Bottom line: Competition works in free markets. And that’s why the Protection Racket Media tried very hard to kill off their competition through tendentious ‘fact checks’ and cheerleading for government censorship. Even with their grip on information markets, their narrative labs have to compete — and that led the New York Times to get a scoop over the weekend.
This revelation from Semafor leads to an interesting “what if,” though:
The afternoon before a long holiday weekend isn’t always the best time to drop a major scoop. But the New York Times did not want to wait to publish its story about Zohran Mamdani’s application to Columbia University in 2009, in which the paper reported that the Democratic nominee for New York City mayor then identified his race on a form as both “Asian” and “Black or African American.” Mamdani is of South Asian ethnicity and was born in Uganda.
The story, published late last week, came as the result of the release of hacked Columbia University records that were then shared with the Times. The paper believed it had reason to push the story out quickly: It did not want to be scooped by the independent journalist Christopher Rufo. Two people familiar with the reporting process told Semafor that the paper was aware that other journalists were working on the admissions story, including Rufo, a conservative best known for his crusade against critical race theory.
Let’s take this in order. First, the time to drop a major scoop is as soon as you have it nailed. That’s what is called news. If you start trying to time it for maximum market and political impact, it’s not really news or a scoop any longer — it’s campaign propaganda.
And if the timing revolves around trying to bury it without getting much attention, then the afternoon before a long holiday weekend is in fact the perfect time to publish it. Is that what the New York Times tried to do here? It certainly seems that way from the tenor of post-publication outrage by their own staff and its readership over the news that Mamdani attempted to black-face his way into Columbia. Jonathan Turley took notice yesterday:
The Times readers were outraged to the point that the paper published a lengthy statement from the Times’ assistant managing editor for Standards and Trust, Patrick Healy, attempting to explain why it decided to publish facts that undermined a Democratic candidate. Healy sheepishly explained that “When we hear anything of news value, we try to confirm it through direct sources. Mr. Mamdani confirmed this information in an interview with The Times.”
It did not help. Much like the infamous Cotton scandal, where editors were fired for allowing a Republican senator to print an opposing view on riots, writers and pundits demanded firings or attacked the journalists.
One such response came from Times columnist Jamelle Bouie, who attacked the journalists themselves. Not surprisingly, the attack appropriately came on BlueSky, a social media site designed to be a safe place for liberals who do not want to be triggered by opposing views.
Bouie slammed Times reporter, Benjamin Ryan, as stupid, claiming, “Everything I have seen about him screams a guy with little to no actual brain activity.”
Semafor assumed that the NYT wouldn’t have chosen to publish this on Thursday afternoon if not for the competition from Rufo. Given the tenor of defense from Healy and the outrage from the Times’ notoriously restive staff, I’d bet that the Gray Lady wouldn’t have chosen any other time to report on Mamdani’s appropriation of black identity — if they bothered to report it at all.
That’s the value that Rufo brought into this equation. By readying his own publication of Mamdani’s Columbia application, Rufo threatened to batter the NYT’s credibility on covering its own city’s mayor race. Furthermore, Rufo’s report would have set the context for the revelation and the debate over it that followed. By beating Rufo to the punch, the Times at least had the opportunity to shape the context and debate and soften the edges for Mamdani:
Columbia, like many elite universities, used a race-conscious affirmative action admissions program at the time. Reporting that his race was Black or African American in addition to Asian could have given an advantage to Mr. Mamdani, who was born in Uganda and spent his earliest years there.
In an interview on Thursday, Mr. Mamdani, 33, said he did not consider himself either Black or African American, but rather “an American who was born in Africa.” He said his answers on the college application were an attempt to represent his complex background given the limited choices before him, not to gain an upper hand in the admissions process. (He was not accepted at Columbia.)
Ahem. Being African is not the same thing as being black, especially in the American context. Just ask Elon Musk. The purpose of questions like these was, in Affirmative Action, to offer benefits for those who descended from slaves and operate with economic disadvantages as a result. That purpose was and still is painfully obvious. To claim black (or Native American) identity as an advantage in any process without any valid connection to that identity is an outright corrupt act, and everyone from Elizabeth Warren on down knows it.
That is, everyone except at the New York Times, apparently:
The piece also seemed to divide staff, and reignited years-old internal tensions between some younger, more left-leaning members of staff and management.
“People are really upset,” one Times journalist told Semafor.
Why are they “really upset”? Because the Times reported news rather than the latest output from Narrative Central. If these staffers are upset that their employer publishes news verified as factual by the principal, especially about political candidates, then they are in the wrong line of work. Even if they are only upset by the fact that Mamdani’s corrupt act has been exposed, they still should consider their career choice and find work in political activism. That is, honest political activism, not political activism disguised as ‘journalism.’
Anyway, don’t weep too much for Rufo over his lost scoop. He seems to be enjoying it:
Bummer to get scooped, but kudos to my friends at the New York Times for being first to publish the story https://t.co/SSOw62Hnxa
— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) July 7, 2025
Rufo plans to offer more in a follow-up on his Substack, so stay tuned.
We often get feedback from our readers of appreciation for what we do to hold the Protection Racket Media accountable, but some then suggest that the fight is futile. Rufo just proved what competition can do in the media space. The rest of us in independent media need to keep fighting to keep that competition going, because clearly nothing else will work to hold narrative labs like the New York Times accountable.
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