Word: paper
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Inside the paper, the Times' very dominance may help foster a certain arrogance and complacency. The Times has been slow to jump on some major stories, notably the campaign-finance scandals in Washington (where the Washington Post's Bob Woodward has had some big scoops). Concedes Lelyveld: "We were too slow off the mark." Its big, serioso reporting projects are sometimes lumbering: a seven-part series in March of 1996 on middle-class people who had been downsized out of a job was vivid and affecting but late; it came out just as economic statistics were highlighting job growth...
Times writing can still be fusty and stilted, with a prim overreliance on the adjective clear. ("Term limits have been successful at bringing new faces into politics. Less clear is whether they're making any practical difference.") And when the paper tries to get hip, the results can be just clumsy. A self-consciously trendy Sunday styles section, launched in 1992, was an embarrassing flop. (It will be relaunched later this year, with a stress on service pieces and fashion...
...weaknesses arise from the paper's strengths. No group of journalists can be handed the kind of power the Times' reporters have without feeling just a little bit of the weight on their backs. "If you work here and look around at the rest of the profession," says Howell Raines, who runs the paper's feisty editorial page, "you realize that if this place disappeared, it would not be reinvented. That imparts a sense of stewardship." The upside of this sense of mission is that it makes the paper careful in its judgments, scrupulous about corrections, conscious that its words...
...institution is not as intimidating as it once was. The Times' most important editor of modern times, A.M. Rosenthal, ran the paper from 1969 to 1986 and did much to strip the place of cobwebs, break down its seniority system and open the way to more stylish writing. In later years, however, his reign became autocratic and oppressive--creating a now legendary "climate of fear" that the newspaper is still trying to shake off. Rosenthal's successor as executive editor, Max Frankel, tried diligently to lighten the mood and loosen up the front page, with more life-style and culture...
...wife and adopted son for a British journalist who was pregnant with his child), Keller has received a good initial reception in the newsroom. His chief competition to succeed Lelyveld when he retires in five years is Raines, 54. A gregarious Southerner who has brought new punch to the paper's often bland editorial page, Raines could bring some welcome flair and aggressiveness to the paper's journalism...