PressEthic

Thursday’s New York Times contained what seemed to be a serious examination of “diet doctors” who directly sell untested, and potentially unsafe, diet pills to their weight-conscious patients. At least that’s what I thought.

That’s when I realized it was in the Fashion & Style section, under the headline “A Guide to Weight-Loss Drugs.” Fashion & Style, as in “pink is the new black and diet doctors are the new size 0.”

I didn’t see the print edition, but I’m sure not far away from the article was some Neiman-Marcus ad featuring a 95-pound waif whose stomach hasn’t seen a hamburger since she was 15.

With TimesSelect, The New York Times is turning readers away from some of their best work - unless, that is, those readers have their credit cards handy.

Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes make more money than you. But if you write about them, you might catch up.

Newsrooms and advertising departments are blurring together, and in all the wrong ways.

Anonymous sources get a lot of play in the news, but journalists' ability to use them doesn't equal a carte blanche. Sometimes it's just not necessary, and sometimes it's just not worth the grief.

Passionate reporting like that seen during Hurricane Katrina could be the death of journalism. Or, it could be its savior.