NYT, March 2&3

[I am going to start posting these more regularly through the week, hopefully daily soon. Here is this weeks Monday and Tuesday]

Monday, March 2
I’ve been skimming the sports and arts sections, enjoying those before going through the A section. So the lasting impression from my read today was of the “first family” of Rhode Island basketball—the tough-as-nails father/ coach; the sensitive, balancing mother/ artist; and the privileged son who lives like he wasn’t/ b-ball team standout. But maybe it wasn’t so much the family that left an impression, but the perspective that the author invented to get his angle. The information was very clearly spun to get the desired result, or rather forced into a dramtic mold. Almost like there was a 3 way standard paradigm that the family members needed to fit into, but didn’t. It almost involved doublespeak when the author tried to imbed the angle with the facts, or the facts with the angle. I feel bad picking apart the story because it would sound like criticism of the newsmakers.
Other thing that stood out was the first page ad for “a late night stimulus package.” I think the term “stimulus” is taking on a new meaning and significance that will last longer than news coverage of the specific Obama package. I am only starting to realize how far the current events term is being appropriated culturally.


Tuesday, March 3
The centerpiece for section B, on allegedly corrupt pharmaceutical practices, did what news reports do rarely—it shocked me. Not because of the shady bonds between industry, some doctors and some med schools that have been in the news (Rolling Stone published a story on Eli Lilly and docs last issue, for instance), but because Harvard, often ranked first among med schools, received a failing grade for oversight over faculty/ private interest relationships, while most of the immediate competition got A’s/B’s. Not quite enough to make one adopt a Tolstoy stance to medicine, but enough to raise serious concern. If it came out that the pope was using papal priviledges to have secret liaisons in the open, hidden by the perceived dignity of his position, it would be an offense of similar quality… though perhaps different magnitiude.
A nice story to bridge to—the Art’s section review of Philip Herrewegh’s conducting of Bach’s B Minor Mass. Finding extreme clarity in the performance, the reviewer wondered if Herrewegh’s medical training led him to prepare the performance by sitting down with the score the way a psychiatrist sits down with a patient.