Howell Raines and Gerald Boyd fall on their swords. See: http://dailynews.attbi.com/cgi-bin/news?e=pri&dt=030605&cat=news&st=newsmedianytimesdc Who's next? Sulzberger?? With Blair, and then Rick Bragg...and RW Apple's sensationalist (and ultimately incorrect) reporting on the war...and the vacuous rantings of Maureen Dowd..... and now THIS...the humiliating resignations of two of the nation's "top" news editors. ...well, it's safe to say that the gold standard of (liberal) journalism is at the least a bit tarnished...and at worst, in complete disarray. I won't cancel my subscription yet...but I am getting tempted.
The NYT has sucked for a while. Whitewater, Wen Ho Lee, and now Judith Miller's article on WMD in Iraq? Jayson Blair was the teeniest of small potatoes in comparison.
I knew that, ensconced as you are in La-La land, that you're simply out of touch with reality. Your Nathaniel West imitations notwithstanding. ...but when I read this ....YIKES!! Your distance from reality has got to be measured in parsecs. By the way, speaking of distances in parsecs, how is the Galaxy goal scoring coming along? Think it will happen someday??
How moderate do you have to be to realize that Blair fibbing on expense reports and stealing quotes did not damage as many people as the Whitewater lies, the Wen Ho Lee lies, or the WMD lies? Here's an Iraqi dinar, go buy some priorities on the black market.
With Alabama Howell out of the picture, The Times can finally move more to the center where it was for well over a century. Outside of the great 9/11 bios. that they did, they've really become way too preachy and strident in their viewpoints (not just on the Op/Ed. page either). It's time to wipe the slate clean and everyone there probably was looking forward to the day Howell bit the bullet. Now - can the Washington Post claim the spot as the nation's Paper of Record or will the NYT turn it around? It will be interesting to see. First move - ship MoDo out to the Hamptons where she belongs so she can cover the summer society scene.
I posted the bulk of this in another thread but it seems more appropriate here, so I'll paste a lot of it. The Times will hire some editors from the outside. Traditionally, they've promoted folks near the top of their Washington Bureau to the top editorial jobs in NYC but I think they've got to go completely outside the company at this point. But, they need to find someone who is the model of ethics and credibility. I can think of a number of editors that fit the bill, but I'm not sure they'd want to walk into this situation or go to NYC. Sure, this could make your career and you'd go down in history as the guy who turned the Times around (and most everyone I've got in mind would succeed, not fail) but who needs this aggravation? Besides, 3 or 4 of the people I'd rattle off the top of my head just moved into new jobs either at their own paper or by transferring locales. This whole thing is about 1 year too late for the Times to grab any of them. They've already brought back one of their respected former editors to be the interim chief. I wouldn't be surprised if they have already contacted a few past managing and executive editors who still live in NYC to get their opinions on things -- at least they should be doing that.