Tom: "Even with requisite journalistic care (including round-robin meetings with editors), it would seem that a [David] Paterson story should have been ready to be printed by Friday morning, especially since any yet-to-be confirmed charges against the governor could always run in a later article. Instead, the Times has yet to publish. While there may be extenuating factors, we have reached the point when the Times' care at being journalistically responsible has become irresponsible."
Choire: I mean. How do you even come to that conclusion?
Tom: It is crackers.
Tom: It might be a new low in media-critical dumbshittery.
Tom: "Any yet-to-be-confirmed charges against the governor could always run in a later article."
Tom: So then what would go in the "Paterson story" that "should have been ready" by now?
Tom: What if there is only one charge, but they don't have it nailed down yet?
Choire: Also, you know, traditionally newspapers do actually publish articles on a daily basis, sometimes about the same people or stories as those stories evolve? But they are articles with things that have a thing to say?
Choire: It "would seem" that they "should have" already asked about those rumors, to people who have nothing to do with the situation and don't know anything.
Tom: And this goes back to the business about how dare reporters ask about scandalous unsupported rumors.
Tom: Not all reporting is performative!
Tom: Some reporting is still an attempt to figure out whether unconfirmed claims are true or false.
Choire: And sometimes that takes some time?
Tom: And sometimes you ask about the terrible thing and the answer turns out to be, no, it is not true, and then you chuck that notebook in the pile and find something else to write about.
Choire: That happens!
Choire: Also very frequently one cannot reconcile accounts.
Choire: That is frustrating!
Choire: I'm still struck by "a newspaper that will do things its own way on its own schedule."
Choire: As opposed to... any other media outlet?
Tom: Well, didn't Renata Adler have something to say about that?
Tom: About the question of when a writer chooses to say the thing that the writer is in the midst of writing.
Choire: Oh I believe she did.
Choire: You mean when, the New York Times wrote about her that: "As it stands, Ms. Adler and Simon & Schuster, a unit of Viacom, are either cheaply smearing Judge Sirica-with legal impunity-or they have evidence.... But neither the publisher nor the author shows any urgency about resolving the issue, either by retracting the accusation or establishing its accuracy."
Tom: That was the one, yes.
Tom: Sauce for the goose, I suppose, but I don't much care for this flavor of stupid-sauce on any fowl at all.