This week’s issue of the New Yorker has a compelling (and very long) profile of ex-President Bill Clinton, written by the magazine’s editor, David Remnick. In the piece, Clinton is asked — of course — what it would mean for him if Hillary ran for president. Remnick points specifically to a recent New York Times article($$) from May, a gossipy expose Remnick refers to as “one of the stranger specimens of journalism in the past year,” about the state of the Clinton marriage. He asks Bubba whether he’s ready to deal with more of this. Clinton responds, interestingly, more to the question of the article’s propriety than to its substance.
“How weird was that?” he says. “It didn’t bother me as much as it did a lot of people last time. But I just want to — that’s their choice. Except this time, with all the problems this country has, if the New York Times really wants to take the place of the Enquirer, and the Globe and the Star, you know there are alternative means of communication this year. And I don’t know how long people in the press think they can do that to one party, instead of both, by themselves. I think this is nuts, myself. I’ve never engaged in it, and I never will.”
Clearly, the president was a bit discombobulated by the article — or, maybe, more accurately, he was discombobulated by the fact that it appeared on the front page of the Times. The article, headlined, “For Clintons, Delicate Dance of Marriage and Public Life,” had the spirit of People magazine blowing through it, more a gossipy pile of speculation than anything resembling news. It wasn’t the partisanship of it that bothered us, it was the news judgment of the editors who ran a story purely for its titillation value.
But we had almost forgotten about it — until this morning that is, when another article with a dance metaphor in the headline waltzed that older story back to mind. This one is about Condoleezza Rice and the highly speculative affair she’s not having with Canada’s single foreign minister, Peter MacKay. It’s headlined, “Dance of Diplomacy is Grist for Gossip Mill.” It’s a much more self-consciously gossipy piece than the Clinton one, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s been deemed important enough to be teased (including a color photo) on the front page.
In a way, the constant winks to the reader throughout the piece come off as a cynical attempt to simultaneously deliver the juicy information without really owning it. The Times, because it never wants to be confused with the Enquirer, writes instead a story about the gossip. “Reporters tend to get bored pretty fast — there is only so much ink anyone can devote to softwood lumber trade spats and overfishing in the North Atlantic,” Helene Cooper, the apparently bored reporter writes. “And a bored reporter is a gossipy reporter …”
Cooper then proceeds to dish like Page Six. She writes about the flight aboard Condi’s plane that MacKay took after a Rome summit in July; then describes a recent press conference the two conducted in Halifax in which MacKay announced that the Secretary of State had slept with her window open the previous night. As for Condi, Cooper reports (if that’s the word for it), “She repeatedly called Mr. MacKay ‘Peter’ (he called her ‘Secretary Rice’ or ‘Miss Rice’), confirmed the sleeping-with-the-window-open bit, and told the assembled local leaders that Mr. MacKay had introduced her to his family, including his father and stepmother, the night before.”
Okay, we know that the Times takes a lot of heat and is generally more exposed than other papers. But there is a reason for that. It calls itself the “paper of record.” It holds itself to a certain standard. Nobody’s saying there isn’t room for some fun. Hell, who isn’t curious about Condi’s love life or the Clinton marriage? But there is something to be said for carefully picking one’s spots. It’s as though the Times, precisely because of the gravitas it claims, has difficulty recognizing when fun is appropriate and when it isn’t. As a result, it’s timing is off, and we end up with pieces like Cooper’s that try to have it both ways. It’s probably no coincidence that in Cooper’s piece she refers to “Italy’s normally staid Corriere della Serra” raising its eyebrow over a joint appearance by foreign minister Massimo D’Alema and Rice. It takes one to know one, after all.
Besides, there’s no shortage of “fun” in the news these days anyway. Just today, a report by network news analyst Andrew Tyndall found that in her first week as anchor of the CBS Evening News, Katie Couric had a total of 30 minutes more of features, interviews and commentary throughout the week than ABC’s broadcast. Fluff is on the march. It has been for a while. The Times needs to be smarter about when it joins this particular parade.
Gal Beckerman is a former staff writer at CJR and a writer and editor for the New York Times Book Review.