Diary – 28 June 2008

I’m just back from New York, where I met friends from the New York Times. Their morale, they said, was low. This is a typical complaint of journalists everywhere; for not only are they seldom content with their lot but, more than people in any other trade, they love to analyse and expound upon their collective state of mind. But those at the New York Times do have reason for feeling a little glum. Circulation has been falling, advertising revenue is down, and the management recently made some 140 journalists redundant. It’s the same sort of story on most newspapers, but the Times used to seem so mighty and impregnable that its present difficulties feel particularly ominous. Its editor, Bill Keller, told me that retrenchment was now complete and there would be no more editorial redundancies. But it takes more than that to cheer journalists up when they have decided to feel gloomy.