RedStateVT was a loyal follower of the New York Times for decades, reading it every morning on the commute into Manhattan. For nostalgic reasons we are deeply saddened to see the slow and steady decline of the paper. The Times and others may blame the rise of the Internet, the 24 hour news cycle or sun spots, but the fact of the matter is that the wound is self-inflicted. The reflexive liberal ideology of the Times has been well documented and, in fact, there are web sites devoted to pointing out how its biases have compromised the paper's integrity and driven readers away.
Recently the Times has been called to task for failing to report on the ACORN and "Green Jobs Czar" Van Jones scandals. In an internal post-mortem of why the paper did not write about these events, Public Editor Clark Hoyt said it has been suggested that the Times: "has trouble dealing with stories arising from the polemical world of talk radio, cable television and partisan blogs." And further: "a newspaper like The Times needs to be alert to them or wind up looking clueless or, worse, partisan itself." Yes, by all means, it would be wrong to appear either clueless or partisan.... RedStateVT has a tip for the Times. Don't get left behind again! Sean Hannity has picked up the story of "Safe Schools" Czar Kevin Jennings and is now calling for his removal. The positions Jennings has taken will curdle milk. So with Jennings the next czar to possibly face the wrath of the proletariat, the question is: will the Times learn from its past mistakes and write the story? (A quick search of the on-line Times today shows nary a mention.)
Unlike you, Redstate, I never read the New York Communist Times on principle. I guess you experienced something of a mid-life conversion – better late than never.
ReplyDeleteIn any case, I don’t know that I agree with your assessment that the Times’ “reflexive liberal ideology” is responsible for its slow and steady decline. Yes, the Times is indeed reflexively liberal, much more so than it was even 20+ years ago when we affectionately called it Pravda on the Hudson. But I think the Times’ liberal slide is a logical result of changes in the competitive media landscape. As the internet, talk radio and Fox News siphoned off many of the Times’ more conservative and moderate readers – like you – what was left was was a moonbat core readership. The Times’ has effectively positioned itself as the reflexively liberal newspaper of record. It’s not a bad niche, but it’s considerably smaller than its old niche as the newspaper of record.
That said, the ACORN and Van Jones stories badly damaged the Times’ credibility. Not because they exposed liberal bias, but because the Times left its readers completely in the dark on important news stories. Late night comedy shows, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert were having a field day with pimp-n-hooker ACORN gags, and the poor Times’ reader didn't get the joke. You can’t leaver your readers feeling “clueless, or worse, partisan itself.”