The financially struggling New York Times has been letting people of late, especially on the local culture beats, which were once so central to the paper's identity, but it has found the resources to create a new position–gender editor.
Andrew Stiles reports at Heat Street:
One area where the paper has decided to devote these resources and energy is in the hiring of a “gender editor” to lead a new “cross-platform, global coverage vertical on the topic of gender and identity.”
The recently announced vertical is part of the Times‘ effort to create a “reimagined newsroom” for the digital age.
Gender editor isn't the only up-to-the-minute new beat. Another new editor is being hired to report on climate change, which the newspaper describes as “the most important story in the world“.
Local art and theater types told Stiles that the Times' slashing of cultural coverage could actually endanger some cultural institutions. But you might want to think before you complain:
Perhaps all the people concerned about what the lack of New York Times coverage could mean for cultural institutions in New York and the surrounding areas should just shut up, lest they come across as insufficiently committed to social justice.
The Times is also cutting down on coverage of crime stories or fires, which Public Editor Liz Spayd says is only right because a paper with such “lofty international ambitions” probably shouldn’t spend time and money “covering news of no interest to readers in Beijing or London.”