GRAY LADY DOWN: The New York Times’s bizarre handling of its Gay Talese story.

In 1992, New York magazine reported that Pinch Sulzberger “told a crowd of people that alienating older white male readers means ‘we’re doing something right.’” If one older white male reader in particular that your staffers attempted to eviscerate in your pages is an 84 year old left-leaning journalistic legend, well, the left always devours its own eventually. Even if it’s someone who has written one of the best histories of the Times’ past glory days, 1969’s The Power and the Glory.

As for the slow collapse of the paper in the decades since, Bill McGowan’s 2010 book, Gray Lady Down takes up the story where Talese’s book ends. As this week’s debacle and the earlier quote from Sulzberger combine to illustrate, the self-styled elites who currently populate the Times appear to be remarkably punitive and infantile, not least when compared to their grown-up Timesmen of an earlier and better era in the paper’s long history.

Related: Great moments in unawareness, from both Tina Fey and Salon: “Tina Fey, female writer, is not impressed by Gay Talese.”

More: Gay Talese and the Outrage-Industrial Complex’s Odd Priorities.