Bari Weiss resigned from The New York Times yesterday. This news will be greeted with yawns by most Americans, but it marks a critical moment. The American paper of record, perhaps the most famous newspaper in the world, will no longer pretend to value opposing points of view within its pages.

Weiss stepped down with a letter to Times’ publisher, A.G. Sulzburger. A centrist, Weiss was hired by the Times‘ to diversify the paper, especially its opinion pages. She was brought in by James Bennet, a liberal, who resigned in the face of massive progressive criticism after he published U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton’s (R-AR) editorial about the protests surrounding George Floyd’s killing.

Cotton argued for President Trump’s power to use federal troops to quell violence in American cities. By itself, and as a matter of constitutional and statutory law, Cotton’s opinion was unremarkable, but the context, understandably, made it potent. The reaction was decisive. Times employees took to social media, especially Twitter, to express their outrage, some claiming that simply by publishing the editorial, the Times had made its own journalists less safe.

Bennet defended the decision on liberal grounds. Opposing points of view matter. Institutions like the Times are obligated to share diverse perspectives for the good of the people. There is value in conflicting arguments, and citizens benefit from reading them, even if they find them uncomfortable. His defense fell on ears of stone and Bennet left the paper.

Weiss’ departure falls in line with these events, but she provides a broader understanding of the Times‘ culture, which she paints as toxic for those unwilling to pledge fealty to the progressive narrative in all matters. The entire letter is worth reading, but two elements merit highlighting here.

Weiss says she was hired after the 2016 election, which proved that elite institutions were out of touch with large chunks of America. Instead of learning about the rest of the nation, Weiss says the Times has fallen further into the stark polarization that defines us. Truth is now sacrificed for the sake of political commitments. Here is how she puts it:

But the lessons that ought to have followed the election—lessons about the importance of understanding other Americans, the necessity of resisting tribalism, and the centrality of the free exchange of ideas to a democratic society—have not been learned. Instead, a new consensus has emerged in the press, but perhaps especially at this paper: that truth isn’t a process of collective discovery, but an orthodoxy already known to an enlightened few whose job is to inform everyone else.

Instead of transcending divisions, and nurturing a common set of facts, journalists are now part of the division. Journalists are no longer arbiters, but soldiers in the culture war, and opinions from “the other side” or outside standard progressive interpretations, are dangerous or even violent.

Social media has intensified the division. Twitter is both a battleground and an echo chamber, where elites go to affirm orthodoxy and define heresy. Weiss believes that social media drives the news at least as much or more than the news drives social media.

Twitter is not on the masthead of The New York Times. But Twitter has become its ultimate editor. As the ethics and mores of that platform have become those of the paper, the paper itself has increasingly become a kind of performance space. Stories are chosen and told in a way to satisfy the narrowest of audiences, rather than to allow a curious public to read about the world and then draw their own conclusions. I was always taught that journalists were charged with writing the first rough draft of history. Now, history itself is one more ephemeral thing molded to fit the needs of a predetermined narrative.

Weiss goes on to describe what happens when writers don’t live up to expectations. “Colleagues” repeatedly urged her firing. She was called a Nazi and a racist. Co-workers who offered succor were marginalized and badgered, proving that progressives have fully bought into the fundamentalist’s fervor for second-degree shunning. She was savaged on social media. In the face of this behavior, Weiss’s superiors did nothing to protect her. As she concludes, “I’m no legal expert,” but this felt like a hostile work environment.

Bari Weiss has written not just a letter of resignation, but an obituary, not for a paper, but an era. American journalism was ruled, for almost a century, by an ethic of objectivity, an obligation to be factual and fair, where a firm separation between news and opinion was maintained. Those days are over and they have been over for some time. We are not witnessing the death of objectivity, but the flowers sprouting above its grave. Journalism is now fully engaged in the cultural conflict, unmoored from any obligation to inform. Our press, on the right and the left, has abandoned event the pretense at holding its preferred politicians accountable, choosing only to savage rivals to their own power.

This is not new territory for American journalism. Our first century was defined by a partisan press. Newspapers were organs of the Federalists, Democrats, Whigs, and Republicans and we managed to survive. Our nation, though, is far different from the one serviced by that kind of journalism. There was a commonly held worldview that bound people together. There were public spaces where opponents talked, went to school, and worshipped. Yes, there were divisions and they were sometimes bloody, but it feels like that world was better-equipped to handle a partisan press. I am not sure this one is.