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After the New York Times (NYT) published an op-ed on bitcoin mining, claiming the industry is harmful to the environment, an organization called Stop the Presses challenged the Times’ use of the paper. Stop the Presses launched a social media campaign against NYT newspaper production. The organization’s website, nytimesup.org, alleges that the company “kills an estimated 59 million trees a year.”
Activists blast New York Times over physical production of newspaper printing
On April 10, 2023, The New York Times was criticized for publishing a one-sided “hit story” about bitcoin mining. Crypto proponents claimed that Times reporter Gabriel Dance did not use factual information. Since then, the focus has shifted to the environmental impact of the American media, founded in 1851, due to its newspaper production.
A group called Stop the Presses has launched a social media campaign and website exposing the news industry’s current printing practices. The charge is that the New York Times is destroying a significant number of trees to produce its outdated physical paper in a digital world.
The New York Times kills about 59 million trees a year, details the site nytimesup.org. They kill those trees just to turn them into a log that most people throw away, creating billions of pounds of CO2 every year. They print propaganda on the paper they create with dead trees, yet we live in the digital age. This unnecessary practice must stop.
NYTimes Bitcoin Hit Piece backfires as #StopThePresses movement erupts on social media https://t.co/H21dbyUUbW
— zerohedge (@zerohedge) April 18, 2023
Many others share the same sentiment as Stop the Presses. Several people are sharing images and information on the subject while tagging the NYT Twitter account for the company to notice the grievances. One individual estimates that if The New York Times kills 59 million trees per year, it creates “2.832 billion pounds of CO2 per year”. The person notes that it is even worse when one accumulates 171 years of newspaper delivery.
“That means they killed over 10 billion trees and created over 484 billion pounds of CO2,” the individual pointed out. The number of trees used to create The New York Times since 1851 does not take into account the CO2 used at the company’s 27 newspaper printing sites for manufacturing purposes.
Social media campaign image shared by Stop the Presses.
Moreover, it does not take into account the delivery process and all the fossil fuels used to transport the newspaper to the stores. The NYT even publishes a 2009 article on the subject, and the author acknowledges that physical logs cause a significant amount of greenhouse gas emissions.
Citing a 2004 academic paper, New York Times contributor Tom Zeller Jr. explains that the study’s conclusion notes that “receiving information on a PDA results in significant reductions in carbon dioxide emissions, water, nitrogen and sulfur oxides”.
In another New York Times article published in 2018 by Farhad Manjoo, the author explains how he took time off from reading digital news to read the physical paper for two months. Interestingly, Manjoo says it was a “surprise blessing” although he acknowledges that the print “presents a more restrained mix of ideas than what you find online”.
The blessing, Manjoo said, despite news dating back a day due to the delay in printing and delivery, was that “hundreds of experienced professionals had done the hard work” for him. The NYT has not publicly responded to any criticism from Stop the Presses and other activists.
More recently, the newspaper’s social media account with 55 million followers lost its verification tick on Twitter. Physical print newspapers have declined over the past decade, and over the past two years print subscribers have fallen by 7%. Data further shows that between 2005 and 2021, approximately 2,200 US print newspapers failed, with the majority of today’s readership migrating to digital media.
Keywords in this story academic article, US print newspapers, bitcoin mining, BTC mining, carbon dioxide, CO2 emissions, reviews, dwindling readership, digital age, digital media, environmental impact, environmental responsibility, experienced professionals, information factual, Farhad Manjoo, fossil fuels, greenhouse gas emissions, manufacturing, media landscape, New York Times, newspaper delivery, newspaper production, nitrogen oxides, NYT, nytimesup.org, one-sided reporting, online journalism , print, PDA, print subscribers, print versus digital, print locations, propaganda, social media campaign, Stop the Presses, sulfur oxides, Tom Zeller Jr., trees, Twitter, checkmark, water
What do you think of the environmental impact of physical newspapers in the digital age, and do you think major news outlets like the New York Times should focus entirely on digital media? Share your thoughts on this topic in the comments section below.
Jamie Redman
Image credits: Shutterstock, Pixabay, Wiki Commons
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