Whenever I talk to people about the New York Times, which is an occupational hazard if you work in journalism and sometimes even if you don’t, I try to point out that it’s impossible to talk about the New York Times as if it were a single entity (kind of like, say, the Kennedys, or Harvard, that way).
This is really one of the paper’s great idiosyncrasies and, probably, flaws: the standards of reporting and editing vary substantially from section to section.
One of the worst offenders, week in and week out, is the Style section, which is generally less well-reported and edited than magazines that might be thought as part of its peer set, such as New York or Vanity Fair. It’s certainly less rigorously composed than the A section of the Times.
I noticed that in two small but telling ways today.
The first came in David Carr’s profile of the late Andrew Breitbart. Essentially a rehash of what we already knew about Breitbart, it’s not Carr’s best work. (A fun read, but it doesn’t probe very deeply into why Breitbart was the way he was, or the human consequences of his bilious personality. Oh, and just by way of disclosure, Carr has written about me.)
One line in the story struck me as unfair in an interesting sort of way.
At the end of the introductory section, Carr writes, For good or ill (and most would say ill), no one did it like Mr. Breitbart.
That parenthetical caught my eye. One of the things I tell writers whom I’m editing that if something’s important, it shouldn’t be shoveled between parentheses. Parentheses are for qualifiers and digressions.
(I can’t take credit for this insight; it’s hardly a new idea. Still, you notice it when editing, because if you need to cut for space, parenthetical information is often the first to go, because it’s less important, or should be, than everything else. As just demonstrated.)
To say that “most would say ill” of the late Andrew Breitbart is saying a lot, and the writer and/or editor are/is being wimpy by hiding it under cover of parentheses-sneaking in a serious charge as if it were a casual aside.
To compound the error, in the couple thousand words that follow, Carr doesn’t come close to substantiating that accusation; he doesn’t really try, in fact. (Which makes me think that this particular aside was inserted by an editor who didn’t think much of Breitbart).
This may seem like a small point, but imagine if you knew and cared about Andrew Breitbart. That parenthetical could infuriate or frustrate or sadden you—because, inserted in parentheses and without convincing proof the most people think ill of Andrew Breitbart, it’s a cheap shot. And that matters. Especially when you’re talking about people who can’t defend themselves.
The second bit of sloppiness in today’s Style section comes in James Atlas’ exploration of Harvard’s Red Book, the catalogue of alumni achievements published for each class every five years at its reunion. It’s a subject ripe for satire or at least skepticism—sorry, but it is—yet Atlas writes it straight. The result is a piece that only Harvard alumni could find interesting, and maybe not even then; it tests the limits of self-indulgence.
What is it about this crimson-colored book, its hue as recognizable to graduates as the coloration of a red-crested cardinal to a dedicated birder, that prompts such obsessive perusal?
Zzzzz….
Why such an earnest consideration of a subject that only a small subset of Times’ readers (though probably a much larger subset of TImes’ editors) would consume with fascination?
Probably because Atlas himself went to Harvard, so in writing about his fascination with the Red Book, he’s really writing about his own self-fascination. But you would never know of Atlas’ Crimson connection from reading this weird little essay, because Atlas never mentions it (are we supposed to just know?) and the Times doesn’t add an author blurb to the end of the story.
So then you get inexplicable (and kind of dreadful) lines like this…
The life journey of members of the Class of ’71 has been less outwardly dramatic, but they, too, have many wondrous tales to tell.
…that are somewhat more explicable, if no less dreadful, if you know (from Wikipedia) that Atlas is class of ’71.
Why does this matter? Well, knowing that Atlas went to Harvard would inform a reader’s understanding of the piece, and it certainly informs—and, probably, limits—his ability to speak freely about the Red Book. (For one thing, this may explain why he writes about the class of 71’s 40th reunion-when that was last year. Possibly he wanted to put some distance between himself and his classmates when writing about the Red Book?)
Also, it’s another sign of how the Times likes to pretend that its writers are so free of bias and conflicts of interest, no identifying or clarifying information is necessary. Not to worry! We’re the Times. Trust us.
The world won’t end because of small failures like these, but they remind one to read the Times critically; the Style section may not usually be important, but the Times is.