RAINES OF TERROR: Did you get through that New Yorker Ken Fellata piece on the New York Times under Howell Raines? Okay, I did. But I share Tim Noah's skepticism about the caveats in the piece about the Times' doing well under Raines. Pulitzers are establishment prizes given to establishment friends (with occasional credentializing outreach). And as Tim points out, "Chatterbox would argue that a major newspaper that can't sweep the Pulitzers in a year when a gigantic disaster befalls its hometown is a very poor newspaper indeed. The awards are as much for the disaster as they are for the coverage." I'm not just saying this because Mr Raines banished me, but I used to feel I was missing something when my Times didn't get delivered and I read the Washington Post instead. Now I don't. What I got from Auletta's piece was that Raines is a left-liberal populist ideologue, who likes to big foot his reporters and editors. Not that there's anything wrong with it! There are plenty of great editors who have been from a similar mold, and having a crusading, left-liberal paper, with more pop-culture and vivid writing could be a great addition to the reading world. But one thing it isn't: the paper of record. It has excised almost all non-left commentary from its op-ed and editorial columns. It is skewing news coverage in ways that will please Nation-readers like the hysterical Enron coverage, the bogus poll designed to argue that the public blamed Bush for Enron, or the burying of politically incorrect studies about the validity of racial profiling in speeding tickets. And it's increasingly happy assuming its readers agree with it. So it explains less and hectors and preens more. Again, this is fine. But let's acknowledge what it is. Raines is on a crusade for the populist left. And Raines is now the New York Times.
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(Andrew Sullivan in the Daily Dish, June 4, 2002)
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