Can the New York Times Pass GO and Collect $200?
The woman told me that she doesn’t like to French-kiss her husband. I didn’t know this woman. But on Dec. 6, 2009, I was told her name, and in moments she delivered this intimate confession. And I thought at that moment, “So this is how it ends.” It is the New York Times, and the woman is a writer who wrote an article in the Times Sunday Magazine about marriage counseling. Regarded by many, including myself, as the best newspaper in the country, and perhaps the world, it has fallen in on itself, trying desperately to find its way in a world that in quick succession was turned upside down by television, and now by the Internet. I will try to explain here why this woman’s literary gifts are detrimental to the Times. In the midst of a economic downturn, the Times appears to have decided on a plan for charging readers of the online edition of the paper. At least that’s what New York Magazine says. I take the article at face value because if the losers in the internal debate at the Times do
