New New York Times Boss, Same as the Old New York Times Boss

Weinergate and Sarah Palin have dominated this space the last couple of days, but another story with major media implications is that Jill Abramson will replace Bill Keller as the New York Times executive editor beginning September 6th. The headlines have been boasting that Abramson is the Times‘ first female boss since the paper’s inception, but this shake-up is hardly progressive: Abramson was raised in New York, is Harvard educated, has little new media expertise (if any), and has a long history of liberal bias in her reports. She’s a daughter of the old, biased, liberal MSM.

The Wall Street Journal’s James Taranto was quick to point out this incredible excerpt from the NYT article announcing the change:

Ms. Abramson said that as a born-and-raised New Yorker, she considered being named editor of The Times to be like “ascending to Valhalla.”

“In my house growing up, The Times substituted for religion,” she said. “If The Times said it, it was the absolute truth.“

Scary.

Taranto then goes on to demonstrate that Abramson has a history of “trying to tear down” the Times‘ competitors, most notably Fox News.

Newsbusters, which has documented dozens of examples of liberal bias in Abramson’s past, focused a post on Abramson’s support of Anita Hill, the one-time Clarence Thomas colleague who bears major responsibility for the fiasco that was Thomas’s SCOTUS confirmation hearings.

This promotion by the Times seems to be logical based on her journalistic pedigree and internal company politics (i.e. her dues have been paid), but swapping out one old-school liberal for another is an affront to those who criticize the Times for their bias and does nothing to suggest the Grey Lady intends to get ahead of (caught up to?) the new media revolution. The fact that she happens to be a woman is hardly the bold statement the ideological totalitarians in the mainstream media would like to think it is.

The fact that she’s an “old media” liberal is much more revealing.