As noted in the New Yorker (speaking of probity) this week, the real concern is that the New York Times has, by default, become a crucial element of the rotting American body politic. It is hard to imagine how much worse things would be without its presence to act as an intelligent critical voice and a paper of record. I assume it will recover.



Considering that I come from a really provincial country (Canada), I am constantly amazed at how truly crappy and provincial American newspapers and television are, with a couple of worthy exceptions. The best Canadian newspapers are terrible, but it is not a big and important country -- papers here are mostly designed to separate the ad pages. Even so, travelling in the U.S. I always pick up the local "high quality" paper (if there is one) to see what's what. I am shocked at how poorly written they are, even compared to Canadian papers, full of "syndicated" junk, and nary anything about the rest of the world. Nothing is written above about a grade 8 level of comprehension. The only time they seem to rise above themselves is on the weekends -- but even so, you could take most high quality American papers on the weekend, and toss out everything but about 3 pages, which would mean tossing out about 250 pages of junk per paper.

Meanwhile, in England, the better papers are at least well written, and very often you can find something about art, philosophy, music, at reasonable length in them. The weekend papers, though also massively filled with junk, are quite well put together, I think. I think the quality of the British press comes from once having been an empire, at the centre of the world (so they thought) -- there is a residual belief that public discourse is important. There is also a tradition of having some intellectuals write for the popular press.

None of these three countries' newspapers remotely compare to the quality of writing you get in Germany, even in provincial newspapers.

yours, Peter T.