Editor Raines, an Alabama native, seemed bent on making the South over in his own image. The Times, in his heyday, was always good for a story or editorial on the scandal of displaying the Confederate flag. Another Raines obsession: the Augusta National Golf Club's unwillingness to let women join. Golly darn! Isn't that just too awful for words? The Times think so. Evidently, the rest of us should, also.
The general -- I didn't say universal -- liberalism of American journalism stems in part from professional interest in whatever is new and in part from the tide of skeptical, post-Watergate baby boomers that flooded newsrooms starting in the '70s. A third factor is the prestige of those publications -- e.g., The New York Times -- that seem to render smug liberalism as normal as bottled water.
No fair. I try to sell my university journalism students on a quaint notion -- that ideology should be barred sternly from news columns. I have a saying: As reporters, we're the readers' eyes and ears; we're not their brains.
The New York Times of Howell Raines and Jayson Blair would differ with that judgment. That Times, to the extent it remains intact and emotionally unencumbered, indeed deems itself our brains' trust. It knows what we need to know.
Except that it doesn't, really. Its wising up, so long needed, could be decades away. At least now the wising up has begun.