Brian Akre of General Motors’ PR staff says he tried and failed to get his company’s side into the New York Times after GM was slammed (I think with some accuracy) by Thomas Friedman. In “The Ban on `Rubbish’ in The New York Times,” published in GM’s FYI blog, you can read Akre’s account.
If it’s accurate, Times is guilty of transcendent arrogance. It’s the classic gatekeeping move by an outfit that seems to edit letters to the editor more carefully than some of the journalism that appears in the news pages.
Of course, GM has one thing in its favor: The Times counter-productive paid-subscription service for online column reading means that many, many fewer people saw the Friedman piece in the first place.