This fall has been a grand diversion for The New York Times’ left-leaning editorial staff, a metaphorical (or not, in some cases) bender, a prolonged sugar rush as reporters, editors and even some administrators are gleeful in anticipation of the Nov. 7 midterm elections. This column is written eight days before the election, and I’m not as sure as Paul Krugman, for example, that the Democrats will ride the “wave” resulting in Speaker Nancy “This gavel is for the children” Pelosi implementing her 100-hour agenda that will raise the minimum wage and roll back President Bush’s tax cuts, but it’s a possibility for which I’m bracing. Realistically, for a Conservative it’s like dealing with a recession: The rules have changed and you have to adapt until there’s a more favorable environment. It’s not as if Bill Clinton’s largely ineffective but enormously self-aggrandizing presidency is ancient history.
So let’s take, from my point of view, a worst-case scenario: the Democrats win the House and Senate, resulting in retaliatory and partisan congressional investigations of Bush, Cheney, Rove and Rumsfeld, and a country made less safe by the Old Europe style of Democrats. Chuck Schumer will be in the news even more often, if that’s possible, and intrusive legislators like Henry Waxman, Barbara Lee, Charlie Rangel and Steny Hoyer will run hearings in the Capitol that will inspire, 30 years from now, a young filmmaker to ape George Clooney’s vastly overrated Good Night, and Good Luck about the Democratic witch hunt. And you thought the obscene controversy over Valerie Plame was a waste of time and money; that’ll be a footnote if self-righteous Democrats batter the current administration.
But I’m prepared.
However, once the election is over, regardless of the results, The Times will be forced to consider its own declining fortunes and reputation, which, of course, go hand in hand. Never mind the storm rising in New England, where at The Boston Globe, owned by The Times, staff is going bonkers over proposed editorial cuts and layoffs by its not-so-benevolent bosses in Manhattan. Publisher Arthur Sulzberger, pummeled recently by legislators in Boston—led by Teddy Kennedy—over the coming downsizing of a once respected family newspaper, could either sell the property (at a loss) or really batten down the hatches and take the entire New York Times Co. private. Anyway, The Globe, despite its own inflated sense of worth, is small beer.
(The Oct. 30 Audit Bureau of Circulations report from the previous six months might even distract Sulzberger, and his family, from the election. The Globe suffered a loss of 6.7 percent in daily circulation and 9.9 percent in Sunday sales. The Times lost 3.5 percent circulation in both categories.)
What The Times ought to consider, but apparently hasn’t, is that its combination of editorial scandals and frantic political swing to the hard left is alienating a considerable portion of its once loyal readership. I’m not talking about the never-say-die loyalists—who won’t live forever— who still believe Sunday’s Times is a major cultural event, or the pundits from extremist publications like The Nation, The American Prospect, Salon and portions of the youngsters at The New Republic and Slate who continue to treat The Times’ editorial shrieking as gospel. Rather, look at the affluent reader in the metropolitan area who almost always votes Democratic (except perhaps for Bloomberg or Rudy Giuliani in his reelection bid), is pro-choice, against the death penalty and doesn’t mind higher taxes if they’re put to supposed good use.
Consider, in particular, the well-known and accomplished journalist/author Kurt Andersen who, among other projects, writes the column “Imperial City” for New York magazine, which happens to be edited by longtime Times staffer Adam Moss. Andersen, in the Oct. 16 issue, wrote a devastating piece about The Times’ “flood the zone” coverage of last spring’s absurdly over-sensationalized rape charges against several Duke University lacrosse players, a case that was tried in the media early on but has since collapsed and is likely to disappear altogether, barring the unlikely event that the politically-motivated prosecutor produces actual evidence against the athletes.
One Times reporter told Andersen that he/she has never been a source about internal affairs at the daily, until now. The reporter said: “I’ve never felt so ill over Times coverage.” Andersen’s next sentence: “That’s ill at a paper that published Jayson Blair’s fabrications and Judy Miller on WMD.”
It’s Andersen’s conclusion that should—but given the current management—won’t, cause Sulzberger, Bill Keller and especially those on the business side to wet their pants. He writes: “For the past few years, I’ve tended to roll my eyes when people default to rants about the blindered oafishness of various biases of ‘the mainstream media’ in general and The Times in particular. At the same time, I’ve nodded when people gush about the blogosphere as a valuable check on and supplement to the MSM—but I’ve never entirely bought it. Having waded deep into this Duke mess the last weeks, baffled by The Times’ pose of objectivity and indispensably guided by [K.C.] Johnson’s blog, I’m becoming a believer.”
(Two weeks later, in a column about the troubled Los Angeles Times—which, with the exception of its op-ed page, is stultifying—Andersen appears to retreat a smidgen from his previous assessment of The Times. He says L.A.’s Times is so boring that when he’s in Southern California, he reads The New York Times rather than the local paper. So do I, but it’s merely a default choice, especially since it’s hard to find The Washington Post.)
If The Times begins to alienate habitual readers like Andersen—and it’s not just the Duke jihad; he’s also a reluctant backer of Joe Lieberman over the Times-sponsored Ned Lamont—the paper’s slide could snowball. A consumer like Andersen won’t give up on The Times entirely, of course; but like many other newspaper readers, he has the luxury of skimming any number of dailies on the Web, and if he misses an edition of The Times, it won’t be a big deal. After all, if you’ve read Maureen Dowd or Frank Rich once in the past two years, fresh columns hold no mystery. In fact, given the speed of media technology today, the rapid response to examples of Times (and, to be fair, Washington Post and Los Angeles Times) inaccuracies and blatant boosterism of “progressive” Democrats, it’s possible the onetime “paper of record” won’t be nearly as influential in the political culture in 2008 and beyond.
The Times—in its determination to elect a Democratic Congress that will destroy the “right-wing Conservatives” who’ve supposedly replaced the Constitution with the Bible—has become a parody of itself. And that’s saying something: As recently as the campaign of 1988, when the paper’s coverage of the first President Bush against Michael Dukakis was decidedly one-sided, close readers could detect the coming changes at an institution that once—and younger Times readers won’t believe this—endorsed incumbent Republican Sen. Ken Keating over Bobby Kennedy in 1964.
A few recent examples: An Oct.8 editorial, “Roller Coaster at the Pump,” began, “It seems a little too convenient. As the stretch run to the midterm congressional election approaches, gasoline prices fall precipitously. The sudden shifts in prices seem to come out of the blue. And unlike copper or pork bellies, oil is a commodity always charged with political significance.” The writer went on to say that, contrary to various conspiracy buffs (some, no doubt, employed by The Times), that Bush press secretary Tony Snow was correct in saying that gas prices haven’t been “rigged” to affect the election.
Nonetheless, the editorial thundered on: “Average Americans find themselves at the whim of an increasingly capricious market, one that strikes hard in the pocketbook.” The number of Times editorial employees who consider themselves “average” is probably lower than the percentage of votes sad-sack Republican Alan Schlesinger will receive in the Connecticut Senate race next week, but the point is made: Big Oil (helped along by Bush, Cheney and Rove) is undermining America’s democracy.
When the Times endorsed Democrat Diane Farrell—a former “first selectwoman” from Westport—over Republican incumbent Rep. Chris Shays, a centrist the paper has consistently recommended over the years, it was a watershed moment. Even though the paper considers Shays “a beacon of integrity,” the reasoning is he should be defeated because “his re-election would help empower a party that is long overdue for a shakeup.” Gone are the days when the paper lionized Shays for his—misbegotten by my reckoning—crusade for “campaign finance reform.”
It could be that when Shays, in defending House Speaker Denny Hastert over the Foley scandal, said “I know the speaker didn’t go over a bridge and leave a young person in the water and then have a press conference the next day,” he crossed Sulzberger’s line about criticizing Kennedys. Shays continued, “Dennis Hastert didn’t kill anybody.”
Come next January, The Times staff may blow wet kisses to Nancy Pelosi for the public’s consumption, but the bigger news will undoubtedly be what’s happening behind closed doors at the troubled company.
