Fit to Print

Today, New York Times editor Bill Keller admits that his newspaper may be ever-so-slightly tipped to the left. The reason, he says, is that most of the people who work at the Times are urbanites. Whatever their political affiliations (they're not supposed to have any, or at least not that anyone would discern from their reporting), they are surrounded by the liberal elite—the people who are responsible for America's media and entertainment industries. Their descriptions and analyses of these sorts of people and their issues tend to be more sympathetic and three-dimensional, says Keller. The answer? The Times is considering reopening its Kansas City bureau.

Now, we've taken about all the condescending "heartland" conversation we're going to take, but that's not my point here. Rather than treating mid-America like we're some kind of exotic and dangerous planet, to which the New York Times must send an away-team, they might ask a more fundamental question: Why is it necessary for the newspaper of record to pander to any reader anywhere? Since when is recording and analyzing the news of the day supposed to be focus-grouped to see whether it will be popular in Dubuque?

We happened to be rereading "Gone," by Renata Adler, this weekend. Adler was a longtime writer and editor at the New Yorker. Her book mourns the passing of what she feels to be the last resort of truly great journalism. It is indirectly a hagiography of that magazine's founding editor, Harold Ross, and his brilliant successor, William Shawn. But the book is a bit too peckish and maudlin and apocalyptic for our tastes ("As I write this, the New Yorker magazine is dead. Oh, sure, it lives on in name...").

But she makes an interesting and valid point in saying that one of the things that explains the New Yorker's long run of greatness was the vital spark of curiosity that its editors had and cultivated. There was never an article published in that magazine for any other reason than it interested its editors—and the result was a publication that, as Adler rightly says, quite frequently published the definitive article on any given subject.

Now, I'm not sure why the New York Times needs to reopen its Kansas City bureau. (Hey! What about Minneapolis? Oh yeah, you need a red state office.) Is it to make sure that more Missourians read the New York Times? Or is it to make Missourians more vivid to New York Times readers? Why is this framed as a question of readership and coverage at all? It seems to me the better question to ask is, Well, what the hell is going on in Missouri today? Any news from that benighted wasteland, besides great BBQ ribs and jazz?—The Editor in Cheese