When I was a wire editor of the Miami News, the New York Times news service sent a daily listing of the paper's front page stories.
Not very subtle. Clearly you were intended to judge your news judgment against the great NYT. After a few years of this, I got annoyed.
I collected a week's worth of front page listings and I graded them. "C+, B, C-, B, C," with a note explaining my grades –- "too many local stories," "you underplayed ...." "too much attention to...." I sent my listing to a senior editor. He never replied, natch.
That comes to mind today because the New York Times has just run an editorial calling for an end to the U.S. military occupation of Iraq. Since the New York Times, along with its cronies in the corporate press, were a major factor in making that war possible, it's a major step, though too late for thousands of American dead and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi dead.
The New York Times has always considered itself the best newspaper in the world. It wasn't true when I was grading their front page; it's not true now that they have made it possible for our politicians to get us involved in an outrageous ugly war.
I'm glad that they are finally admitting that the war was wrong. But I won't hold my breath waiting until they admit they were simpering, sycophantic, ignorant, and immoral fools to back it in the first place.
Posted by Deck at July 9, 2007 01:10 PM