The New York Times under Abe Rosenthal from the mid-60s through the mid-80s was liberal, but it had it’s limits, which is why the left both inside and outside the paper hated Rosenthal with roughly the same sort of passion the left has hated the liberal-on-most-things Joe Liebermann since the 2006 election. And really, the same liberal-with-limits ethos and battle with the more far left factions within the paper had been playing itself out since World War II — The Village Voice was founded in the 1950s by the ideological mentors of the people today who truly believe the New York Times is a tool of the right-wing establishment media (Judith Miller’s Iraq reporting sparking the same type of Joe Lieberman-hatred on the left when it came to the War on Terror before Joe Lieberman became their bete noir).

It was the transition at the end of the 80s and the start of the 90s from Punch to Pinch, and his desire for a paper that was more in tune with what the owner’s most valued readers (i.e., the almost-far left late 30s-early 40s baby boomer crowd Pinch identified with) wanted, that started the paper on its path towards basically becoming the Village Voice with a wider circulation area, which long-term has led to the paper’s plunging sales, stock price and credibility.