Monday, May 23, 2005

Anti-Jersey Bias at the Times

Mickey Kaus links to this very funny New York Times correction:
An article on May 6 described a demonstration at Princeton University against the proposal by Bill Frist, the Senate majority leader and a Princeton graduate and board member, to bar filibusters on judicial nominees. The writer, a freelance contributor who is a Princeton student, did not disclose to The Times that before she was assigned the article, she had participated in the demonstration.

Forget questions of political bias, what I want to know is: Why is the New York Times assigning stories to college students? I'm on record as believing that the Times is the greatest thing since sliced bread--surely they can afford to use professional reporters to cover stories in central New Jersey. Aren't stringers supposed to be for remote, unreachable locales? Or maybe for Manhattanites Central Jersey is a remote, unreachable locale?

2 comments:

arrScott said...

Well, for all civilized people central Jersey is "a remote, unreachable locale."

But the Times has a long history of using college stringers to report on campus events. Steve Roberts got his start as a Times stringer at Harvard back in the 1960s.

The real question is how Princeton, whose Princetonian at least used to be a pretty good paper, is turning out reporters who don't know better than to cover events in which they participated. Woodrow Wilson would not be happy.

Anonymous said...

Hmm, that is odd. It can't be that they don't know where Central Jersey is, they print the Times in Central Jersey...

Can't be because none of the Manhattan Staff can drive a car either, since there's a train to Princeton...