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TIMES_AGAINST_DARKNESS

                                             August 17, 2003
                                             March  18, 2009
 After the 2003 blackout, I took a look      April  13, 2009
 at the photo essay they had up on the
 New York Times web site.                 BLACKOUT_2003


 One thing that was immediately
 striking: these photos almost all
 suck.  It makes me sorry I wasn't
 trooping around with a camera,
 because there was an astounding
 photographic subject shoved in my
 face every few minutes.  How could
 they get such uniformly boring
 photos?

 Maybe what they're doing is trying to be
 dull because they think of what they're
 doing as documentary photography, just
 recording what's happening?  You might
 regard *trying* to take good photos as
 cheating, walking near falsifying the
 event.

 Or maybe they wanted to be reassuring?
 The party line from the New York media is
 "New Yorkers can be proud".  Boring is
 ordinary is "no big deal": nothing to
 worry about.

 Then I looked at their "the lights come
 on" photo series, and they just scream
 happy ending.  Brighter colors than a
 coke commercial.  Maybe brighter than
 the new issue of Iron-Man I was just
 looking at.  These guys have no problems
 with pushing an angle when they feel
 like it.


     Then in retrospect, looking back at their
     blackout photos, I realize that one of the
     things missing was shots of people having               Dec 15, 2009
     fun.  Everyone *loves* blackouts (except
     maybe for people, say, stuck down in a         Rebecca Solnit has
     subway for hours...).  When I was walking      written a book,
     around that night, I saw lots of people        expanding on this
     having parties in candle-lit bars, hanging     sort of observation:
     out in groups on the street, and so on.
     You saw some people looking grim or tired,            "A Paradise Built
     but lots of people were enjoying their                in Hell: The
     little adventures.                                    Extraordinary
                                                           Communities
                                                           That Arise in
                                                           Disaster" (2009)
So, the *New York Times* did a weak
job of covering the 2003 black-out
in New York.

This might seem a small thing to complain
about-- a lame photo essay or a local
event-- but think about that for a minute.

They have a batallion of photographers at
their disposal, they're located right in
Manhatten...  They're readership can be
presumed to care *something* about local
news in Manhatten.

Usually, when I stumble across this
sort of media suckage I tend to assume
the worst, and look for some sort of
active malfeasence, but there doesn't
seem to be any plausible angle like that
here.

How is such incompetence possible?

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