When it comes to the New York Times, apparently the people writing for the main paper view themselves as filters that shield us little people from too much detail. Compare and contrast the coverage of Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison's endorsement of Barack Obama in the their politics blog "The Caucus":
Her decision, she continued, is rooted in the prospect of finding a prescient leader. (In addition to keen intelligence, integrity and a rare authenticity, you exhibit something that has nothing to do with age, experience, race or gender and something I dont see in other candidates. That something is a creative imagination which, coupled with brilliance, equals wisdom, she wrote.)
versus the throw-away line buried in an article on Ted Kennedy's endorsement in the main paper (I saw this in the print edition):
Mr. Obama also was endorsed by the author Toni Morrison, who once described Mr. Clinton as Americas first black president. Ms. Morrison praised Mrs. Clinton but said she was supporting Mr. Obama because of his wisdom.
Does this mean that people that don't read blogs are stupid and need to have the New York Times safely summarize things for us? This comes from the paper that spends most of its column space talking about the election as a horse race / war between the candidates.
I should point out that I noticed this difference today because the Newsday article on the subject gave me the full quote.
Bob Chance
Nice catch, but perhaps it also has to do with that fact that there's a physical limit to the space available on the paper edition?
The paper edition's statement you quoted is quite a bit shorter than the blog version (almost half the length).
Barry
Hi, Bob. Newsday managed to give an African-American Nobel Prize winner more than a single word, so I thought the New York Times probably should have too.