New York civic life suffered a serious setback this week when the most powerful news organization in the world announced it will no longer bother to help its readers decide who should run our city and state. “The paper does not plan to take a stance in Senate, congressional or state legislative races in New York this fall, or in next year’s New York City elections,” the paper’s “Opinion” editor, Kathleen Kingsbury, said in a statement brimming with callous indifference.
We don’t know why the Times no longer wishes to help New Yorkers make choices about city, state, and federal leaders, as it has done since the board’s creation in 1896. Kingsbury “did not give a reason for the shift,” according to the paper’s own reporters. We can safely rule out cost considerations: Just last week, the paper reported a profit of $104.7 million over the last quarter, along with 300,000 new subscribers. The Times now has 10.8 million subscribers (10.2 million of them digital only) and recorded a 13.6 percent jump in earnings compared to last year.
I’ve met several of the 13 members of the paper’s editorial board and know something about how they operate, having spent eight years doing similar work as a member of the editorial boards of the Daily News and the New York Sun. They form an impressive team that regularly mounts impressive, in-depth crusades; just last year, a series on terror and violence committed by right-wing political extremists was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. In 2019, Board Member Brent Staples won a Pulitzer for........