Charles Blow says editors at The New York Times drained the life out of his writing, leaving his once-fiery columns a “zombie thing” with only “a dwindling trace of my breath in it.”
In the debut of his Substack newsletter, Blow the Stack, the longtime columnist torched his final years at the Gray Lady as “no longer fully my voice” and admitted he went from loving the job to “struggling to justify doing it for pay.”
Blow’s indictment of the Times’ editing process echoes that of Nobel Prize–winning economist Paul Krugman, who also quit the opinion pages and shifted to Substack.
Krugman said a deteriorating relationship with management — including the discontinuation of his newsletter and what he called growing editorial constraints — made conditions “intolerable” for his style of policy analysis.
Both high-profile defections underscore how even marquee names at The Times have bolted for Substack, where they can write freely and publish more frequently without interference.
Blow, 55, spent 17 years hammering out columns after joining the paper as an intern three decades ago. But he said the grind wore him down and sapped his confidence.
“The reader can sense hesitation, unease and lack of conviction just as they can recognize the muscularity of thought and the sure-footedness of a well-crafted phrase,” he wrote.
He signed off from the op-ed page in February.
Months later, however, he was lured back by a senior editor at the Times Book Review, who tapped him to critique “Baldwin: A Love Story,” the first major James Baldwin biography in three decades. Blow said the editing on that piece was “restorative.”
“The editor was strong and sure, but also delicate, careful to preserve the voice and craft in the writing,” he recalled. “He was respectful. I had forgotten what that felt like.”
While he conceded his years at the Times were “weighted towards the good” and insisted he held no animus toward the paper, Blow made clear his time on the opinion desk ended in disillusionment.
“When I parted ways with The Times, it was without sorrow,” he said.
Blow is now promising readers a more “unfiltered and emancipated” voice on Substack, pledging to be “a fierce voice in terrifying times.”
The Post has sought comment from The Times.
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