Sunday, July 15, 2007

The Untouchables

I have actually had some time to read this week, not much time, but enough to get caught up through a couple of back issues of Time. Rupert Murdoch recently made the July 9 cover. The article was an eye-opener for me. I knew he was a media mogul but I didn’t know that he alone owns 100 newspapers. Anyway, we all know who the guy is.

At one point in the interview he said, “My worry about the New York Times is that it’s got the only position as a national élitist general-interest paper. So the network news picks up its cues from the Times. And local papers do too. It has a huge influence. And we’d love to challenge it.”

I don’t think Murdoch would be saying this if he owned the New York Times, but forget that for now.

What he says about the NY Times accurately sums up some of my feelings toward the paper. It is the only high profile paper out there. But what about the USA Today? What about it? Every article in the paper comes with a color diagram just in case you don’t make it through the 500-word article. It doesn’t contend with the Times. The Times is alone in its dominance of mainstream dailies.

And the Times does have this air about it. Sure, they have writing superpowers, but ones that are treated as untouchable by many of the big networks. You can’t disagree with the Times and remain respected in that many circles. If you make a habit of picking apart the Times’ reporting you dig yourself a hole or you join Fox News.

The name of this paper, The New York Times, carries with it infallibility and greatness. You can’t deny it has acquired that respect from having world class writing and reporting, but I feel like the Times is just getting by on its name. It would be nice to see a challenger to their monopoly.

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