'Ferocious Kind of Love' Behind Times-Bashing

It seems these days everyone’s got a beef with the New York Times these days, so Vanity Fair set out to find out why, asking a panel of experts their thoughts. Simple envy is the primary culprit, some say; others cite "a ferocious kind of love"; the paper's "holier-than-thou" stance, even as it's in decline, also proved irksome.

“Once, it mattered. Once, it set an agenda,” Vanity Fair's Michael Wolff says of the Times. Now? “They don’t do anything right.” Conservative Jonah Goldberg thinks the Gray Lady fell out of favor with the left because of mistakes leading up to the Iraq war. But anyone who thinks it's is a bad paper ought to "soak their heads,” says Slate's Jack Shafer, a frequent detractor. “What newspaper do they think does a better job?” (More media criticism stories.)