>A particularly dumb piece from the tinted pages of the NY Observer.
>
><http://www.observer.com/pages/frontpage5.asp>http://www.observer.com/pages/frontpage5.asp
>
>Wonder what Rosenbaum gets paid to ramble like this. Watta gig!
This may be worse. This, in fact, may be one of the worst pieces of journalism of the new century. Why does Hertzberg need to flatter the Sulzbergers? Is he looking for a job?
Doug
----
The New Yorker - January 14, 2002
COMMENT HOW ALL THE NEWS FIT
The world turned upside down after September 11th, and, as a small but noticeable side effect, so did the sports section of the Times. As of January 1st, the world (though seemingly in better shape than it had been a couple of months earlier, knock on wood) remained severely discombobulated. The sports section of the Times, however, is right side up again. Happy New Year.
In its own inky way, the newspaper of record rose to the post-disaster occasion almost as heroically as did the city's uniformed services. Not for the first time, New Yorkers were reminded how lucky they are to have a newspaper run by a public-spirited family that regards the bottom line as a means, not an end. The Times went after the big story with plenty of resources, plenty of heart, and not a little ingenuity. The flipped-over sports section was a by-product of a decision to put the paper's coverage of the aftermath of the terrorist attacks into a daily stand-alone section, slugged "A Nation Challenged." (The name may have been a trifle CNN-like, but the content-energetic, well organized, spare-no-expense comprehensive-was pure Times at its best.) The press capacity of the Times can accommodate four sections with late-night deadlines. Normally, the four are business, sports, local news, and the main national and international news section. (The arts section and the fluff supplements-Dining In/Dining Out, Weekend, and the like-are printed earlier in the day.) So something had to give. The art department, led by Tom Bodkin, the assistant managing editor for design, had the audacious idea of turning sports upside down and slapping it on the back of Metro. Four sections, five front pages: problem solved.
But Bodkin's brainstorm did more than just iron out a production wrinkle. Unintentionally or not, it was also an astute commentary on a long-standing journalistic problem, which is that news about sports is not really news at all-not, at any rate, in the sense that news about politics, economic and social developments, and international affairs is news. Sports, after all, is essentially a subcategory of the for-profit entertainment industry, as the New York Times Company well knows: just before Christmas, it bought itself a big piece of the Boston Red Sox, and not because the Sox are one of the Hub's neediest cases, either. Except for the uncertainty of its outcome, a sports spectacle is news only in the sense that the plot of a movie is news. ("HOBBIT-LED STRIKE FORCE NEARS MOUNT DOOM, WIZARD CLAIMS"?) The fact that one set of highly paid entertainers gets more points than another set of highly paid entertainers on a given day, while of surpassing and perfectly legitimate interest to many people, is not of great moment. To acknowledge this reality takes nothing away from the wholesome, character-building aspects of athletic competition. Nor does it imply disrespect for the craft of sportswriting, which, on account of the repetitive nature of the subject matter, places a premium on literary skill. Nevertheless, having to turn the paper over and upside down to read about sports served as a useful reminder that, however exciting, it's only a game.
On New Year's Day, the Times eased back into its normal configuration. Thus endethed the lesson. - Hendrik Hertzberg