The Times is great at covering New York City and even Washington, DC. It’s excellent as well with most of its international coverage. But anything happening west of the Hudson River or more specifically on the west coast–fuhgeddabowdit! They sometimes just don’t have a clue. To rib them a bit more, here’s a Correction from today’s Style section (not appearing at nytimes.com):
An article last Sunday about transgender lesbians referred incorrectly to Judith Halberstam, a gender theorist and professor of literature whose books include Female Masculinity. She teaches at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles; it has no San Diego campus.
Indeed. As any southern Californian would know. But not apparently, many New York Times reporters.
There’s a category of New York Times article that I call – Report from California: Who Knew? – in which they “discover” things that are old hat on the West Coast, i.e.: Meyer lemons, redwood forests in Oakland, or universities with Nobel Prize winners and famous writers.