NY Times Sunday Paper

I've been meaning to mention how awful the NY Times has become. I know that this is not a new revelation to most people and I myself knew it too. Its just that last Sunday I actually had the NY Times in my hands and was left shaking my head at how bad the "paper of record" has become.

Let's start with Frank Rich.

On the very day that millions of Iraqi's were voting for the first time, Rich was writing about Iraq being "Vietnam on speed" and bemoaning the costs of the Inaugural. Talk about being being out of touch. This was Al Gore giving a speech on Global Warming on the coldest day of the year out of touch. At first I was going to give Rich's column a good Fisking but there was just so many other things in Sunday's paper to mention. (As an aside - if you are going to read the writings of a Frank Rich - don't read the Frank Rich from the NY Times, read the Frank Rich from Modurn Drunkard - he's much more witty.)

Then we had Bernard Weintraub's farewell column which was actually a good read but the point that the Times' Hollywood reporter was married to the head of Sony Pictures and still allowed to continue with that enourmous conflict of interest says a lot about the lack of integrity at the paper. Maybe arrogance would be a better word than integrity because I think their attitude was "none of our writers would ever be anything but fair and balanced in our reporting." Yeah - right!

The main headline in the Sunday Business section asked, "Can Angelina Jolie Really Save the World?" Did I mention that this was the business section? Need I go on?

Even the sports section isn't immune to the new levels of suckitude at the NY Times. One of the featured articles in the Sports Sunday section was by Omar Minaya (as told to Dave Campanaro, the public relations director for the Brooklyn Cyclones, a Mets farm team). Read that last sentence again. The GM of the Mets gets a half page article in the NY Times that is written by a member of the team's PR staff. In business we call these things press releases but I guess the NY Times calls these things news. The only thing missing from the column/press release was season ticket information.

The NY Times - new levels of suckitude indeed!