The Latest Evolution of the New York Times' 'Week in Review'

I'm moved to write about this, since it's Father's Day.

My dad was a New Yorker by way of St. Louis. He went to NYU for his BA and MA, taught in New York Public Schools, and married my mom in New York City in 1959. My dad took a job in Europe as a civilian officer in the U.S. Army, but we moved to California when I was 4 years-old. I remember, when I was old enough to notice, that my dad received the Sunday New York Times in the mail each week. He'd spread the newspaper out on his bed and read each section carefully, from the front page down to the style and social sections. If he didn't finish a newspaper, he'd leave it at the side of the bed to finish, before moving on to the next week's paper. That was his tradition, so the New York Times always had a special place in our house, and in my memory.

When I was in college and graduate school, the New York Times was always the most prestigious source for writing term papers. I also like the Los Angeles Times, which is why readers will note that most of my news reporting from mainstream sources cites those two papers. As much media bias as there is, and both papers are very left-wing in their editorial writing, I still rely on them for the bulk of my news. I don't expect that to stop anytime soon, and frankly I only wish the best for the newspapers as far as their financial health. We need a mainstream press. We need that press as we've always needed independent journalism in the democracy. The difference today, of course, is the Internet and the spread of citizens' journalism. But bloggers and videographers aren't going to replace the big newspapers. What's happening is that the big papers are becoming more Internet-friendly, more like bloggers, not the least from the need to simply survive.

So, well, I'm both critical of the New York Times, like today's hit piece against Clarence Thomas (discussed at Althouse), and also thankful for it. I continue to admire the newspaper's styling and its website is the best newspaper website online. I also assign it to my students so they'll learn how to read a newspaper, which in itself is a disappearing skill.

Anyway, one of the things I enjoyed in the old days, when I used to buy the Sunday Times before it was $6.00 a pop, was the "Week in Review" section. Sometimes I'd pull out "Week in Review" first off. It seemed so cool and sophisticated. I loved reading all the background analysis. Now it seeems dated. I rarely read it anymore, and I don't buy the Sunday paper anymore just to go find it, which I once did. So, things have changed. I guess Bill Keller knows this, he knows how the cachet of the "Week in Review" has collapsed in the hyper-news era of today. So he's moved to spiff it up. See, "Coming Next Sunday: The Latest Evolution of the Review." There's going to be a name-shortening, and more:

Next Sunday, the Week in Review will make another evolutionary leap. The name will be shortened yet again to Sunday Review, the last vestiges of a weekly summing up replaced by a more general timeliness, and that dividing wall breached, so that argument (which will be labeled Opinion) can appear alongside explanation (which will be labeled News Analysis.)

It is not the end of the world as we know it, or even, really, the most dramatic turn in the long history of the section. In the 1990s the Review was very nearly killed off, on the ground that it no longer did anything the rest of the paper wasn’t doing.

Check the rest of it. Interesting development.