Is nastiness a sign of desperation?
The Wall Street Journal today launched its scoop-filled Greater New York section, covering the metropolitan area (including culture). The NY Times has struck back with a snarky memo from Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr., its publisher, and Janet Robinson, its CEO.
Here are some excerpts:
In the spirit of journalistic camaraderie, we welcome the Journal’s new
local section. The New York Times has been the paper of record in New
York for nearly 160 years, and we know just how difficult it can be for
start-ups to develop a following….As our welcome gift to New York, we pass on a few helpful hints to
our Journal colleagues: the Dodgers now play in Los Angeles, Soho is the
acronym for South of Houston, Fashion Week has moved to Lincoln Center,
Idlewild is now JFK and Cats is no longer playing on Broadway.If you happen to know anyone who works for the Journal’s new section and
he or she wants any additional information about the greater New York
region, tell them to check out NYTimes.com’s always very helpful
archive.
Gee, Arthur and Janet, you and I may be old enough to remember such metropolitan trivial-pursuit questions as the long-ago name of our international airport and the Dodgers’ former stadium, Ebbets Field, but I daresay the savvy staffers recruited for the WSJ’s New York initiative by a former NY Sun editor, John Seeley, are too focused on breaking stories before they’re in the Times to take a backward look.
The rest of the memo is a paean to the Times’ longtime “position of strength in the New York marketplace”—most notably the advertising marketplace (which, judging from the memo, is what most concerns the “paper of record”).
Today’s NYC arts coverage in the WSJ scoops the competition here (a piece on Christie’s new art-storage business in Brooklyn, by veteran WSJ writer Kelly Crow) [NOTE: Correction below] and here (a piece on the new midtown location for Phillips auction house, by Crow and WSJ’s new hire, Erica Orden). My ArtsJournal blogging colleague Terry Teachout will provide a theater review once a week, in addition to his usual Friday review. I wish they would have spared us the inane details of the Brooklyn Museum’s and New Museum’s fundraising galas, but I’m not the target audience for that type of frippery. Maybe the advertisers of luxury goods are.
So what’s the Big Story on the Times’ culture pages today? It’s yet another “hefty salaries” survey, leaving the impression that even though executives of leading cultural institutions have taken a compensation hit, they’re still getting too much. The piece, by NY Times veteran Robin Pogrebin and new hire Kate Taylor, is national in scope, but the photos of five cultural luminaries that illustrate the article are all from the Big Apple, with MoMA’s Glenn Lowry once again chosen as poster boy for high pay in the visual arts.
You already know how I feel about that type of coverage:
Every time a journalist gets hold of information about the salaries
of the top officials of major cultural institutions, the resulting
story makes these public servants seem overpaid….But I feel that major
cultural institutions do well to pay their top
officials well. Otherwise the best people will be lost to private
industry, leaving culture in the hands of mediocrities.
Today’s Times piece does acknowledge those who share my point of view, noting that “several board chairmen said that if someone can be found” who can do a good job juggling the myriad responsibilities of directing a major cultural institution, “it pays to retain that person, especially in tough
times.” But the mug shots of the highly compensated are worth a thousand words in terms of the negative impression that they leave upon readers.
Meanwhile, the inaugural edition of Greater New York lives up to the first word in its title. That said, its writers and editors had a long lead time to make sure that they made a strong the first impression.
The test of time lies ahead.
UPDATE: Kelly Crow informs me that she shares the byline for the Phillips story, as well as for the Christie’s story. Her name was inadvertently omitted from the hardcopy version but has been added online.
CORRECTION: This just in from Mike Hale, a NY Times television and film critic, formerly deputy editor of its “Weekend Arts” and the Friday “Arts and Entertainment”
sections:
It’s probably worth noting that the first of the two scoops you mention
in the “scoop-filled” WSJ section was actually the subject of a lengthy
story in the Times in, um, August.
That story, by Diane Cardwell, was in the (“um”) “N.Y./Region” section, not on the arts pages, which may be why I missed it. Mea culpa.