I love my wife. Even if she forgets Father’s Day and has never given me a Valentine, she is consistently supportive and loving and is still the apple of my eye after lo these many years. Also I admire her as an editor and journalist and have watched her ever-ascending career with growing amazement and pride. 

So yeah, I’m biased. But so is the New York Times. She was disappointed with Friday’s piece on Reader’s Digest (which just named her Global Editor-in-Chief) where the big takeaway was that the magazine was moving to the right. Which would be fine if it were true. But the real story — presented to the reporter who then chose to ignore it — was that the company, while moving to a digital strategy, had tested some conservative editorial only to find that its readers did not want that and that the values they looked for in the magazine were politically neutral: service, faith, family, humor. 

The problem with the Times — and the media outlets and blogosphere that picked up on the story — is that it doesn’t seem to believe those qualities are neutral but rather sees them as code for conservatism. (News flash: Obama won in part because of his adherence to and espousal of those values, not because of his allegiance to the orthodox left.) The fact that there might be a readership that goes to church and yet is tolerant, or that supports the military and yet is opposed to war, seemed too much for the paper of record to accept.

But the bias really showed in the story’s choice of detail. CEO Mary Berner was tweaked for espousing core community concerns and shunning Manhattan parochialism yet going to work in a limo and wearing Manolo Blahniks. (I guess the reporter wanted her riding the bus in sensible shoes.) And while my wife was spared the same kind of lampooning, the story also failed to mention that Reader’s Digest just won a National Magazine Award for General Excellence — a first in its history, and the business’s equivalent of a Best Picture Oscar  — after a year of her oversight.

Throughout the article seemed to be insinuate that the women in charge were guilty of some kind of cynicism — wearing fashionable clothes when addressing Middle America, courting conservatives while voting Democratic — while it seems to me that it is the Times that is cynical, or certainly out of touch. I can remember when Reader’s Digest really was a conservative rag: When I was in high school I went to a Vietnam war debate armed with copies of Ramparts while my opponent had a stack of Reader’s Digests to bolster his argument. But that same magazine was the first major news organization to link cigarette smoking to lung cancer. I would think even a young NYT reporter would know that: It was practically a plot line during the first season of Mad Men! And I know everyone in New York watches that show.