When I was growing up, in the 1970s, my folks subscribed to the New York Times. Every day the paper boy would deliver it to our house in Connecticut. My father was from Brooklyn and my mom from the Bronx and for them, as for me, the Times represented the primary source of news.
But it was more than that. In the years prior to cable, we might tune into CBS or NBC or ABC, but it was the Times that most reliably defined political reality. It was the Times that represented a sort-of bedrock of political reality. It was the Times, foremost among all news outlets, that we relied upon in order to make sense of the world.
For those who did not grow up with the NYT, it may be difficult to understand what the paper meant to those of us who did. For many of us, or for my family, at least, the Times meant something. It was a presence. It was always there. My father would read the NYT every morning over breakfast and leave the paper on the kitchen table for the rest of the family to peruse at their leisure. If my mom and my sister got into a fight, it was to the Times that my father would retreat in order to avoid the conflict.
The Times represented reasonableness, rationality, substantiality, and fairness. That's the way we thought of it, and that's the way I thought of it, as I grew into adulthood. All through the 1990s, although I didn't subscribe to the paper, I would still purchase it at newsstands and read it on the bus. My wife and I would take Sunday brunch and read through the op-eds and the book reviews, over our pancakes and scrambled eggs, at our favorite breakfast/brunch-style restaurants.
It was comforting because it represented, and portrayed, a reality that we could count on.
Sometime around 1996, or thereabouts, the Times introduced color photography to the newspaper. I remember walking down Columbus Street in San Francisco, my adopted home, and spotting the first copy with color photography. I was actually mildly shocked! I kidded friends that the world was coming to an end! Oh my god, the Times has gone color!
It was around this time, the mid-late 90s, that I finally met someone whom I respected who argued that the Times was NOT the be-all and end-all of news coverage. A good friend of mine, who happened to be a strong progressive and a native of Los Angeles, would often tell me that coverage of the Times was slanted to the right. This was during the period in which pundits in the traditional media, particularly in cable news, ramped up complaints that the New York Times was a liberal/leftist news outlet. It was also around this time that I became aware of Chomsky and his analysis of the Times' failure of reportage concerning the East Timor massacre.
Nonetheless, it was still to the Times that I went when I wanted to know what was going on. I did not think that the paper was perfect, nor did I think that it was particularly liberal, but I did still think of it the way that I always had. As reliable. As central. As the go-to place for what was happening in the country and the world.
When the Times went on-line the virtual version substituted the physical paper as my source of news. Sometimes I regretted not having the actual paper laying on the kitchen table, but as a creature devoted to my laptop, the on-line version became the place to start my day. Every morning, prior to going to work, I would take half an hour, or so, over coffee, to scan the headlines and read an article, or two.
Then came the current Iraq war and occupation. As someone opposed to the war, I was disappointed that the Times bolstered the administration's case for bloodshed. It seemed so obvious that the Bush administration was using 9/11 to gain political capital, to run roughshod over the Democrats, and to drag the country into war. Yet the allegedly liberal New York Times covered its back.
Although I was disappointed, I felt I had nowhere else to go. I still looked to the Times for news, although more warily.
Then, quite recently, two things happened that made me turn my back on the paper that I was raised with. The Downing Street Memos and the revelations concerning the WMD reportage of Judith Miller. I forget which came first, but between the two, I finally lost all respect for the paper. When I first heard of the Downing Street Memo I began to explore the internet for news on this story. The Times was not covering it, but I read some articles in Common Dreams, one of which referenced Daily Kos.
It was at that point that I started coming to this site. My relationship with the Times was not entirely over, but I now began to look to it not for news, but for a sense of how the traditional media was playing stories. The difference could not be more stark. No longer did I see the Times as presenting a fair reality, but as one particular source of spin among many others.
Although I began to avoid much of the paper, I still looked to the opinion section. I read Krugman. I read Rich. I read Herbert. I read Dowd. When the paper brought in David Brooks to appease red-staters, I shook my head, and simply avoided him. And, then, of course, TimesSelect came on and the only part of the paper that I appreciated disappeared behind the firewall.
It was finally at this point that I gave up entirely. I un-bookmarked the newspaper and have not returned since. From that day to this, however, I have lived with a sense of political ungroundedness. Where could I go, I wondered, for something that could offer me what the Times always had? What other newspaper, or news outlet, could I rely on? Not the Washington Post, that was clear. Definitely not the Wall Street Journal.
I did not know where to go... so I came here. The Times had let us down, and although dKos was a place not for definitive news, it was (and is) a place for discussion and for interpretation. It was here that I could find information that was of interest to me and it was Kosmopolitans that pointed me to articles on issues that were of interest.
Now, of course, we have David Brooks' attack on this community. And although for me this attack by Brooks hardly represents "the last straw," it does represent something sad. It means my old political home is dead. Thoroughly and completely dead.