nyt vs. wp

Jay Rosen says the Washington Post has eclipsed the Times as “our great national newspaper.” I don’t see it. Sure, you can fault the Times for this issue and that. Jay devotes 22 of the paragraphs in his post to the whole Judy Miller affair. That strikes me as a narrow perspective from which to judge the whole paper. And really, I think the Times is the paper it is because of the breadth of its coverage: its unparalled science section, its international coverage, the book review, the depth of its national coverage, the arts and theater section, etc. The Post does have a excellent Style section, a great media critic, and does a good job of covering Washington. (Of course, neither paper’s sports coverage compares to ours…)

Look at the Washington Post’s most-emailed articles and compare them to the Times’. There’s definitely some interesting stories in the Post — hey, I wish I wrote any of them — but I think there’s a clear winner here.

There are other papers that carry stories like the Times’ very interesting ongoing series, “No Way Out,” on prisoners serving life sentences mostly for crimes other than murder. But the Times has journalism like that way more often, in this writer’s humble opinion.

And where but the Times would you read a story like this, comparing how “Batman Begins” and “Revenge of the Sith” treat themes of good versus evil and the question of whether or not to behead one’s enemy?