I don’t buy that the timing of the story had much to do with some misguided business sense, except in the remotest sense of a desperate attempt to stay relevant. The Sulzbergers are hardly in this for the money. If they were, they would have attended to their credibility these past 15 years or more.
The WSJ is in the same, doomed dead tree journalism business, yet has not seen its revenues, circulation and value plummet to nearly the extent the Times has. Simple incompetent management has certainly played its role in the Times’s demise, as has the technology sea change, but the biggest factor has been the Sulzbergers’ willingness to sacrifice credibility, circulation and business goals to their moral crusade to tell the world how things should be. Even when it requires omissions, lying and cheap scandal.
