TELECOM Digest OnLine - Sorted: Re: NY Times Plans Major Job Cutback

Re: NY Times Plans Major Job Cutback

Mark Crispin (mrc@cac.washington.edu)
Thu, 11 Jan 2007 22:49:04 -0800

On Thu, 11 Jan 2007, Reuters News Wire wrote:

> The New York Times, like many other newspaper publishers, is trying to
> cut costs as advertising revenue and circulation decline as a result of
> more readers moving to the Internet and other media to get their news.

I would claim that a more important factor is that many long-time
subscribers (such as myself) grew weary of being spoon fed ideological
pablum and dropped our subscriptions en masse. Jayson Blair is a
symptom of a much more far-reaching problem at the Grey Lady (and
other once-reputable newspapers).

It's convenient to blame the Internet and other alternative media; it
avoids having to take a hard self-examination.

All newspapers have an editorial viewpoint; that is the purpose of the
editorial page. However, when the newspaper taints its hard news
reporting with that viewpoint, particularly when it reaches the
extreme of inventing quotes and incidents to match, then it ceases to
anything more than a propaganda organ.

The Times was once the paper that both dogmatic rightist and equally
dogmatic leftist read to get the hard facts, even as both vehemently
disagreed with the editorial. The Times had "all the news that's fit
to print", even when that news was inconvenient for its editorial
viewpoint; and it was respected and trusted for that.

Sadly, that has not been the case for many years.

The Times has fallen quite low, little better than the tabloids. It
will take a good deal of work to bring it back. I see little sign of
that happening.

-- Mark --

http://panda.com/mrc
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep deciding what to eat for lunch.
Liberty is a well-armed sheep contesting the vote.

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