Bad times at the Grey Lady
‘‘DID YOU SEE WHAT happened at the New York Times?” To be a journalist working in North America today is to ask or be asked that question approximately once every 72 hours. 2020 was a bumper year for firings, resignations and other newsroom drama at America’s most influential newspaper. Thus far, 2021 promises to be a similarly memorable vintage. So unrelenting are the micro-controversies that it has been possible to while away large chunks of lockdown speculating about the latest ruckus at the Grey Lady; just as one fizzles out, another seems to bubble up.
If the were writing a story about all this tumult, the headline would be something characteristically ponderous and oblique, something like “Inside the , a reckoning”. In ideological terms, that reckoning is a clash between the liberal and the very liberal. But
