Raines, if you recall, spent almost all his capital as editor of the editorial page going after the Clintons
John, I don't care what Raines did at the editorial page. I never paid much attention to the NYT editorials. I decided long ago that they were rarely sensible or original.
I do care what Raines is doing to the news reporting of the NYT right now. What he's doing is launching crusades on the news pages. Fulminating on the editorial pages is one thing, making the front page play handmaid to your crusades is quite another. These crusades have been against the Masters (90+ stories!), for "the environment"/global warming, and most of all, against the Bush administration's policies, foreign and domestic.
Furthermore, he is lowering the journalistic standards of the Times (did you ever see such a year for corrections? remember the "giant sea sparrows"?), and now it comes out that he is a disasterous manager, clearly having one set of rules for his favorites and another for everybody else. There has been a high turnover under his management, a situation which this public scandal is hardly likely to amend.
Now some elements in the establishment have moved rightward but the Time has hardly moved leftward
No, the Times now conceives of its mission as being a counterweight to the rightward movement, that is going to haul the country back to towards the left. As Tim Egan said the other day, as quoted by Seth Mnookin of Newsweek:
What will come of this infighting, cannibalism, and soul-searching? Hopefully, we'll go back to valuing what we have: people who care about the drift of this country, and are given the time and respect to tell it right.
What "drift" would that be, hmm, John?
Only you think the Times is unchanged, John. Only you. |
