When we do this job well, we manage to connect a few dots, and this morning, in the New York Times alone, there are plenty to connect.
We’ll start with an insightful editorial page column by Adam Cohen on the travails of Harvard President Larry Summers, who’s still struggling to extract his foot from his mouth after suggesting women might be biologically disadvantaged in trying to master science and math. “Today’s Internet-driven, media-saturated era is promoting two things,” Cohen writes, ” transparency and the ability of likeminded people to network easily.” Both those things are “inimical to the sort of absolute power Harvard’s leaders have long been used to …” Thus, all of a sudden, Summers is fighting to keep his job, the faculty have met twice to consider a no-confidence vote and alumni have been “writing and emailing in protest — and in support — and threatening to cut off contributions.”
Cohen notes that the “Internet has played an unprecedented role” in this affair, “both in spreading the news and in rallying the troops on both sides. The liberal blogosphere has taken up the controversy energetically; a single anti-Summers post on Daily Kos drew more than 800 comments,” while Summers is being defended by conservative blogs and studentsforlarry.org, which has an online petition going. Even the normally reclusive and august Harvard Corporation felt compelled to get webby, posting a letter supporting Summers on an alumni Web site. In an age of cyber-villagers storming about with torches and pitchforks, Cohen writes, it could well be that Larry Summers is about to be easonjordaned.
(For our part, we’ll note that, if there is a take-home message in all of this for heads of network news operations and college presidents alike, it is: shun the much-vaunted transparency; it only leads to grief. Or, put more bluntly, “Button your lip, already, and whatever you do, never tip your hand.” It’s a safe bet that both the Jordan affair and the Summers affair are certain to have a chilling effect on any free speech that is a little too free for the vast Internet audience out there to stomach.)
Meantime, on the op-ed page, the Times runs an utterly convincing piece by W. Michael Cox and Richard Alm, with statistics indicating that, in truth, Summers is about 35 years out of date. Since 1970, smart and ambitious women have not only stormed the gates of historically male disciplines, they have trampled those gates into dust. Example: In 1970-1971, women accounted for less than one percent of bachelor’s degrees, master’s degrees and doctorates in engineering, while in 2001-2002, they took home 19 percent of the bachelor’s degrees, 21 percent of the master’s degrees and 17 percent of the doctorates. In other fields, like geology, women have risen even faster; they now receive 45 percent of the bachelor’s degrees, 40 percent of the master’s degrees and nearly 30 percent of the doctorates. (That’s great nitty-gritty reporting, but here’s a telling factoid: Cox and Alm aren’t reporters, they’re economists with the Federal Reserve Bank.)
Next, in media business news, the Times tells us that in the first three months out of the gate, NBC’s Bryan Williams has bested ABC’s Peter Jennings — although if you read deep into the story you’ll learn that on the 25-to-54 demographic coveted by advertisers, Jennings has cut into NBC’s lead by two-thirds compared to a year ago. And NBC’s lead among all viewers is also shrinking, now one-third smaller than it was when Jennings was going up against Tom Brokaw. Furthermore, plagued by rising competition from cable, talk radio and the Internet — there’s that damned Internet again! — all three broadcast news programs lost viewers from a year ago, with ABC down 4.4 percent, NBC losing 6.7 percent and CBS bleeding 10.8 percent. Perhaps prophetically, Williams himself tells the Times, “I feel terrific about where this newscast is — until I think about tomorrow.”
Now to our final dot: Also on the Times business pages, a survey of the chaotic British press scene, where broadsheets are becoming tabloids, paid newspapers are becoming free, and “class distinctions … seem to be dissolving.” Underlying much of that is an Internet that is “siphoning off” readers of all political and economic stripes. That, combined with the growing number of free papers, steadily but relentlessly undermines “the habit of paying” for news, notes a newspaper consultant.
In short, all the lions of winter — Larry Summers, Eason Jordan, Peter Jennings, Bryan Williams, and the entire daily print press of Britain — appear to be writhing under the assault of the fire ants of cyberspace. It’s never wise to count a lion out, but one thing’s certain: the fire ants will only multiply, and fresh meat just whets their appetite.
–Steve Lovelady
Steve Lovelady was editor of CJR Daily.