Crease in back cover Tear in book jacket spine Edwin Diamond Villard Books, 1994 - New York times - 437 pages Behind the Times offers an incisive examination of the present uncertain state of the New York Times - long regarded as the world's most respected paper - and of the "reader friendly" revolution it has haltingly attempted over the past twenty years. Edwin Diamond tells a story of changing "Timesian values" (as they are dryly called in the newsroom) and of the editorial struggles, the star columnists and critics, the institutional self-importance - and the political and cultural favorites of the Times' owners and editors. Diamond goes behind the scenes to recount the Times' by-the-numbers business plan to win new audiences and hold on to its dominant economic position in the new media landscape of celebrity journalism and hundred-channel television. Behind the Times takes the reader inside the Times' news-gathering process and into the executive offices of this national agenda setter. It also presents a telling appraisal of how the Times and its editors have shaped coverage of major public events for over one million readers since the 1970s. No one is better situated than New York magazine media columnist and New York University journalism professor Edwin Diamond to dig out and analyze the contradictory facts about the modern Times. With his unblinking eye for the texts and subtexts of the news and his meticulous attention to detail, Diamond explores the Times' effort to position itself at the ideological center. He offers stories of the Times' reviews of politics and the politics of its reviews - book, theater, film, dance, music, and art. He describes as well how the Times has come to look and read the way it does and discusses the tectonic shift in Times coverage after Arthur O.("Punch") Sulzberger was succeeded by his son, Arthur, Jr., who brings to the newsroom a New Age commitment to diversity and Downtown Chic. Behind the Times explains: why the 1980s activists who complained of the Times' "homophobia" and failure to cover the AIDS epidemic adequately are now praising the "lavender revolution" at the paper; how the Times "settled" the Tawana Brawley and Father Bruce Ritter scandals; why it's easier to find a copy of the New York Times in Palo Alto, California, than in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn; how the Times' editorial and news columns "loosened up" to make way for Anna Quindlen, Maureen Dowd, and Garry Trudeau; how you can increase your chances of being published on the Op-Ed page by following six rules offered by a top Times editor; the convoluted story the Times was really trying to tell when it named the woman in the Palm Beach rape case; and why the curtain was dramatically rung down on the Times' dynamic theatrical duo known on and off Broadway as Frank the Knife and Lady Macbeth.