the University of Maryland and rose up the ranks to become chairman of Accuracy in Media until his transition to AIA.
He resides in the suburbs around the nation’s capital and is a proud father and grandfather.
