{"id":2939,"date":"2023-01-16T16:34:04","date_gmt":"2023-01-17T00:34:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/shrinkrapped.com\/?p=2939"},"modified":"2023-01-16T16:34:04","modified_gmt":"2023-01-17T00:34:04","slug":"paper-of-record","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shrinkrapped.com\/?p=2939","title":{"rendered":"Paper of Record"},"content":{"rendered":"
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My husband and I just watched She Said<\/a><\/em>, the film based on New York Times<\/em> reporters Megan Twohey\u2019s and Jodi Kantor\u2019s investigation that brought down Harvey Weinstein and turbocharged the #MeToo Movement. We happened to see it on the same day that we\u2019d contemplated canceling our Times<\/em> subscription at least three times.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first came when I listened to The Daily<\/em>\u2019s podcast coverage of the recent discovery of Joe Biden\u2019s classified documents in all the wrong places. The sequel to the 2016 smash hit, \u201cOh, But Her Emails!,\u201d \u201cDocuments!\u201d is part of the breathless reporting that is one-tenth spelling out the differences between Biden\u2019s and Trump\u2019s behavior and nine-tenths implying nefarious intent with far, far more disturbing revelations to come. I suppose the one-tenth part counts among the Lessons Learned by responsible journalists whose hyperbolic coverage of the drip-drip-drip of Hillary\u2019s misused server surely contributed to the mess we\u2019re in now. Unfortunately, the greater Lesson Learned about stoking conflict to gain eyeballs, plus a misguided allegiance to \u201cFair and Balanced,\u201d still triumphs. At least when Fox<\/em> touted the \u201cF&B\u201d tagline, they knew it was ironic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Later that day, I moved onto the Times<\/em> Opinion section, only to be confronted with a column by Kellyanne Conway, Trump\u2019s notorious campaign manager, counselor, and coiner of \u201calternative facts.\u201d Why the Times<\/em> would give over precious inches to a known liar and political hack was beyond me, though I shouldn\u2019t have been surprised since that\u2019s a fair description of what has happened to our political discourse in general over the last many years. But I<\/em> would not let Kellyanne off the hook: \u201cHow\u2019s your marriage? And your daughter?\u201d<\/em> I unkindly asked her in my mind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As I complained to my husband about these journalistic outrages over lunch, he added a third reason to quit the Times<\/em>: \u201cThey\u2019re going after us because we both use the same log-in to read the paper. I\u2019ve explained that we\u2019re in the same household, but they say \u2018It\u2019s just one user per subscription.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That evening, which was Takeout and Movie Night, we streamed She Said<\/em>. It\u2019s a good, though not great, movie, and one well worth seeing for the importance of the story alone. And also for the d\u00e9cor of the New York Times<\/em>: chic red walls, bright and airy workspaces, a stunning cafeteria with floor to ceiling windows. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the aesthetics are nothing compared to the paper\u2019s unlimited resources, including sending the intrepid reporters overnight to London. Given that no expense was spared, I couldn\u2019t help but wonder why the Times<\/em> never sprang for a couple sets of Bluetooth headphones so the reporters were not constantly on speaker phone as they walked down streets or made dinner while passersby, husbands, and kids freely listened in. (Then I realized that this was a cinematic device designed to allow the audience to hear all, not half, of the conversations with vital sources. Duh!)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Best of all was the unstinting support of everyone at the Times<\/em>. While poor Ronan Farrow had to go, beggar-like, to the New Yorker<\/em>, after NBC News squelched his simultaneously exploding bombshell investigation, Twohey and Kantor had a whole army of senior staff behind them. Their editor, Rebecca Corbett, not only dispensed hugs, keen advice, and chocolate almonds freely throughout; she also knew that the pursuit of a good story could cure post-partum depression.\u00a0Executive Editor Dean Baquet personally and hilariously ran interference with Harvey Weinstein himself. In contrast to the workplace Weinstein turned into a house of horrors, the New York Times<\/em> came off as the best employer in the world. It was hard to even recall that just last month, labor unrest<\/a> roiled the Times<\/em>, and those sympathetic to the workers were encouraged to eschew their Wordle addiction for the day in solidarity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Still, the Times<\/em> did good, does good, and no doubt will continue to do good, especially if they ever get over their fetish for interviewing MAGA enthusiasts in diners. We\u2019re likely never to quit them (of course, they may boot us off first if we continue to share one subscription in our household of two). In honor of this exasperating, brilliant paper of record, I even played Wordle for the first time ever yesterday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As for Weinstein? Well, RIP Harvey–rot in prison. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My husband and I just watched She Said, the film based on New York Times reporters Megan Twohey\u2019s and Jodi Kantor\u2019s investigation that brought down Harvey Weinstein and turbocharged the #MeToo Movement. We happened to see it on the same … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3,776],"tags":[668,805,806,807],"class_list":["post-2939","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-political","category-political-political","tag-metoo","tag-she-said","tag-new-york-times","tag-harvey-weinstein"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2F8Ch-Lp","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shrinkrapped.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2939","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shrinkrapped.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shrinkrapped.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shrinkrapped.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shrinkrapped.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2939"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/shrinkrapped.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2939\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2942,"href":"https:\/\/shrinkrapped.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2939\/revisions\/2942"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shrinkrapped.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2939"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shrinkrapped.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2939"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shrinkrapped.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2939"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}