What does a conservative beat mean for The New York Times?

Jewish World Review ^ | March 2, 2004 | Terry Eastland

[hobbes1]

Gee, the Times makes conservative America seem like a foreign country. Which, to them, it is.

Exactly. There is no "Black Beat" no "Puerto Rican Beat", No "Homosexual Beat".......These people are awaiting a cold hard wake up call in November.

[stylin_geek]

Uh, I have guns, believe in RKBA and God, but sure as heck don't drink Folger's. "Swill in a can." yech.

[FreeInWV]

They first have to admit they have a problem. They haven't done that yet. They are bowing to pressure to create the illusion of being fair and balanced. If they really want to be fair and balanced and to increase their sales, they will have to do better.

If they want to more than triple their distribution, they should hire a hardcore conservative editor and give him carte blanc. Give him a section of the paper and team to write about whatever they want. Forbid the rest of the paper from interacting with them. People like Alan Keyes and Ann Coulter should have weekly columns. Publish only excerpts of their work on the web and people like you and me might actually buy the paper on occasion. Look what the opinion section of the Wall Street Journal has done for that paper.

[Cicero]

The New York Times is so firmly embedded in "we" and "they" ways of thinking that they hardly notice it.

Bill Keller wants "to figure out why people believe what they do, how big their constituency is, where it comes from."

Who are those Little Green Men out there?

[Finalapproach29er]

Since they don't have any influnece in the conservative movement right now, they getting into it so they can try to influence it.

Its like us being in the Arab world; we hope by being there we can steer it a certain direction.

[Jack Black]

Gee, the Times makes conservative America seem like a foreign country. Which, to them, it is.

[GulliverSwift]

Here's an idea: if your newsroom is perceived as too liberal. How about hiring some conservatives instead of discriminating against them?

[PJ-Comix]

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! The NY Times is acting like covering conservatives is like examining some sort of Alien Life Form.

"It's life, Jim, but not as we know it!"

[PJ-Comix]

At the NY Times? It probably means that they outfit the editorial staff with clubs and chase down a conservative in the park.

Maybe they could produce it as a TV nature type show like the old Mutual Of Omaha "Wild Kingdom" shows. The old guy would sit in the studio while the younger Jim could trap wild conservatives in the parks with nets and tranquillizer darts.

[jmcclain19]

I would have loved to been a fly on the wall during that editorial meeting.

"Ladies and Gentlemen, it seems we have a strange phenomenon occurring out in America.

A whole swath of people are causing all kinds of trouble, mucking up the works, they actually want to change the direction America is going"

*GASP*

"Johnson, assign a beat reporter immediately. These people, these "conservatives" must be watched at all costs"

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

"conservative" stories have proved more than a little strained. The words "conservative" and "conservatives" are used to excess - 24 times in one story - as though to assure readers that The Times is on the conservative beat.

The key point is that labels such as "conservative" or "liberal" are critiques.

A self-critiqued "conservative" talk show host such as Rush Limbaugh is far more objective than any self-described "objective" journalist. Because belief in your own objectivity is the very essence of subjectivity.

"Objective" journalists will be the last ones to discover that liberal politicians are simply demagogues who align themselves with whatever journalists decide makes good copy. That's why journalism portrays liberalism as the natural order of things, and conservatism as some strange alien force.

[CFC__VRWC]

The old guy would sit in the studio while the younger Jim could trap wild conservatives in the parks with nets and tranquillizer darts.

"Crikey, There's a conservative now! I'm gonna sneak up behind him and jam me finger in his butthole - that'll piss 'im off!"

</Crocodile Hunter voice>

[GOPJ]

ping

[an amused spectator]

Thanx for the ping, fellow alien conservative bug-thing.

"Why don't we use Fedex?" ;-)

[GOPJ]

Editors sit in the New York Times newsroom and wonder what conservatives are like out in the hinterlands? They need to find out, and do an equivalent hunt for democrats. It'll be an eye opener.

Democrats "out there" are not the same people as the fellow editor, next desk over, at the New York Times. Create one standard, and go looking.

I have a friend who's writing fake "letters to the editor" stuff for the Kerry campaign. His job is to give the illusion that democrats are on the same intellectual page as, well, the people who choose the letters to be printed on the "letters to the editors" page. Now he doesn't express it that way. He says he's giving voice to the thoughts these people would express if they could write better. Yeah. He's a solid 145 IQ type and he's "giving voice" to an unemployed steel worker? A person he's never met or spoken to? One he imagines what he would say if he could? Right. That's the ticket. What he's really doing is pulling the wool on the members of the press who are so willing to believe the majority of the democrats "out there" are just like them.

The DNC plays the press for fools, and the press goes along. Credibility anyone?

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! The NY Times is acting like covering conservatives is like examining some sort of Alien Life Form.

[GOPJ]

I have a friend who's writing fake "letters to the editor" stuff for the Kerry campaign. His job is to give the illusion that democrats are on the same intellectual page as, well, the people who choose the letters to be printed on the "letters to the editors" page. Now he doesn't express it that way. He says he's giving voice to the thoughts these people would express if they could write better. Yeah. He's a solid 145 IQ type and he's "giving voice" to an unemployed steel worker? A person he's never met or spoken to? One he imagines what he would say if he could? Right.

What he's really doing is pulling the wool on the members of the press who are so willing to believe the majority of the democrats "out there" are just like them.The New York Times needs to go looking for real democrats.

The DNC plays the press for fools, and the press goes along. Credibility anyone?

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! The NY Times is acting like covering conservatives is like examining some sort of Alien Life Form.