New York Times

New York Times
Category: Print Media
Neighborhood: Madrona/Leschi
10/19/2007 First to Review
The best American newspaper, perhaps the best daily newspaper anywhere.

As of about two weeks ago, all its features are available in the FREE online edition (Maureen Dowd, Paul Krugman, David Brooks columns, etc.) which used to be the province of only paying subscribers, as well as being able to search their extensive archives. You just have to register...

Maureen Dowd has the sharpest, funniest tongue of any columnist around although at least as single-minded and unrelenting as the people she turns her rhetorical daggers in (Hillary Clinton, for instance, whom she has made the subject of non-stop character assassination the past decade). Thomas Friedman, on the other hand, is a snore.

The newspaper has truly become a national one, as evidenced by the distribution--in news-stands or delivered to your doorstep--of its print edition in cities and university towns across the country.

The "reach" of the NY Times is astounding: the number of articles, for instance, about and emanating from Seattle is phenomenal.

The online edition is updated--believe me--every few minutes with breaking news as well as new stories. (There was, for instance, splendid coverage of the Iowa caucuses--no need to tune in MSNBC).

The only drawback of the online edition is that the photos are much smaller in most cases. On the other hand, the gigantic ads are also missing.

The reporting, both in its breadth and in-depth objective investigative analysis, is unparalleled and clearly dwarfs our local dailies.

In some ways, it has become a wire service of its own, comparable to the UPI, AP, or Reuters and its reporters are based all over the world and very quick to pick up breaking stories.

There is just no comparison with the highly condensed news most of the American public gets from watching the evening news via the three major television networks.

Its op-ed columns and Letters to the Editor provide a great forum for a discussion of national and international issues.

Occasionally, the newspaper DOES make mistakes (the breaking stories about Wen Ho Lee, for instance).

One of the things I must do every day is to read the New York Times. I don't need to read any other news magazine--Time, Newsweek, though I do.