Raines Blasts Times

The Guardian reports that the forthcoming edition of the Atlantic includes an article by Howell Raines lambasting the New York Times. The Times’ former editor writes that the newspaper is on a “glide path toward irrelevance”:

I felt on the day I became executive editor and on the day I drove away from West Forty-third Street for the last time that the Times badly needs to raise the level of its journalism and to do so quickly in order to survive.

Raines says the Times newsroom is marked by “lethargy and smug complaceny,” and that two cultures exist side by side: one of achievement and, in the Guardian’s words, “one of complaint, the latter stirred by people who were allowed to fester in an environment where no one is ever sacked.”
We’ve thought for a long time that the Times is on a glide path toward irrelevance, but it is a bit shocking to learn that the paper’s former editor in chief agrees.
Courtesy of Tim Blair.

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