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Comedy Central and The New York Times Collide ... and It's a Train Wreck

By Catharine Taylor

Updated on: June 11, 2009 / 10:03 AM EDT / MoneyWatch

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The New York Times must have felt that as another "journalism" outlet that has liberal leanings, "The Daily Show" would be kind when it had its faux reporter Jason Jones stop by the newsroom for a visit (above). That's the only explanation I can come up with for this train wreck, as Jones gleefully skewered everything from the Times' land lines to that oldest of newspaper jokes: "What's black, white and read all over?" Jones asks executive editor Bill Keller. "A newspaper," responds Keller. "No. Your balance sheets!" exclaims Jones.

The clip above isn't up there with previous Times scandals, like serial fabricator Jayson Blair, or the covering of the alleged WMDs in Iraq. No. This is a cataclysm of a different sort, one that paints, with a broad brush, the picture of a news organization that still believes in itself, maybe a bit too much, best exemplified by when Keller compares the Times to "the last ship afloat" as compared with the rest of print journalism -- and Jones responds that the lifeboat is, in fact, made of paper. I'm posting this because when we look back on the missteps of the great institution the Times is, we may find this clip to be the most emblematic of its downfall.

(UPDATE: This tweet just in from Times reporter Jenny8Lee: "how is aged news better than real news? @nytimes plays straight man to jason jones of daily show.")

(UPDATE 2: My BNET Media colleague, David Weir, has a different take on the Comedy Central/New York Times showdown.)