An arts section piece on Columbia University's new business school buildings includes this sentence: "Glenn Hubbard, the former business school dean who brought the project to fruition, saw the need to break free from fealty to the unregulated free market economy that over decades has led to extraordinary wealth concentration."

In the latest development in the Ochs-Sulzberger family's ongoing campaign against nepotism, an opinion column in today's New York Times declares Clarence and Virginia Thomas as the "most egregious Nepo couple." Nepo is short for nepotism. This is really something—a newspaper whose publisher is a fifth-generation member of the family whose trust controls it, denouncing for nepotism, of all people, Clarence Thomas—who lived as a child in a one-room shack in Pin Point, Georgia, with a dirt floor and no plumbing.

From the 2022 New York Times Company proxy statement:

On Thursday, New York Times unionized newsroom employees walked off the job. One feature of the rally in support of their contract demands was participation of the broader labor movement. A representative of the Communications Workers of America proclaimed from the rally stage: "Workers are fed up with corporate greed. The labor movement stands with you. We're all in this together." The president of the New York State AFL-CIO, Mario Cilento, said, "We are a family. The labor movement is family." Representatives of Workers United, representing "newly organized Amazon and Starbucks workers," were at the rally and recognized for their support.

Lo and behold, the Sunday New York Times features two long news articles cheerleading labor organizing campaigns at Starbucks and among food delivery workers in New York City.

A front-page Sunday New York Times article carries the online headline "Cigars, Booze, Money: How a Lobbying Blitz Made Sports Betting Ubiquitous." A sidebar summarizes "Key Findings from The Times' Investigation of Sports Betting."

The investigative journalist explanation that this is all the fault of business buying off politicians breaks down when you realize that people were betting on sports before it became legal, and also that the New York Times has also gotten deep into the business of promoting sports betting, with regular articles such as this one, in the sports section of the same paper that carries the investigation:

The New York Times has become increasingly strident about labeling as a "lie" false claims about the 2020 election. A front page news article on Saturday, for example, reporting on the victory of a Democratic Senate candidate in Arizona, described the Republican candidate as "a venture capitalist and political newcomer who embraced former President Donald J. Trump's lie that the 2020 election was stolen."

The problem with the "lie" label is that the Times applies it so selectively that it makes the paper appear partisan rather than independent. Contrast it with a Times news article, also in Saturday's print newspaper, reporting that "More than a dozen protesters, including scientists, were arrested on Thursday at private airports in the United States, coinciding with similar actions around the world to highlight the toll of private jets on the environment, activists said."

The Times article concludes with this paragraph:

There's no mistaking which side the New York Times is on in tomorrow's election.

On page A2, under the headline "The Consequences of the Midterms," is a question-and-answer-style interview with Astead Herndon, "a Times national reporter." He explains, "If the U.S. elects lawmakers who spread conspiracy theories and who promise to tear down tenets of democracy, that will embolden autocratic leaders in other countries and weaken the United States' standing in the world."

A New York Times dispatch from London about the end of a five-week strike by criminal defense lawyers manages to go on for 18 paragraphs without saying how much money the lawyers make. We read that the government's offer "raises legal aid payments by 15 percent" and "fell short of the lawyers' demand for a 25 percent raise in legal aid fees." We hear that "some lawyers say criminal defense work remains financially tenuous, leading many barristers to quit for more lucrative practices in commercial or family law." But the percents alone aren't much use without numbers about the base.

The Financial Times does a little better, reporting that the barristers "are self-employed and ... can earn as little as £12,200 in their first three years of work."

A wine column in the New York Times, pegged to the death of Fred Franzia, is headlined "Two-Buck Chuck: Wine of the People or a Cultural Wedge?" The article assesses the Charles Shaw wines sold by Trader Joe's. Wine columnist Eric Asimov writes, "I remember the wine as uninteresting, but I last drank it more than a decade ago. I wanted to try it again, but the line of Charles Shaw wines, which includes numerous variations beyond the original red blend, is sold only at Trader Joe's. The sole Trader Joe's wine shop in New York shut down last month, so I was out of luck."

This is unbelievably lame coming from what purports to be a global news organization, and from a wine columnist who regularly visits Europe. Is it too much work for Asimov to travel to the Trader Joe's in Westfield, New Jersey, to pick up a bottle? Or would it be too difficult for one of the New York Times' many domestic news bureaus to ask a clerk to go fetch a bottle and deliver it to Asimov?

The Algemeiner has published a couple of columns I wrote about the New York Times coverage of the Jewish day schools known as yeshivas. If you are interested in that topic, please check them out:

•Long-Hyped New York Times Investigation of Hasidic Yeshivas Fizzles

•New York Times Ups Attack on Hasidic Jews, Publishing Editorial Riddled With Contradictions and Contempt

Today's New York Times features an advice column by a flight attendant responding to reader queries. To the question "I'm terrified to fly since I lost friends on the planes of Sept. 11. Turbulence and the sketchy behavior of other passengers doesn't help. What would you suggest to calm my nerves?" the Times publishes a response that concludes, "A glass of wine may help, too, to help you relax and enjoy the flight."

No suggestion that the reader consult a mental health professional for help with the anxiety issues. Why bother when you can self-medicate with a drink?

It's possible the advice will be harmless for a portion of people, but for plenty of other people, drinking in response to anxiety can make the problem worse and lead to alcoholism. Basically, it's bad advice, and some editor at the Times should have caught it and cut it.

Under the headline "Why It's So Hard to Find an Affordable Apartment in New York," the New York Times mainly lays the blame on, of all people, Mayor Bloomberg. "Between 2003 and 2007, the Bloomberg administration rezoned nearly one-fifth of the city, according to a 2010 study by the New York University Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy. But nearly 90 percent of the lots analyzed in the study had their capacity reduced or only modestly increased," the Times writes. Strangely, the Times doesn't say what happened to the other ten percent of the lots, or break down, in the 90 percent, what portion had their capacity reduced and what portion had their capacity increased. Nor does the Times much grapple with the problem that it could also be hard to find an "affordable" apartment in New York even back in the 2003 to 2007 period, before the Bloomberg-era rezoning on which the Times blames the problem.

An article in the business section of the New York Times about a settlement with the Justice Department by a unit of Berkshire Hathaway includes this paragraph: "Reached by phone, Debbie Bosanek, assistant to Warren E. Buffett, Berkshire's owner, said: 'There's no one here available for interviews.'"

Buffett is the CEO and Chairman of Berkshire Hathaway and a significant shareholder. But Berkshire is a publicly traded company, so it overstates it past the point of inaccuracy for the Times to write it they way they did. It's worth correcting: "CEO and chairman is Warren Bufett's title at Berkshire Hathaway, which is a publicly traded company in which Buffett is a significant shareholder. A business section article incorrectly characterized him as the 'owner.'"

In a Bret Stephens-Gail Collins "The Conversation" column, discussing possible Democratic alternatives to Joe Biden in 2024, comes this passage:

Gail:...Along with the rest of the world, I don't think there's much to be said for Kamala Harris. You?

Bret: She's ... a Democratic version of Dan Quayle. I'm also not too keen on California's Gavin Newsom...

From the "I'm also not too keen on," I gather that Stephens considers "a Democratic version of Dan Quayle" to be somehow disparaging. But "a Democratic version of Dan Quayle" could also be read as, well, as the promotional copy for the 1992 book by David Broder and Bob Woodward put it, "possesses much more savvy than his many detractors are willing to admit."

I'm not a Kamala Harris fan either, but Quayle was underestimated. He gave Mike Pence some good advice during the crisis at the end of the Trump administration, and he's always been solid, a leader even, on the missile defense issue. He had good staff in Bill Kristol. Quayle deserves better treatment than this cheap shot!

"How to Follow the News Without Spiraling into Despair" is the headline over a New York Times article advising readers that following the news "can become overwhelming" and that "it's understandable to feel sad, angry and anxious."

It's the timing of these sorts of articles that is always a giveaway of what Times editors are thinking (or of what they think their readers are thinking). With the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade, reinforcing the right to bear arms, and issuing a couple of rulings protecting the free exercise of religion, and with polls and projections showing Republicans poised to take control of at least the House of Representatives in November's election, at least some conservatives are not "sad" or in "despair," but happy.

A news article linked from the NYTimes.com home page carries the headline: "Some Surprising Good News: Bookstores Are Booming and Becoming More Diverse."

The diversity the Times is talking about is racial diversity ("many of the new stores that opened during the pandemic are run by nonwhite booksellers"), not ideological or viewpoint diversity, which could partly explain why the Times drops the convention of journalistic neutrality and opens the headline with instructing readers that this is "Good News." On other topics the Times mostly at least attempts to pretend simply to deliver the news and defer to the readers to decide for themselves whether the news is good or bad. We don't see, for example, "Some Surprising Bad News: A Mass Shooting at a July 4 Parade."