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November 09, 2007
Times Talk
"Wouldn't it be nice," asks Ankush, "if [Patrick] Healy could say that he annoys Clinton's people by interspersing random policy questions in scheduled interviews?" It would! Sadly, it's the other way around. And this willingness to ask the tough questions about how often Mrs. Clinton and her husband see each other's underthings makes him a tough and courageous reporter.*
Meanwhile, Ankush is also right that the Times should encourage it's op-ed writers to attack each other by name, rather than take anonymous potshots. And I'll go further than that: I'd love to see a debate between David Brooks and Paul Krugman on the Republicans and race, or health care and inequality. That would be great fun, and probably more informative than either of their columns in isolation. But for some reason, we don't get such opportunities, because putting pundits in extended conversation with one another might lead to someone getting embarrassed.
*For more on this obsession with the Clinton's marriage, see this post..
November 9, 2007 | Permalink
Comments
Extended conversations, back and forth, and potshots, are, of course, the comparative advantage of the blogosphere.
Newspaper columns, as a form, were, as all things need be, limited by the underlying technology.
If the New York Times really wanted to have some fun, they would set an editor to mining the archives, and set-up a self-contradiction sweepstakes. Tom Friedman and David Brooks arguing with themselves. That would be a real service -- exposing these hacks for what they are, before extinguishing their regrettable careers.
Posted by: Bruce Wilder | Nov 9, 2007 5:32:55 PM
But for some reason, we don't get such opportunities, because putting pundits in extended conversation with one another might lead to someone getting embarrassed.
Maybe that's because they all hate each other -- at least the one with major ideological differences.
Seriously. That's actually a very good idea. The Times needs to push video a lot more on its site. They've been doing this a bit lately. But man oh man do they leave a lot of chips on the table by under-leveraging their brand, and its presence on line (ditching Times Select was a baby step in this direction, but they've got a long, long way to go). They ought to consider either using Bloggingheads for their columnists -- either to discuss with each other or to bring in outsiders -- or come up with their own in-house product (call it "TimesDiscuss" or somesuch). They featured McMegan and Marc Schmitt (sp?) the other day on their site, but what about their own writers? It's such a no-brainer to do this with their own columnists. Maybe their management has no brain.
Posted by: Jasper | Nov 9, 2007 5:35:12 PM
On the upside, making underwear a legitimate political issue might help us against Mitt Romney.
Posted by: Neil the Ethical Werewolf | Nov 9, 2007 5:51:27 PM
There's a lot packed into this post - on Brooks' column, on Krugman's, on Presidential politics and the Clinton thing... really I can't even say where to start. I would, however, point out that it's really not a reporter's job to please his ro her subject; Mrs Clinton's people can torture the Times and pick other reporters to favor... but that doesn't make the whole "Clinton marriage" story go away, does it? (see Ezra's post at Tapped, which amplifies this.) The other things is that I don't think writers can only write to please an audience, which goes not just to how reporters cover Clinton vs. the way we might thing they ought to, but also to thie budding "Brooks/Krugman feud." If Brooks and/or Krugman want to name each other, I suspect they can; that they don't I think, is not just policy, but also an attempt to not make this personal, but indeed, about differing ideas. Krugman's not the only columnist to sell the "Reagan code at Neshoba" story, nor is Brooks the only conservative who tries to pretend there's not a problem with our economy (indeed he's way too polite to do it strongly enough). They talk in generalities... because they're generalizing. And maybe that other guy on the op-ed page says it, but so do others, and that's how they present it. If a reader doesn't like that, I think all you can do is a) read somethig else and b) write that stuff down yourself. And with that, I think I'll decide whether to blog about the rest on my own page, later.
Posted by: weboy | Nov 9, 2007 10:55:11 PM
"if [Patrick] Healy could say that he annoys Clinton's people by interspersing random policy questions in scheduled interviews?"
Well, imho this is a bit unfair towards Mr. Healy, because it implies that he should be more intelligent than the average interviewer, being able to ask intelligent questions about difficult policy issues...
|-(
To quote Brad DeLong: "Why, oh why, can't we have a better press corps?"
Posted by: Gray | Nov 10, 2007 3:44:05 AM
This posting by Kevin Drum fits nicely into the picture:
"QUOTE OF THE DAY....From waitress Anita Esterday on press corps fascination over whether Hillary Clinton left her a tip during a campaign stop:
You people are really nuts. There's kids dying in the war, the price of oil right now — there's better things in this world to be thinking about than who served Hillary Clinton at Maid-Rite and who got a tip and who didn't get a tip."
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2007_11/012475.php
Posted by: Gray | Nov 10, 2007 4:56:34 AM
