Paper of Broken Record
13th February 2013
Russ Smith hates on the New York Times.
Just as a decreasing number of Americans still have the jingle “Winston tastes good like a cigarette should” etched in a corner of their minds, some people still claim—in all seriousness—that The New York Times is the “paper of record.” It’s fairly beyond dispute that the percentage of media consumers under the age of 30 don’t cling to that opinion about the Times, let alone even recognize the famous motto pushed by the paper, and so, inevitably, one day it’ll die out. Probably not in my lifetime, for even as the Times, like other print dailies, slides into niche-status—not unlike vinyl recordings—steadfast loyalists will warble, “If it’s in the Times, it must be true.”
February 17th, 2013 at 17:20
They’re still a paper, and there’s still a record, they’re just using the wrong preposition. It’s not the Paper of Record anymore, it’s the Paper With a Record now.