The Times–It is a Changing

The Times–It is a Changing

The Times: It is a Changing

This morning’s New York Times brings with it a shock. Along the entire bottom of the front page, there is a two-and-a-half inch ad for CBS. The “Gray Lady” has gotten the equivalent of a henna dye job.

The story behind the change is a familiar one. Like papers across the country the Times has succumbed to financial reality. The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and the Los Angeles Times all run front-page display ads. Of the major American papers, only the Washington Post turns down front-page advertising.

The <Times has not tried to hide its financial troubles. In November, the paper reported that its revenue from continuing operations fell 13.9 percent from the previous year, and during this same period advertising at the New York Times Media Group declined 21.2 percent.

This is not the first design change the Times has made for financial reasons. In 2006, it narrowed its width from thirteen and a half inches to twelve inches. The good news—what we ought to be thankful for—is that the Times has not changed its reportorial standards: a claim that cannot be made for the most important television news station in America, CNN.

In 2008, CNN began running a Saturday night talk show hosted by the standup comedian D. L. Hughley. Hughley’s previous television experience included a family sitcom, “The Hughleys,” which ran from 1998 to 2002 on ABC and UPN, as well as a featured role on NBC’s “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip.” Hughley can be funny. He once compared himself to Sarah Palin, noting that she ran a police department and that growing up in Los Angeles, he ran from the police. But Hughley is no Jon Stewart. He has simply been hired to bring in younger viewers. Giving him a regular weekly spot is the equivalent of the Times giving an op-ed column to Jerry Seinfeld.

Which is why I am not complaining about the ads running along the bottom of the Times’s front page. Anything that keeps the hard news coming undiluted is worth the price.

Nicolaus Mills, a professor of American studies at Sarah Lawrence College, is author of Winning the Peace: The Marshall Plan and America’s Coming of Age as a Superpower.

Photo: The New York Times building (Haxorjoe / Wikimedia Commons / Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0).