Sloppy Joes

The New York Times is a powerful, well-resourced newspaper based in Manhattan. It sees much, reports much and influences the conversation of the republic. But Manhattan is not the republic. A newspaper, however distinguished, looks outward from somewhere; and the somewhere matters.

Its newsroom, sources and habitual audience gather largely in New York, Washington and the other metropolitan precincts of the educated professional class. From such places certain things appear enormous and others scarcely visible. Crime, energy, religion, guns, immigration and class acquire the proportions given them by the city. What seems self-evident in Brooklyn may look rather different in Boise, Birmingham or Bakersfield.

This is not principally a complaint about bias. It is a question of scale and perspective. The modern metropolis has an old temptation: to mistake the intensity of its own conversation for the breadth of the civilization surrounding it. Yet beyond the newsroom lie counties, workshops, farms, churches, substations, schoolhouses and kitchen tables where the country conducts most of its ordinary life, frequently without appearing above the fold.

National influence is therefore not national representation. A serious reader uses the Times for what it does exceptionally well — reporting, investigation and the argument of the governing and professional classes — but reads outward from it as well: local newspapers, regional voices, primary documents and, not least, direct observation.

The map is larger than Manhattan.  The republic contains more voices than its loudest newspaper, and more life than can be gathered into a morning edition.