The New York Times goes small town
The 100-year-old Gray Lady throws herself an interminable front-page party
By TED RALL
Last week the Newspaper of Record wallowed in the kind of blatantly self-congratulatory coverage rarely found outside of Tri-County Coupon Shoppers. The somewhat dubious occasion was the 100th anniversary not of the Times itself, which dates back to the Civil War, but of its 1896 purchase by Tennessee journalist Adolph S. Ochs.
Ochs is the founding member of the still-ruling Ochs-Sulzberger dynasty, and the anniversary of his advent is being given what is, by New York Times standards, a tribute of Biblical proportions. The Sunday Magazine has already published two special 100-year "commemorative" issues, chronicling the glories of its writing and photography, and has another on the way -- outlining plans for the next triumphant century of Times cap-feathering. (Mind you, this trinity was laid out for the reader in ubiquitous teasers run without mercy since the ball dropped on 1995.) And then last week the paper very nearly OD'd on itself.
Wednesday's coverage started on the front page and was continued in a lavish two-page spread in The Living Arts section. There was a fawning article about Ochs, a flowery piece about a history-of-the-Times exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art, and a nice little ditty on the tragic beauty of the paper's antiquated morgue, home of 22 million clippings of photographs and stories published in -- where else? -- the Times. Never mind that the morgue long ago went out of regular use, replaced by computers in 1990 -- anything is news if it concerns everyone's favorite omnipotent daily!
To be fair, the article about the show at the Modern dared to turn a harsh -- or at least, say, 50-watt -- light on the Good Old Grey Birthday Girl. "While each exhibition illustrates the paper's aspiration to live up to Mr. Ochs' stated principles, they also acknowledge in small ways some of the occasions on which the newspaper fell short, like playing down initial reports of the Holocaust," wrote party-pooper Luc Sante. Oh well. On with the fun!
What Thursday's coverage lacked in inches was made up for in breathlessness. Again on the front page, this time readers got the scoop on the triumphant gala thrown by the paper in honor of its own psuedo-centennial. The black-tie fete was held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and was attended by no shortage of famous and important people. Should you doubt the muscle of their guest list, the Times was kind enough to list 23 of the comers -- Tina Brown! Joseph Heller! Kate Nelligan! Beverly Sills! Even Martha Stewart! (Where does she find the time?) The article was penned by staffer Janny Scott, working the paper's crucial Times-on-Times beat. Her account of the event was suitably star-struck:
"Politicians, publishers, artists, television anchors, business people and journalists filled the museum's Great Hall as projectors hidden in towering boxwood topiaries flashed headlines on the museum's walls," announced Scott, understandably still giddy from the soirée. "Dozens of tables draped in cloths imprinted with front pages were set up around the museum's reconstructed temple, and an enamel box bearing Mr. Och's likeness was left as a party favor at each place."
Times editors apparently found no irony in the contrast between Ochs' credo -- "To give the news impartially, without fear or favor, regardless of any party, sect or interest involved" -- and the event's setting, a scene reminiscent of a cross between Edward Gibbon's scenes of Roman decadence and the gathering of the shoe-hat ladies in "Brazil." They also treated us to backslapping howlers like the following banquet-circuit fatuity: "Shortly after last night's first course of lobster tarragon with artichoke and cucumber salad, Mr. Sulzberger introduced Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani and Gov. George E. Pataki. 'Frankly, this is a nerve-tingling moment because in the last election The New York Times failed to endorse either of them. Please remember, gentlemen, that there is nothing in the Bill of Rights about fallibility.'" It's reassuring to know that whatever life-and-death battles are fought between newspapers and our elected policymakers, they can still put aside their differences, put on their tuxes and exchange genial ribbings while wearing lobster bibs.
Times readers are accustomed to the paper's subtly self-serving treatments of near-and-dear causes. The long lead story of last Sunday's Metro section, "Columbia Trying to Show What a Gem It Is," was about the Ivy League school's decision to hire a PR flak to "pump up its public profile and draw attention to itself, especially within the city." Guess what? Columbia counts several top Times honchos, including publisher Arthur "Punch" Ochs Sulzberger himself, among its current and recent trustees. Looks like the PR firm is earning its money already.
Still, even in light of its recent self-indulgent frenzy, it's hard to argue that the Times is not indeed in a league of its own. Let's just hope the time soon arrives when they'll tire of patting themselves on the back. Perhaps then they can put their hands to better use -- for example, by writing about what's news.
Ted Rall, a syndicated cartoonist and freelance writer based in New York City, was a 1996 Pulitzer Prize finalist for editorial cartooning. His essays have appeared in The Los Angeles Times, Harrisburg Patriot-News, New York Times and numerous other publications.