My daily lunchtime feast consists of two equally-important elements: a turkey sandwich and The New York Times.
As last week’s Daily column exposed, I am unequivocally drawn to celebrity and so it should be no surprised that my bookmark takes me directly to the “Most Popular” page. (Yes, I read the paper online. I am not particularly proud of this fact, as, with the possible exception of the National Enquirer, I think print journalism is incredibly important and I will be greatly saddened if my children grow up as unfamiliar with newspapers as I am with records or LPs or whatever those black shiny discs are called. However, given that I have roughly twenty minutes per day to rifle through it, I cannot justify the wasted newsprint or the financial investment).
Speaking of finances, my principles vis a vis the Internet have kept me from subscribing to the Select service; I refuse to pay for anything Internet-related other than my Comcast high-speed connection (my one-month JDate trial subscription was a necessary research expense). It is, however, extremely frustrating not to be able to read Maureen Dowd and Stanley Fish and every other intriguingly-titled Op-Ed column. As far as I can tell, it is only the Op-Ed pieces that are on Times Select. I’d like to believe this indicates that I have chosen a highly-valued profession to aspire to, but I think it’s more likely that I’m taking a skewed sample - I spend 95% of my time on the Most Popular, Op-Ed, and Education pages. Obviously, no one cares about the latter (or rather, those of us educators that do, don’t have the money).
Although I read the Times faithfully and find many articles interesting (ie, yesterday’s piece about the Newberry-award-winning children’s book that contains the controversial word “scrotum or last week’s piece about the wine thief in Atherton), I try not to name-drop. “I read this article in The New York Times the other day”, “According to The New York Times“, “The Times says”. Even onscreen it looks pretty obnoxious to me, like friend who mentions her wonderful boyfriend every five seconds, if only to say his name one more time.
Come to think of it, that last metaphor is quite appropriate. The Times as my significant other, the ever-interesting source of enjoyment I look forward to seeing at least once a day… I think I’ve found my soul-mate.