Jeffrey McManus

Link: Talk to the Newsroom — The New York Times

Q. Having grown up on the west coast, and having read the NYT for years, I’ve noticed that the Times and several other large east coast papers occasionally run stories that treat life in the west as a kind of foreign novelty, with vast untamed and uncivilized lands. Why is rural life in the west given such prominent treatment (A section, Sunday Times, etc), when rural life in the east coast is seldom treated?

– Danica Willard

A. For decades, our West Coast reporters have been accused of treating the west like an exotic, odd place. Even our correspondents who were born and raised out there are accused of not understanding the west….But let’s also remember that California IS different from the East Coast; that’s what makes it so intriguing. And remember that most of our readers do not live in California, so it’s important that when we write about the West Coast, we give proper background and context to readers who have never experienced Surf City.

We deserve a somewhat more satisfying and less defensive explanation from the paper’s Assistant Managing Editor. It’s not his job to defend this practice. Using his reasoning it should be okay for Times writers to refer to the residents of foreign countries using quaint euphemisms and air quotes. And shame on him for assuming that his readers are not sophisticated enough to understand that the West is "different" from the East Coast.

Suffice it to say that most Times readers haven’t been to, say, Tel Aviv or Beijing either, but if the Times’ writers used the same tone when writing about those places as they do about Los Angeles or Fresno, they’d be locked up.

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