The New York Times: Party mouthpiece

Let me open by saying that I know that the Hillary/Barack showdown is almost Hollywood perfect: she’s the constantly morphing, much hated, incredibly powerful and wealthy wife of a still loved ex-President; he’s the telegenic, deep voiced, wunderkind, with so little experience that he has no political dirt attached to him. What could make for better story telling? It’s unsurprising, therefore, that their combat ends up daily on the front page of The New York Times. Conservatives are also fascinated by the whole thing, and highlight it in their blogs.

But the New York Times is supposed to be a newspaper, not a Hollywood movie or a story-telling hour. That’s why I find it a little surprising that, when I check its front page on a daily basis, it has so much about Hillary/Barack (especially “above the fold”), and so little about McCain/Romney/Guiliani. I freely acknowledge that the latter three are fairly boring compared to the shootout in the Democratic candidate corral, but they’re still news. Or, at least, they’re news to Republicans and that, ultimately, may be why they don’t show up in the New York Times, which is increasingly making less effort to pretend that it caters to all, rather than just to Democratic readers.

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