Jay Rosen has a great fisking of a NYTimes' story on Bush campaign strategy.

Sample:

Among cases submitted for explanation I would try to have placed this morning's lead story in the New York Times. According to the editors, the most important thing for me, a Times subscriber, to know about today, in a world exploding with reality, is: "90-Day Media Strategy by Bush's Aides to Define Kerry." By Jim Rutenberg, writing out of Washington, March 19. (His beat is the media angle on the campaign.) Some prose from it:

The aides said the strategy was planned weeks ago in coordination with Karl Rove, Mr. Bush's chief political aide, while Mr. Kerry was battling for his party's nomination.

Wow. Weeks ago this thing was planned. Must be pretty carefully thought out.

Go read the rest. The Rutenberg piece struck me when I saw it as pretty cheesy when I first saw it. It looks worse now. The Times is clearly on the skids. I'm assembling my own news media from blogs that I admire. Commentators like Rosen, Kaus, Welch, Tim Blair and more I can't think of immediately don't need editors. They're great writers and reporters. They see the key facts buried in stories, and they write with flair and perspicacity. Who'd want to go back to the biassed blather that fills the mainstream media.