Olden Times

These bright modern times can be a little gloomy for the “Grey Lady” of journalism, otherwise known as The New York Times. First off, she’s getting older, and a little lonelier—former subscribers screening her calls as the rest of the industry’s circulation dives, both hometown readership and stock plunging like the Andrea Doria (which she remembers). Yes, she’s gussied herself up for the kids online, but it’s not the same; video just feels wrong. Her pride is intact, to be sure, with most of her reputation, but we’re dealing with a lady who has seen better days—and she knows it.

Take yesterday’s exposé on John McCain’s political-careerful of indiscretions small and large. The probable Republican nominee for president and historically, McCain apparently didn’t let his self-styled reputation as the Senate’s most adamant ethics watchdog slow him down when Rupert Murdoch and Michael Bloomberg offered him a plane ride. The Arizona senator—who is becoming more and more like his constituency with each passing year—was celebrated when he helped birth the Reform Institute, a nonprofit organization dedicated to keeping corporate money out of American politics; that same senator didn’t see a problem with his pet project enjoying the benefits of, yes, corporate money—apparently piles of it.

Instead of being a story about McCain screwing the proverbial pooch, though, much of the article’s same-day fallout seems to have been directed at its publisher. In its infinite wisdom the Times ran the piece bookended with the nebulous claims that the candidate had had an affair with a lobbyist; both supposed parties denied these claims, though. What’s more, these allegations were the only new information in the story.

Some cried sensationalism; others felt that the longstanding claims that the Times staff is a hyperliberal cabal had been vindicated. One disillusioned conservative wrote: “There’s nothing wrong with investigative reporting, especially on presidential candidates, but it doesn’t seem that this investigation produced anything substantive.” Another offered something more incisive: “rush limbagh [sic] is right.”

Frankly, it’s fairly obvious that the exposé was handled badly; it was a vitriolic indictment masquerading as a feature news story, trashy tabloid fodder dressed in the garb of journalistic legitimacy—in short, not very ladylike.

Even as the Times demeans itself to entertain the blogosphere for a moment, it also apparently yearns for its glory days. Its eccentric brand of nostalgia is manifest: until the McCain story hit the Web, sitting atop the website’s “Most Emailed” list was a story about “celebrating the semicolon” on a subway poster. The piece, beginning with this most banal of leads, develops into a disconcerting death knell for the richer punctuation of yesteryear: prominent lefties like Noam Chomsky wax elegiac and crack wise about grammar, the implicit assumption being that people under seventy see the semi-colon and think, “what’s wrong with that comma?”

So the estimable Gray Lady has slipped a bit: she’s sometimes unreliable and sometimes a little weird. We must see, though: it didn’t used to be this way! She was a nice girl! For proof we need only turn to the Times itself, at the start of its original salad days, just before the turn of the century. In an October 1897 article, George P. Rowell explains the paper’s sudden success. Instead of cutting rate, the staff upped the ante with a “strict insistence upon absolutely trustworthy and impartial news reports, and a rigid maintenance of its apt motto, ‘All the news that’s fit to print.’” The effect on circulation was undeniable, and it proved to Rowell and the world “what may be accomplished by a clean, progressive newspaper.” One hopes that now, as newsprint’s future seems uncertain, its graceful matriarch won’t change her ways.

James M. Larkin ’10, a Crimson editorial editor, is a social studies concentrator in Quincy House.