New York Times still is the newspaper of record. They have great news reporting, and ever since their Public Editor writes a column every Sunday, their conflict-of-interest issues have improved. I have been tempted to get a Times select subscription for Nick Kristof’s columns alone.
Easter Lemming Liberal has called for a public boycott of New York Times because of their delays covering the Echelson System/wiretapping stories. Jay Rosen mentions that they had sat on the story for over a year and could have revealed it pre-election.
Sometimes their coverage of Media and Creative content is suspect. For example, in a story about how writers are blogging on Amazon.com, EDWARD WYATT doesn’t mention lulu.com’s blooker awards. Their book reviewers rarely cover DIY books (a result no doubt of the proximity of big publishers in the same city). (Still, I found BYRON CALAME description of the book review selection process to be fascinating).
Yesterday, a feature story about independent filmmakers/writers TheLonelyIsland , the writer DAVE ITZKOFF overlooks what I consider to be the most noteworthy part of the story: that they are licensing their content under creative commons licenses.
See also: my open letter to the New York Times about their coverage of online music services (excuse the comment spam!).
Recently New York Times seems to be the last to hear about techological and cultural trends, and even slashdot/boingboing seems to be falling behind. Digg.com has been outscooping everybody for the last 6 months, and special interest blogs like Eastern Lemming Liberal, Tapped or Oreilly Radar or teleread have been providing depth of coverage in their area of specialty.