Features February 1994
Old “Times” and new
On two New York Times memoirs, My “Times” by John Carey & Behind the “Times” by Edwin Diamond.
The melancholy fate that has lately overtaken The New York Times—its militant embrace of political correctness and its surrender to multiculturalist doctrine combined with a general “dumbing down” of its news coverage and the elevation of features on lifestyle, fashion, and pop culture to a priority status—has suddenly and unexpectedly become the subject of a good deal of critical debate and journalistic controversy. The newspaper long regarded as pre-eminent in the annals of American journalism has now achieved, in what many observers believe to be the twilight of the paper’s august history, the dubious distinction of becoming a “story” that on many days of the year is far more interesting, and far more indicative of the malaise afflicting American cultural life, than a large number of the trivial events and fatuous opinions regularly reported in its pages. The Times has always had its critics, of...
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