Times City Section Cuts Reader Views

As if the City Section of the New York Times was not a small enough sop to readers looking for coverage of New York City issues, the Gray Lady is diminishing, and maybe cutting off altogether, even just the opportunity for Bronxites and other New Yorkers to write letters to the editor or opinion pieces for the section. In “A Note to Readers” last Sunday, the editors wrote that editorials and Op-Ed articles “that have been appearing on this page will no longer be published in this section. Letters will appear elsewhere in this section.” We are not told, however, where the editorials and op-eds will be published, if not in the section itself.

We called the number the Times provided and the person who answered the phone said that editorials and opinion pieces would be published occasionally depending on “interest.” Letters would be treated the same way, she said, even though the editor’s note implied they’d be published regularly elsewhere in the section.

Those who have lived in the Bronx a while might remember the struggle to simply get the City section delivered to Bronx homes instead of, or in addition to, the Westchester section. That took a letter writing campaign.

Maybe another letter-writing campaign is necessary to demonstrate to the Times that actually having an opinion about New York City issues and letting New Yorkers write back to offer their own views on important policy issues, is what a newspaper – particularly a section supposedly oriented toward communities – is all about.

--Jordan Moss and Dart Westphal