If you’re looking for a distraction from the tedium of the debt ceiling trainwreck, or the details of the Norway killings, this New York Magazine piece on the Times is worth a read. Make no mistake — it’s a handjob for the Sulzburgers — but it’s right when it points out that the Times understood the importance of a digital edition early, and that they’re one of the few English language newspapers that still has a major commitment to international reporting (the other I can think of is the Guardian):
The most satisfying moment in Page One, the recent documentary about the media desk at the Times, comes when columnist David Carr visits the burgeoning Vice magazine media empire in Williamsburg. At one point, Vice co-founder Shane Smith launches into a lecture about how Vice’s video “travel guide” to famously war-torn, ungovernable Liberia shone a light on harsh truths (alleged cannibalism, feces-strewn beaches, and the like) that the Times had avoided. “Time out,” Carr says. “Before you ever went there, we’ve had reporters there reporting on genocide after genocide—and just because you put on a fucking safari helmet and looked at some poop doesn’t give you the right to insult what we do. So continue. Continue.”
When Smith, backpedaling, protests by explaining that he’s “not a journalist,” Carr cuts him off: “Obviously. Go ahead.”
The Times’ original reporting on Fukushima was excellent. The Guardian beat them on News Corp, but they’re in many ways the hometown paper for that scandal. And today, the Times has a good backgrounder on Norway’s tradition of unarmed police.
Marmot
If only the Times wasn’t so easily led by Republicans in domestic matters. See Wen Ho Lee, Whitewater.
pablo
and thanks to the Times keeping it alive last year.
arguingwithsignposts
@pablo: Actually, wasn’t the Guardian continuing the story last year as well? I’m sure the Times would love to take credit for stoking the flames, but this has been the Guardian’s story from the get-go.
Wag
The loss of innocence is such a sad sight. The Norwegians have a tough road ahead. I remember the sense off dislocation I felt traveling in the States in the months after 9/11 and seeing troops patroling the airports dressed in fatigues and carrying assault rifles. We are used to our police bearing arms. For a society with a tradition of unarmed police, the dislocation must be even greater n
Jane2
The Guardian gives the Times full credit for being the only paper interested in the hacking story and for helping it to keep it going.
mark
David Carr is a moralizing ex-junkie.
tomvox1
And yet…they still give prime real estate to Bobo:
Asshole.
arguingwithsignposts
@tomvox1: Brooks:
Truth hurts, don’t it Bobo?
SRW1
OT: Apparently, Glenn Beck has managed to go even more stark raving mad.
Dennis SGMM
@mark:
“Ex-junkie”? WTF does that have to do with anything?
ETA: Talk about moralizing.
Villago Delenda Est
As noted earlier, the Times has never acknowledged the utter bullshit of Whitewater and Wenn Ho Lee.
The vermin called Gerth should hang for both of those utter travesties of “journalism”.
MattF
Yeah, like good old, late, Bill Safire– who was all nice an’ cuddly when he didn’t have the knife out. So, ’twas ever thus with the Times– And don’t forget that the old daddy of insider columnists was the ancient Mr. Reston.
FWIW, the Times seems to be about the best we can do. And it’s pretty good, mostly.
bergman
Carr’s a good writer, but a very big hat size. Once I digested that, he stopped bugging me.
As NPR circles the drain (count how many times Steve Inskeep quotes other reporters as ‘experts’ instead of real experts–he did it today, again), the Times really holds up.
If Bobo pisses you off, don’t read him. I remember Andy Rosenthal, that was only ten or fifteen years ago. Painful.
jwb
SRW1: Is Glenn Beck still alive? I thought he died when he left Fox.
burnspbesq
The people who slam the Times most vociferously would be most pained if it disappeared.
$234 million in net income suggests that Sulzberger is doing something right.
Brachiator
I’ve never thought much about the Guardian’s international reporting (either its commitment or the quality of the reporting). The Economist (although not a newspaper) is often better. The LA Times is underrated, especially with respect to Pacific Rim stories.
A number of newspapers got their Web editions right. The SF Gate (originally encompassing the San Francisco Chronicle, the Examiner and web sites of their affiliated TV and radio stations) was excellent from the jump. The Times of London and Sunday Times was easily as comprehensive an Internet edition as the New York Times and also exploited its deep historical archive, before Rupert Murdoch made the Web edition irrelevant by hiding it behind a pay wall.
The Web editions of The Boston Globe, the Chicago Tribune, the Miami Herald, and the New Orleans Times Picayune (especially during Katrina) are all pretty great.
AAA Bonds
They also lied us into Iraq.
So maybe keep a lid on that effusive praise.
AAA Bonds
@burnspbesq:
Actually, all this statement does is tell me something about you.
AAA Bonds
Do I even need to point out the responsibility of the Times for their hit pieces on Al Gore in 2000?
They’re more responsible than Ralph Nader for the outcome that year. Keep that in mind.
Mark
@Dennis SGMM
First of all, fuck you.
Second, David Carr has done things in his life that are so horrible, 99.9% of us could never look at ourselves in the mirror had we done them. Carr is part of the 0.1% who turn pious and preachy instead. If he were a congressman or even a small-town mayor, you’d be revolted by him. But he’s *merely* an egomaniacal entertainment “journalist”, so it’s wrong of me to point out what a hypocrite he is?
Third, fuck you.
burnspbesq
@AAA Bonds:
You really are a moron, aren’t you.
burnspbesq
@AAA Bonds:
“They’re more responsible than Ralph Nader for the outcome that year. Keep that in mind.”
At first glance, that appears to be the dumbest, least factually accurate thing written on this blog in calendar year 2011. Care to explain and/or document that assertion?
Humber Dinglepencker
The Times isn’t, and hasn’t, been worthy of lining the bottom of a birdcage in a very, very long time. I don’t understand the fawning respect that fishwrap gets.