As the paper itself admitted on February 8, the cash flow squeeze has The Times’ parent company “looking to raise money by trying to sell its stake in the Boston Red Sox and arranging a sale-leaseback of its new headquarters building.” The financial picture has become so bleak that the Times accepted a $250 million cash infusion from Mexico’s wealthiest man, billionaire Carlos Slim Helu (profiled in the paper’s February 16, 2009 business pages), and at a rate of interest most would consider “usury.”A large part of the problem is that The Times can no longer be taken seriously. Consider the “Domestic Disturbances” penned by every Friday for the Times Web site by Judith Warner, heretofore best known as the author of “Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety.”
In one recent column Warner mused openly about her apparent sexual attraction to President Barack Obama: “The other night I dreamt of Barack Obama. He was taking a shower right when I needed to get into the bathroom to shave my legs,” it begins — and then only gets worse as Warner explains she launched an email survey of women to see if she was the only one having such dreams. Apparently not, she reports.
“Many women — not too surprisingly — were dreaming about sex with the president,” she writes about the responses she received to her informal survey, adding helpfully that “In these dreams, the women replaced Michelle with greater or lesser guilt.”
There’s more, but you get the idea.
In any event, columns such as this, full of liberal fawning and self-love, are inappropriate when appearing under the auspicious of what purports to be the nation’s most important broadsheet. It contains “too much information” and cannot be considered serious journalism.
Warner, while doing nothing to restore the Times reputation, may have inadvertently shown the ruling Sulzburgers a way out of the paper’s financial woes. It suggests the start of a new section, one in which each piece begins, “Dear New York Times: I never thought any of the things I read here were true … until one day something just like it happened to me.” Call it the “Letters to the Times,” charge $25 a month for on line access and the paper would be back in the black in no time.
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
The Times demise
The NY Times continues to slide into the abyss but that won't keep their love affair with Obama muted.
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7 comments:
Gordon - are you purposely not linking to when the NYT dissents big time with Obama? Esp. when the conservatives are being damn quiet?
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/16/opinion/16mon2.html
I've been writing about this for a while and it really angers me that not only aren't conservatives saying BOO about this, but it is in fact the NYT taking editorial ink and paper to chastise Obama - get with the program and stop being so myopic.
And that's not the only instance but it's the one I most recently saw - just yesterday.
Jill, surely you shouldn't be surprised to learn that I do not read the NY Times. If I want to read the Communist Manifesto, I'll read it from the original text.
Anything from the Times I get from Drudge or Lucianne links.
None the less, the fact that the Times is critical of The Messiah because he's not liberal enough (on one piece of one issue) is hardly "myopic". Are you kidding me? The link you have is a pretty damn weak in comparison of women writing about sleeping with The One.
Since mention myopic, I'm still waiting for one, just one, liberal who will defend the liberal policies in our inner cities and schools. Or tell me exactly what entity in this country run by liberals is better than anything run by conservatives.
When I see anything like that on your blog, I'll probably choke to death gasping for air.
I'll ignore your nastiness and ask you again:
Why aren't conservatives fighting the expansion of the White House Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships?
Why would they?
I consider faith based initiatives to be a much better alternative to dealing with social issues than an unaccountable bureaucrat to an unaccountable recipient. It really doesn't matter to me if it's an atheist group, muslim, christian whatever.
What I don't get is why liberals are so opposed to them.
The poor still get taken care of right? So what if it's a different delivery system?
This issue is a fly on an elephants butt of conservative concerns.
Your liberal paradigm of conservatives is that we have no compassion for the poor.
We have plenty of compassion. We just feel that government involvement in the process is not only ineffective but counter productive.
All you have to do is look at how the government does, well, anything.
I've personally been involved in some outreach programs through my church (our church doesn't wait for the government). I'm going to guess our interaction was more productive for the all stakeholders involved.
Yes, I'm sure conservatives hate the idea of the feds being involved in anything that should be handled locally, without government involvement.
But it has to be more effective than the old fashion delivery system.
Frankly, I see this issue as a fly on an elephants butt of conservative concerns.
By the way, what the hell does any of this have to do with a female reporter fantasizing about screwing Obama? In case you didn't read my original post.
My interest in your post goes to your selective slapping of the NYT, which you've now said you don't even read, so I'm not sure how you consider yourself qualified to judge it, but whatever. If you recall, the title of your post is, "The Times demise."
My comment responds very specifically to that assertion.
As for your response to my question about why conservatives are not unhappy about or griping about Bush's expansion of the government via the faith-based office and Obama's further expansion of that government office, you wrote, "Why would they [be unhappy about it or gripe about it]?"
Based on conservatives' usage of and reliance on tenets like limited government and the government's only purpose is to defend us, I would think they'd object to such government expansion and invasion.
If your response represents what conservatives would say, then I guess they're okay with being hypocrites. Just trying to understand.
I don't need to read the New York Times to predict it's failings, just like I don't need to buy a GM car to tell you the company is heading into the drain.
In fact, if you read the Times you probably wouldn't even know their subscription rates are in the toilet. I get that information from Editor and Publisher.
You obviously, don't read my blog enough. I've said repeatedly the failures of all newspapers stems from one very important point, they have never addressed their delivery in the information chain.
internet
radio
tv
newspapers
As you head down, the list the news is slower to delivery and, thus, needs to be more thorough if you want someone to actually buy it.
Instead what you get in most newspapers is a printed form of what you read on yahoo news 24-36 hours ago.
Then you compound this problem with the Time's BJ pieces on The One and you don't have to be a psychic to figure it out.
Anytime you want to get into hypocrisy we'll go over abortion and prostitution. It's just a woman's body ya know.
While you're making a list, be sure to add pro-life advocacy and support of the death penalty.
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