Gray Lady Spurned

Back in 2004, Jay Nordlinger explored the many pros and surprisingly few cons of “Going Timesless“:

Last fall, President Bush caused something of a scandal when he made an admission to Fox News’s Brit Hume: He is not much of a newspaper-reader or TV-watcher; he prefers to get his news from his staff, with no opinion mixed in. For many people, this revelation was further proof that our president is a dolt, too abnormal to serve in that job.

I have an even more shocking revelation: Many people in this country don’t read the New York Times, and by “people,” I don’t mean Ma and Pa, I mean major writers and journalists, plenty of whom live in Manhattan.

* * *
Many of these ex-Times readers can give you the exact year, or even the exact day, of their withdrawal. “Four years ago.” “Nine years ago.” “Last June.” Quite a few seem to have quit the paper in recent years, since 9/11, and since the Jayson Blair scandal (he was the con artist who was a rising star at the Times), and since former editor Howell Raines’s bizarre crusade against Augusta National Golf Club.

Today at Pajamas HQ, Kenneth Anderson offers “A Requiem for My New York Times Subscription.”