The Washington Post and the New York Times
Gilbert N. Kahn is a professor of Political Science at Kean University.
It seems like the New York Times is losing its journalistic perspectives at the same time that the Washington Post is disappearing in front of our eyes as a newspaper.
Last week the WPost announced another series of dramatic cutbacks. Clearly the business was hemorrhaging so badly that these further rounds of cut backs became necessary. The Post is already a shell of its former self. One of America’s finest papers may be strictly on-line before it covers the next presidential election. Meanwhile the Times—no doubt with glee—played the story as a business matter (rather than a journalism-information issue) in a spread in Sunday’s business section, perpetuating the long standing rivalry between the Post and the Grey Lady.
At the same time this same bastion of journalistic excellence and high standards appears to now seeking to attract tabloid readers by playing the Kate Upton genesis into the SI swimsuit cover as a front page news story and not an arts or business story.
Surely the Times is now opening itself up once again to critics from all ideological positions as to how and who is making news judgments on the serious issues of the day. Maybe it is becoming “All the News that Sells We Print”.
comments