(or How I stopped screaming at the paper and learned to love the blogosphere.)

by Lynnell Mickelsen

Because of dumb-ass dreck like this little gem from last Sunday's front page.

Can we just review here? Rep. Mark Foley (R-FL) resigns from Congress because he was cyber-stalking young pages. And what does the New York Times decide to run on its front page on Sunday?

Former Pages Describe Foley as Caring Ally

And apparently I wasn't the only person who noticed. Charles Kaiser writes:

"It defies the imagination that the weekend editors of the New York Times read the four stories they had about Congressman Mark Foley that were written on Sunday, and then decided that the one by Rachel Swarns, which explained what a lovely person Foley had been to some of the pages, was the one that belonged on this morning's front page.......

"I have never seen more unusual news judgment in my life."

Unfortunately, Charles, I have, In fact, two years ago, a relentless pattern of "unusual news judgment" led me to finally give up my daily NYT subscription after almost 20 years.

I was one of the people for whom the NYT had the kind of hold and authority that the Catholic church once had over the peasants in Europe. I came of age during Watergate and the Pentagon papers, so I grew up seeing journalism as a high-calling and public service. I got my master's degree at the Columbia School of Journalism where reading the NYT was the secular version of taking communion every morning. It was how liberal, educated, urban professionals started their day.

I started working as a reporter for Knight-Ridder newspapers, first in Duluth, then in Detroit. I went on and freelanced for various newspapers and magazines. Within the news biz, the NYT is the Vatican. So it took years and literally hundreds of of bad, dishonest, biased stories before my disbelieving brain would realize that Grey Old Lady was so deep in the tank with the corporate right, it had grown gills. It had become the Pravda on the Hudson, a tired propaganda tool for the ruling party.

I mean it was the holy New York Times who went berserk over Monica Lewinsky, smeared nuclear scientist Wen Ho Lee (as a way of accusing Clinton of being soft on Commies) and treated both Gore and Kerry with dripping scorn while strapping on the kneepads to service W. It was the NYT who lied us into the Iraq war--- especially their star reporter, Judith Miller, (who was embedded in more ways than one, which was why she was known informally in the news biz as Mrs. Chalabi.) It was the NYT who for a year held the story of the Bushies's illegally tracking millions of American private phone records and e-mails -----and only printing it after the 2004 election and only after their reporter put it in his own book which was being published.

I could go on, but you get the idea. I finally concluded that Fox News and the New York Times are actually on the same team, but play different roles. The role of Fox News is to jazz up its Republican base. The role of the New York Times is to discourage and confuse opposition to Republican rule.

I know this goes against everything we've always been told---that the NYT is liberal, that it tells the truth and digs deep. It's sort of like coming to the sad, reluctant conclusion that the Catholic church knew their priests were molesting kids and did nothing about it. For me, it's been that kind of loss of faith.

Of course, there's a few wonderful exceptions to this--- their staff op-eds are often good, their columnists like Paul Krugman are great (although always "balanced" by David Brooks, John Tierney and many other tired right-wingers.). The NYT still has some great reporters who are willing to question the regime,although their work is usually buried on page A20, if it makes it into print at all.

Anyways, when I tell people I've given up on the NYT, it's seen as viewed as act of heresy, a sign that I had truly gone off the deep end, put on the tin-foil hat, started searching for the third assassin in the grassy knoll. Etc. Etc.

But hey man, I don't care. I get my most of news on-line now. I still sometimes read the NYT on-line, but mainly to hear the Bush administration spin on something. But now I start my day with Atrios, Kos, Juan Cole, Digby, My Direct Democracy, Norwegianity, and the British Guardan. Plus some local blogs.

This routine doesn't take me any more time than reading the NYT. I have a lap-top and wi-fi, so I read it at the breakfast table with coffee. I've saved money, become better informed and it's a lot more fun to read. I mean, what's not to like here?

Yeah, I still take my local newspaper, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. Is it perfect? No. But did it lie about the war? No. Did it run a front page story on what a swell guy Mark Foley was? No. And my 13-year-old still reads the sports pages over breakfast every morning.