The New York Times today runs on the front of its metro section a dispatch from a truck stop at Manadahill, Pa. The truck stop is, the article says, "about 160 miles southwest of Manhattan." Then what, you might wonder, is the story doing in the "metro" section of the New York Times? Is New York City so boring that the Times reporters and editors can't come up with enough good story ideas about it to fill the front of the metro section? Never mind New York City; can the Times also not find any stories worth reporting in the tri-state area of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut? The story rightfully belongs in the national section, but maybe the editors there were reluctant to take it; after all, a story from a truck stop just ran in the Times national section on January 12. That story, by a different reporter, was datelined Grantville, Pa., which turns out to be just the next town over from Manadahill. How much appetite Times readers have for reportage from truck stops in a small area of Pennsylvania is anyone's guess.
Negotiable: A front-page article in today's New York Times reports on a drop in rents for Manhattan apartments. In Manhattan, "landlords have become negotiable, lowering rents in individual deals," the article says. As for Brooklyn, "Only in the high-rent parts of Brooklyn Heights are landlords slightly more negotiable these days," the article reports. This use of the word "negotiable" doesn't fit any of the dictionary definitions. The Times means to say that the landlords have become more willing to negotiate.
Emerson: A front-page article on "Holy Warriors" in today's New York Times again refers to "Steven Emerson, an American expert on Islamic terrorism." Which again raises the question: If Mr. Emerson is simply "an American expert on Islamic terrorism," why did the Times refer to him so dismissively in an October 26, 2000, article on ties between the Hillary Clinton campaign and American supporters of Islamic terrorist groups? That article referred to "Steven Emerson, who identified himself as a freelance journalist preparing a magazine article on terrorism; he became well known when he initially strongly suggested that the Oklahoma City bombing was the work of Arab terrorists."
Clarification: Yesterday's edition of Smartertimes.com referred to an item in the December 26, 2000, New York Times about Mayor Giuliani's support for a pardon of Michael Milken. The item appeared in the metro section gossip column, which Smartertimes.com noted does not appear in editions of the Times distributed outside the New York region. The New York Times has since notified Smartertimes.com that the Milken-Giuliani item in fact did appear in the paper's national, New England and Washington editions as part of the "New York Digest" that runs in those copies.