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On local news, the paper has been as aggressive as Chicago's dailies were in the era of The Front Page. When a zoning series last year charged that planning principles were being subordinated to the desires of developers, the paper's unyielding executive editor John McMullan lamented that the articles did not result in indictments. Said he: "We are proud of explanatory journalism, but a couple of convictions is a wonderful way to explain the problem." Yet the Herald is compassionate: Associate Editor Gene Miller has won two Pulitzer Prizes for investigative reporting in murder cases, including one in 1976 that resulted in the freeing of two innocent men convicted of a slaying.
After McMullan retired last July, some observers claimed that the Herald went soft. His powers were divided between Publisher Richard Capen, 49, who favors a less accusatory approach, and Executive Editor Heath Meriwether, 40, who spends much of his time discussing journalistic ethics in columns and at public meetings. Coverage is increasingly featurish; staff members joke that they sometimes produce "Jell-O journalism," with the main point of a story buried beneath paragraphs of scene setting.
The paper's columnists and specialists lag behind the newsroom. The Herald covers business adequately, especially in a weekly section that ranges up to 78 pages, but is uneven in reviewing the arts and undistinguished in writing about lifestyles. Visually it is blocky, and photos are often muddy. Its primary flaw: like many other major dailies, it suggests that being serious precludes having any fun.
The New York Times
Executive Editor A.M. Rosenthal is fond of quoting an observation by Author Theodore White in his The Making of the President 1972 that whenever anyone of consequence from the terrain between Boston and Washington talks to anyone else from that part of the country, each starts with the assumption that the other has read that day's edition of the Times. It is the most complete American newspaper, and it serves to define "all the news" for many of the country's opinion makers by what it deems "fit to print." In international news, science and technology, food and furnishings, above all in culture, the Times laps the field.
Rosenthal, 61, laughs triumphantly when people still refer to the Times as "the gray lady of 43rd Street." Since he took over in 1969, the paper has been steadily reshaped, especially with the introduction of daily theme sections (Sports, Science, Living, Home and, for entertainment, Weekend). The sections have opened the paper to stories far beyond conventional news. Some are obscure; some are refreshing reminders that there are other serious pursuits besides politics. The editorial page has also shifted, under Editor Max Frankel, from fussy, civics-textbook pieties to street-smart candor.