Media Curmudgeon

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January 29, 2009

Guest Blogger Doesn't Like The Times

Guest blogger Jiri Nechleba writes:

In your blog post titled "Good Riddance" you wrote: "David Brooks and columnist colleagues Gail Collins, Frank Rich, Nicholas Kristof, Bob Herbert, Thomas Friedman, and Paul Krugman contribute to making
The New York Times the best news Web site in America – truly the journal of record for the first draft of history."

The problem is that they are columnists who write opinion, not reporters who report the news, and that's the problem with print journalism today. Newspapers can't compete with the speed of TV or the Internet for news reporting so, increasingly, they are turning themselves into print magazines with opinion as the driver. In my view, the Chinese wall between opinion and news has long been broached. Opinion permeates almost all print news reporting, particularly political, and I don't think young reporters can even see the distinction. It's not glamorous when you report but don't interpret, but it's quite exciting to tell everyone what to think. Moreover, management is rooting you on.

Unfortunately, when you become an opinion "magazine" you become beholden to your readership. They don't read to gain awareness of the news of the day but rather they read for personal meaning. A good paper creates positive community - what does this mean to me and how do I fit into the world. A bad paper fuels negative community - what does this mean to me and anyone who doesn't think like me is stupid. One is noble; the other is bloodsport.

Here's where the Times lies at a distinct disadvantage in staying the nation's paper of record. The market it serves is New York City, specifically, and the Northeast, generally. It's clearly a liberal leaning area and hence to resonate with what the news means to the readership, the Times, for commercial reasons, will lean left. But that's not a reflection of the country, but a reflection of the region. The Washington Post's readership reflects its coverage of the government and, particularly, Congress. This forces them to cover both sides of the debate. Now I won't argue with your assessment of William Kristol, but I think the Post provides a much fairer national debate than the NY Times. Columnists like George Will or Charles Krauthammer present an intelligent conservative perspective. The fact is, the Post has a more balanced opinion section and, generally, holds itself more accountable in keeping itself from letting opinion creep into the news reporting function. I'd argue that in the next 10 or so years it will, in fact, become the de facto paper of record for the country.

I know that we're dropping our NY Times subscription because it is shrill, predictable and pandering to its base (which I'm sure thinks it's a wonderful paper). The Financial Times is more concise and global and I can skim the parts of the NY Times online that I want to read.

I think if the NY Times wants to be the paper of record for the nation, it needs to be more balanced (and more than a token effort) paper from an opinion perspective. It needs to be a paper that a broad cross section of the country can read and respect. It needs to strive to respect differing opinions and promote understanding across diverse opinions. What could be more liberal and progressive than that? Whether management is visionary and/or feels that will be commercially viable is a heck of a question.

Posted by Charles Warner at 10:43 AM | Comments (0) | Print |

January 27, 2009

Good Riddance

William Kristol wrote his last column for the New York TimesMonday, and I’m sure every reader who appreciated good writing said, “Good riddance.”

Kristol is a triple threat as a columnist: he can’t write, he can’t think, and he is error prone. I read his first couple of columns and then an occasional one when I thought the topic might interest me. I typically found that even though the topic might have been of interest, his pedestrian, doctrinaire writing, carelessness with facts, and lack of original ideas or worthwhile insight bored and angered me before I reached the last three or four paragraphs, so I inevitably gave up.

Kristol’s banality has nothing to do with his being a conservative; it has to do with him being dumb. His ineptness is best exemplified by comparing his final column, titled “Will Obama Save Liberalism?” to a column written the next day by the Times’ well-established, brilliant conservative columnist David Brooks.

Kristol’s last column began with the following:

All good things must come to an end. Jan. 20, 2009, marked the end of a conservative era. Since Ronald Reagan’s election in 1980, conservatives of various sorts, and conservatisms of various stripes, have generally been in the ascendancy. And a good thing, too! Conservatives have been right more often than not — and more often than liberals — about most of the important issues of the day: about Communism and jihadism, crime and welfare, education and the family. Conservative policies have on the whole worked — insofar as any set of policies can be said to “work” in the real world. Conservatives of the Reagan-Bush-Gingrich-Bush years have a fair amount to be proud of.

“All good things must come to an end?” I’ll let you guess where his head has been for 20 years.

Here’s how David Brooks began his column titled “What Life Asks of Us” on Tuesday:

A few years ago, a faculty committee at Harvard produced a report on the purpose of education. “The aim of a liberal education” the report declared, “is to unsettle presumptions, to defamiliarize the familiar, to reveal what is going on beneath and behind appearances, to disorient young people and to help them to find ways to reorient themselves.”

Brooks goes on to explore the meaning of education, the philosophy of individualism, the value of institutions, and the meaning of life – no easy task – but he manages it intelligently. David Brooks and columnist colleagues Gail Collins, Frank Rich, Nicholas Kristof, Bob Herbert, Thomas Friedman, and Paul Krugman contribute to making The New York Times the best news Web site in America – truly the journal of record for the first draft of history.

But you have to wonder why Kristol, who can barely play Class A ball in the shadow of the above big-league superstars, got the column in the first place. Conventional wisdom and gossip has that it was Pinch Sulzberger’s decision. It was rumored that he wanted to have another conservative voice on the paper in addition to David Brooks. Perhaps Sulzberger thought Kristol could be a replacement for William Safire. How dumb was that?

The day after Kristol’s last column appeared in the Times, the Washington Post announced Kristol would be writing a column for that influential publication. Katherine Weymouth is the publisher of the Washington Post.

Guess what Pinch Sulzberger, Katherine Weymouth, and William Kristol all have in common? They are all three members of the Lucky Sperm Club. Arthur Sulzberger’s family owns voting control of the Times, Katherine Weymouth is the granddaughter of Katherine Graham, and William Kristol is the son of Irving Kristol, the godfather of neoconservatism, a brilliant writer and intellectual, and founder and co-founder of several magazines, including The Public Interest.

We don’t really know if Pinch, Katherine, or William would have reached the pinnacles of journalism if they hadn’t all been members of the Lucky Sperm Club. But after reading William’s lousy columns, you have to wonder about the motivation underlying his being hired. As with most motivations, the reasons for his hiring were probably unconscious, but that’s the way of the world in the privileged confines of the Lucky Sperm Club.

Probably Pinch and Katherine should have read one of Irving Kristol’s quotes before they hired his son:

"The trouble with traditional American conservatism is that it lacks a naturally cheerful, optimistic disposition. Not only does it lack one, it regards signs of one as evidence of unsoundness, irresponsibility.”

Posted by Charles Warner at 4:30 PM | Comments (0) | Print |

January 19, 2009

At the Inauguration in DC

I graduated from St. Albans School in Washington D.C. in 1951 in the bottom third of my class in grades. I applied to four colleges: Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Dartmouth. I was accepted to all but Princeton because six other classmates had been accepted and Princeton didn’t want more than six from one prep school in the freshman class, I suspect.

My two best friends in that 1951 graduating class and I decided to go to Dartmouth, where I managed to party myself out of in a year and a half. Today I’m staying in the large, lovely apartment on Connecticut Avenue NW of one of those friends, Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist and author, Nick Kotz.

Yesterday I took the Metro down to the Foggy Bottom stop, got off and walked with the crowd to the Lincoln Memorial concert on the mall. The crowd was joyful – not a frown to be seen on diverse faces of every imaginable skin color, hair color, ethnic background and age. There were mostly families and couples and the happiest were black.

Every six feet, or so it seemed, there were hawkers of all color, ages, and gender selling T-shirts, buttons, hats, trinkets, and all sorts of Obama memorabilia; and they provided the comedy – “two buttons for five dollars – ten on Tuesday!” Brahmins from Boston with Red Sox caps, rednecks from West Virginia wearing university sweat shirts, Indian students from India, college girls from University of Colorado in ski clothes, they were all cheery and thrilled to be there.

I walked by the Federal Reserve building and had a bus driver take my picture in front of it. I told him I wanted my picture there so I could say I was watching to see that no more money was leaking out.

It also thrilled me to see the diversity and the absence of privilege. It was a different world than 1951 when there were no black boys at St. Albans and all you had to do to get into the Ivy League was to be white, graduate from a good prep school, and be a certified member of the privileged or semi-privileged class – it helped to be a WASP, too, or to be really smart if you weren’t. Thankfully, I was a WASP.

In 1951 privilege was in; in 2009, privilege is out, especially at this Inauguration. Today I watched Barack Obama on TV painting walls during the National Day of Service he was instrumental in creating. I can’t imagine George Bush, Dick Cheney, John Kerry, or Al Gore painting walls in a school during a Day of Service.

But Obama has changed things; he has already changed Washington. He’s eliminating privilege. I don’t miss it. I don’t miss the old days of privilege in 1951. Today I realized that one of the reasons I supported Obama and why I’m thrilled to be in Washington today for the Inauguration is that my guilt is finally being expiated. I knew I didn’t really deserve the privileges I had growing up. I was just lucky. But now I don’t feel guilty any more. Barack Obama is being Inaugurated the 44th President tomorrow and I’ll be there weeping like a baby, like I wept when he won the election.

Posted by Charles Warner at 11:25 PM | Comments (0) | Print |

January 17, 2009

At the Inauguration

Julia and I are in Washington, DC for the Inauguration.

We took the train from Penn Station in NY this morning. It was supposed to leave at 10:05 a.m., but it was about 35 minutes late and was packed -- standing room only. Because it's Saturday and we're on the same tracks that Obama will be on when he travels from Philadelphia to pick up Biden in Wilmington on the Inaugural train.

We saw small clusters of people along the tracks waiting to see the Obama Express. Cars are stopped on roads leading to the tracks and people are outside waiting, waiving, and happy. Some people are close to the tracks waiving, some holding huge flags. The crowds are mixed -- salt and pepper.

We didn't stop at Wilmington where we saw the Obama train -- as many flags as there were cops and Secret Service agents. The most indelible scene was just outside Wilmington in a run-down section of town. Gathered under a highway overpass was a shabbily dressed black family eagerly waiting to catch a glimpse of the passing Obama Express.

We're staying with my soul brother from prep school, Nick Kotz. We lived a half a block apart in Washington, DC and have stayed fast friends since. He's gotten tickets to an Inaugural Ball and we'll be going to several parties and events.

Both Nick and I campaigned for Obama, so this is a joyous, emotional time for us. Nick has written brilliantly about the Civil Rights movement since the 60s, so this Inauguration is especially meaningful for him.

For me, I'm just grateful that I have lived long enough to see history being made and being able to participate in the joy.

Posted by Charles Warner at 5:05 PM | Comments (1) | Print |

Doug at February 17, 2009 10:27 AM writes:

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