PressEthic

On Sunday, September 18th, newspaper readers throughout America picked up a blue package on their lawns (or stoops, or houseboat docks, or apartment hallways) that was slightly heavier than the one they brought in a week before. Most New York Times subscribers wouldn't even know there was a difference, until they opened up the Times Magazine and found a new section staring back at them: "The Funny Pages."

In the introduction to the section, which will include one "graphic novel" (cough, comic, cough), one serialization of a fictional work, and one David Sedaris-like first person humorous story, the Times wrote: "It should go without saying that the central mission of the New York Times Magazine continues to be its journalism (both frothy and unfrothy). But with the debut of this section, we hope to be able to engage our readers in some ways we haven't yet tried - and to acknowledge that it takes many different types of writing to tell the story of our time."

So, for the record, the paper of record believes "the story of our time" includes both the makings of a great chief justice and how yoga in Tennessee differs from yoga in India.

What the new section in the Times lays bare (in addition to the desire to compete with magazines such as McSweeney's and the NPR segment, "This American Life") is that journalism is a lot bigger than the pegs its critics try to squash it into. Are first person tales journalism if they describe "the story of our times?" Maybe. Maybe not. But no one's ever claimed that anything less than My Lai is drivel.

The existence of journalism beyond front-page news and politics is the great elephant in the room in media criticism. The "trivial" – in which I include sports, food, arts, culture, and the new "Funny Pages" – can mean as much, and tell as important a story, to the reader as the political spin du jour. The journalism of the trivial cuts through the pretense of manufactured press events, ingeniously titled citizens' groups and creative budget accounting of modern government and politics.

Princeton professor Harry G. Frankfurt recently released a book that investigated the very trend that the Times "Funny Pages" does weekly, albeit in a different form. The work? "On Bullshit."