I've been reading The Times for 25 years, and no doubt they'll line my coffin with it. It's the paper of record -- AND it's far from perfect. I can live with both of those facts.
Yes, the Jayson Blair case was shameful, it didn't confront the Bushies strongly enough before the invasion of Iraq (hey, my son's stationed in Iraq, so I have the license to beef about this more than most), and I suspect Arthur Sulzberger Jr. really is a weasel.
But it remains a serious paper: thorough, detailed, and filled with some of the best damn writers around, matched only, in my view, by the Financial Times and The Economist. (If you've never read either of these, please don't reply with accusations of elitism.)
Anyway, my intention isn't to defend The Times. I just wanted to elicit a chuckle with this list of Newspaper Reader Profiles that's been hanging on my wall for years. I don't know its provenance -- a cursory look online didn't turn up the source -- but read it and laugh. It beats bitching.
NEWSPAPER READER PROFILES
- The Wall Street Journal is read by the people who run the country.
- The Washington Post is read by people who think they run the country.
- The New York Times is read by people who think they should run the country and who are very good at crossword puzzles.
- USA Today is read by people who think they ought to run the country but don’t really understand The New York Times. They do, however, like their statistics shown in pie charts.
- The Los Angeles Times is read by people who wouldn’t mind running the country—if they could find the time—and if they didn’t have to leave Southern California to do it.
- The Boston Globe is read by people whose parents used to run the country and did a far superior job of it, thank you very much.
- The New York Daily News is read by people who aren’t too sure who’s running the country and don’t really care as long as they can get a seat on the train.
- The New York Post is read by people who don’t care who’s running the country as long as they do something really scandalous, preferably while intoxicated.
- The Miami Herald is read by people who are running another country but need the baseball scores.
- The San Francisco Chronicle is read by people who aren’t sure there is a country . . . or that anyone is running it; but if so, they oppose all that they stand for. There are occasional exceptions if the leaders are handicapped minority feminist atheist dwarfs who also happen to be illegal aliens from any other country or galaxy provided, of course, that they are not Republicans.
- The National Enquirer is read by people trapped in line at the grocery store.
- None of these is read by the guy who is running the country into the ground.