GREY LADY DOWN

The Daily Howler has been trashing the New York Times relentlessly (mainly for its softball White House coverage), and now it has an unexpected ally:

"Ten months after Howell Raines' forced exit as top editor of The New York Times, he's turned a blow-torch on the paper he professes to love and its publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr.

"In a 23-page cover story in The Atlantic Monthly, Raines indicts The Times for lethargy in its ranks and resistance to change, concluding the paper 'badly needs to raise the level of its journalism.' "

Of course the only thing worse than the Times's mediocrity is its solipsistic neurosis about its mediocrity; this should send the navel-gazing into overdrive. Hope they do something soon. I stopped reading somewhere around the Jayson Blair episode.