Peoria Pundit

The New York Times used the word “bitter” in its pages 2,200 times in the year 2002. This piece of information comes via Cynthia Cotts’ “Press Clips” column in the Village Voice (thanks to Romenesko’s Media News for the link). Cynthia has great fun with the statistic, accusing the Grey Lady of conducting a “bitterness watch.”

A paranoid might accuse the Times of conducting a secret bitterness watch. For example, the raison d’être of the Following Up column seems to be hunting down well-known losers to ask, “Are you bitter?” One subject told the Times he felt “a little bitter,” while others insisted they were not (too righteous! too busy!). Meanwhile, the Ethicist columnist explained away one advice-seeker’s anger as “the understandable bitterness of the downsized,” and a fashion writer duly recorded her husband’s reaction when she threw out his prized green nubuck loafers. ” ‘I loved those loafers,’ he said bitterly.”

Of course, Cynthia misses the real reason the NYT was so enamoured of this word. Editor Howell Raines and other liberals who write for this paper are so disappointed that George W. Bush, who stole the election, is popular and likely to win re-election, that they are projecting their feelings onto others. This explanation would never occur to anyone writes for the Village Voice, which is so liberal it makes the NYT seem like the National Review.

Let’s look at what dictionary.com had to say about the word:

bit*ter adj. bit*ter*er, bit*ter*est

1. Having or being a taste that is sharp, acrid, and unpleasant.
2. Causing a sharply unpleasant, painful, or stinging sensation; harsh: enveloped in bitter cold; a bitter wind.
3. Difficult or distasteful to accept, admit, or bear: the bitter truth; bitter sorrow.
4. Proceeding from or exhibiting strong animosity: a bitter struggle; bitter foes.
5. Resulting from or expressive of severe grief, anguish, or disappointment: cried bitter tears.
6. Marked by resentment or cynicism: “He was already a bitter elderly man with a gray face”

Except for articles actually having to do with food or weather, the word “bitter” is used to express someone’s feelings about someone or something else. Unless the word was used in direct quotes, or in a column or editorial, that means the writer — and by default the editor — placed a value judgment upon someone. They decided to read someone’s mind and report that this is how a person felt, or should have felt.

The NYT used this word some 2,200 times in the space of 356 days — that’s more than 6 times in every issue. That is far too many times to have an innocent explanation.

Journalists are supposed to keep their opinions to themselves. The NYT doesn’t do that anymore. It used to. For all the grief former editor Abe Rosenthal received from his many critics, he kept the NYT objective.

We’ve all pretty much given up the ghost on that.

UPDATE: I ran across this column by Dave Lieber, secretary of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists about the NYT’s spiking of two columns that dared to be contrary to the paper’s editorial position regarding Augusta National Golf Club’s policy on admitting women. Lieber’s position is that the NYT will never abandon its from-the-top-down that tends to discourage independent thought among its staff.

Marajen Stevick Chinigo, R.I.P. Mrs. Chinigo, the publisher of the Champaign News-Gazette and my former employer, died last week. She was eulogized as the prototypical female newspaper publisher, having inherited the job after the death of her father. Most of her obituaries focused on her many marriages, including her first to actor Buddy Rogers (he appeared in 1927’s “Wings”) and her last to an Italian count who also happened to be a journalist. She was known for her close friendships to Hollywood celebrities. She also fired my sorry ass. I was the editor of The County Star, a very small newspaper based in Tolono, Ill., just 10 miles south of Champaign. Our weekly circulation never rose above 2,600. We were owned by Professional Impressions Media Group, which included the News-Gazette.

On the first anniversary of the day I was hired, I was told I was being dismissed because the “board of directors” decided my approach to my job was different than the one the board envisioned. My approach was more appropriate to a “big city” newspaper. They wanted a newspaper that more closely resembled a small-town weekly. The “board of directors,” of course, referred to Mrs. Chinigo, the sole owner of the newspaper. I strongly suspect my fate was sealed when I wrote an editorial essentially questioning the honesty of a major railroad that ran through the town. I was as proud of my railroad coverage (Tolono was bisected by two rail lines) as I was of any straight news story I have ever done.

I might also have crossed the line with I wrote in a column that Confederate sympathizer like John Wilkes Booth would be more welcome in the modern GOP than would pro-labor, pro-civil rights Abraham Lincoln.

While I was there, PIM-G used the newspaper as a tax write-off. Expenditures that had nothing to do with The County Star were listed on the tiny newspaper’s books. Repeated requests for improvements were denied. It got to the point where we were unable to find toner cartridges for our ancient laser printer. Our copy machine had a huge crack in its glass panel. About one year after I was dismissed and replaced with an intern, our long-suffering business manager quit. Operation of The County Star was turned over to Mrs. Chinigo’s nephew. The number of employees more than doubled. The nephew was given new computers and scanners and the offices were moved from Tolono and to Champaign. The newspaper essentially became a shopper. It carried no original news, just submitted announcements and society news.

More than once, I have written about the good old days when newspapers were owned by people and not corporations. According to a story in the News-Gazette, Mrs. Chinigo established a foundation that should keep the newspapers and others members of the media group in local hands. Of course, the Peoria Journal Star thought an employee stock ownership plan would do the same thing. Didn’t happen. The PJS is now mired in mediocrity in the California-based Copley chain.

L.A. Times’ David Shaw gets it right: He has pinpointed the precise reason newspapering stinks in the early 21st century. Newspapers were once a haven for talented eccentrics who made their newspapers fun to read. But …

… Times have changed, though. Newspapers are increasingly part of large conglomerates run by men with MBAs on their walls, rather than printer’s ink in their veins. In a time of increasing competition for the reader’s time and the advertiser’s dollar, newspapers and their parent corporations don’t think they can afford characters, risk-takers, people who might embarrass them and damage the price of their stock.

Neal Gabler, the token liberal on News Watch, FOXNews’ media criticism show, says the issue isn’t whether the media is liberal or conservative.

… there is a third and more disturbing possibility in which both sides have gotten it wrong. Looking at it philosophically rather than ideologically, the real media war today isn’t between liberals and conservatives but between two entirely different journalistic mind-sets: those who believe in advocacy, and those who believe in objectivity — or, at the very least, in the appearance of objectivity. And what we are witnessing is not just a political skirmish but a battle for the soul of American journalism.

Most of us take it for granted that the media should be disinterested, but for the better part of the history of American journalism, this would have been regarded as idiotic. Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, the press was not impartial, nor was it supposed to be. Newspapers were published by political parties, or their allies, with the express purpose of advancing an agenda; news was almost always tinctured with opinion. The papers were principally targeted at the party faithful, or at potential recruits, who read them for incitement, just as listeners today tune in to Rush Limbaugh or Bill O’Reilly to stoke their political fires. Put another way, a newspaper provided ammunition, not information.

This is my problem with most Weblogs. They do not consider it their mission to inform so much as to promote their cause.