As a loyal subscriber to the NYT, I have to agree, sadly, with your general observation about the paper’s increasing willingness to sprinkle the barely-hidden opinions of the staff over the news pages. It is regrettable in the extreme, undercuts the paper’s credibility, and you are right to criticize the trend. I trust our local paper will not emulate the NYT in this regard.

Take a look at this…

http://www.micropersuasion.com/2006/10/how_to_get_the_.html

It has some interesting ways of using Technorati feeds to build your own blog version of the Slate page you mention. Obviously, the “Meme” sites already do this, but for people who are looking for even more refined daily info from blogs, the technorati feeds work well.

PS Is that the Robin that your schoolmates swooned over?

It wouldn’t surprise you to find that I disagree. The beauty of living in our current technological era is we don’t need a single source for news. Like Fred, I scan the headlines using the aforementioned Today’s Papers and investigate anything that looks interesting (such as the Cheney/Kansas piece).

I read the NYT every day religiously for more than 20 years. I never really felt like I was sufficiently informed unless I had at least scanned the A section and the eddy and op-ed pages. There are so many alternatives now that it scarcely makes sense to rely on any one source (or even 2 or 3). Like Fred (I never thought Fred and I had that much in common!), I gravitate toward commentary and analysis that I think will give me a better insight into what’s really going on than the Ivy Leaguers at the House That Jayson Blair Built.

The problem with The Times is this Kansas piece is part of a pattern of snottiness I have noticed for the last several years, reaching its apex with Howell Raines and continuing under Bill Keller. And the beauty of the Internet is smaller operations on the web are eating into the Times readership and even its advertising dollars. Circulation and ad revenue are shrinking at newspapers, particularly big dailes, and there is a good reason for that. The web is a the great equalizer.

Newspapers such as the LJ, which serve small communities, are not under as much of a threat, because, frankly, we don’t have a whole lot of competition. But still, I wonder how many newspaper presses will be running in 20-30 years.

For a sampling of the day’s commentary, I highly recommend RealClearPolitics. For straight news, other than TP, I look at Google News and click on whatever looks interesting. And using an RSS feed, I monitor the blogs such as those links I list on the rail on the right side of my home page.

A good friend of mine who has done extensive consulting work for newspapers, predicts that in 10 years, the NYT will be owned by Yahoo or a similiar operation. You heard it here (and on his blog as well).

But seriously, you make a good point, Peter. However, I actually ignore 50% of the news as it appears in the NYT, because like the Cheney story, it’s not really news. I ignore another 50% because it’s depressing and pointless to worry about. The third 50% I get in the form of headlines from online sources (including the NYT online); then I go to sources of analysis that I believe tell me what’s really going on. I will demur on revealing these because they would just get me ridiculed for the flaming radical that I am.

I will say, however, that I am a true relativist. I believed that there is no “truth” and certainly no “objective” reporting, in the NYT or anywhere else.

–Fred–

The digs here seem mostly aimed at the Veep himself, not at his Kansas fans, who are not held to blame for continuing to support him. On the whole I agree that this is a trashy piece of journalism, and I wouldn’t have bothered to read it had you not called attention to it. Like you and others, I have stopped reading the NYT for the most part, though of course my perception is that it is a mouthpiece of the mainstream/status quo, e.g. helped grease the wheels for Iraq. I don’t find it to be a reliable source for news.

–Fred–

Looks like Cheney in the photo to me.

I read the Times piece only because someone drew my attention to it. That is generally the only time I look at the NYT anymore. I first learned about it in yesterday’s Today’s Papers feature in Slate Magazine. BTW, TP is an excellent summary of that morning’s coverage and I recommend it highly.

But I will say, our political leaders on all sides are pretty weak…we need some strong leaders in both the media and politics!

Marshall