This week’s Onion feature is probably already true: “‘Most E-Mailed’ List Tearing New York Times’ Newsroom Apart.” It’s about how the fluffiest features on love and pets are far more popular than the hardest news stories, which is a bit duh.
Last year, Eat the Press did some fantastic, over-the-top coverage of when one NYT story about marriage and killer whales was #1 on the most-emailed list for several weeks. Which led to this quote from Jack Shafer of Slate:
The Shamu story establishes once and for all that men are the new women. You can now use the New York Times to write the most dehumanizing and insulting shit about them and everybody will laugh in recognition.
I applaud this new cultural switch. Please excuse me while I go shopping for handbags.
I love that even at The New York Times, an incredibly self-important newspaper, it’s romance, sex and doggies* that readers really respond to.
*Not necessarily at the same time.