Thoughts on the New York Times, 2008 version, and the lessons of the McCain article.
Sunday, the paper’s “public editor,†Clark Hoyt, weighed in on the controversy. I say “weighed†but his tread was positively catlike. Another missed opportunity, I suppose. But let me help. Here’s what the paper’s public editor didn’t say, but should have: “Get a grip! The function of the Times is not to print ‘news.’ It’s to provide like-minded readers with a comforting view of the world.â€If its purpose is to print “all the news,†then the Times, like all newspapers, is an old-fashioned product made obsolete by advances in technology. Therefore, what constitutes “news†at the Times is not only a moving target, it’s a series of different targets, depending on who the paper wants to take knock off. But that kind of bias surprises no one: The litany of “I-told-you-so†comments that follow every one of these gaffes by the Times is pointless. The Times no longer pretends to offer a chronicle of the day’s events. Its business has changed: It now provides brain cocoa for its dwindling band of readers by offering a daily validation of the assumptions shared by most of them. In doing so, of course, it also alienates more than half its potential market. If that’s a business plan, it’s a bad one (if the spiraling value of NYT stock is any indication — and of course it is). The most recent announcement of newsroom layoffs won’t be the last.
Steve Boriss - The Future of News
Smear-gate represents a milestone — a major new advance in the power of New Media over the previous high-water mark, “Rathergate.†Back then, bloggers and other alternative media successfully second-guessed the objectivity of a story on journalism’s own terms — factual accuracy in a story on President Bush’s military service — and it cost Dan Rather his job. This time, they second-guessed a story based on the public’s terms — whether it is truly objective given the selection of the news story and angle. For once, the misdirection was noticed and the NY Times was caught in the act. It’s a significant new phase in the disappearing act known as Modern Journalism.
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