Opinion: New York Times editorial board to end long losing streak

We’ve seen a steady stream of criticism of The New York Times’ mysterious decision not to endorse municipal candidates anymore. One melodramatic headline from Harry Siegel in Vital City was catchy but really two decades late: “NY Times to City: Drop Dead.”

Since the turn of the century, the Times has steadily abandoned its once comprehensive coverage of New York City. In its pursuit of global digital hegemony, the Old Grey Lady can’t be bothered with trivial local matters.

Covering drama-filled presidential elections, widening wars overseas, arcane trends in far flung Asian and European countries – these have become the steady diet that Times readers have been feasting on in recent years.

Yes, of course, its impressive metro reporters are constantly trying to sniff out malfeasance at City Hall, and the paper turns its sporadic attention to state government budgets and legislation each winter. Nonetheless, it has largely abandoned substantive and neighborhood-by-neighborhood coverage of our sprawling metropolis, since it folded its once ambitious Sunday “City” section.

The section was launched as part of the Sunday paper in the early 1990s. The Times’ editors and owners must have noticed the growing stable of community weeklies in the four largest boroughs. (Staten Island has its own daily, The Advance, and few other local publications.) The paper of record decided that rather than cede hyperlocal coverage and neighborhood retail ad dollars to the mom-and-pop weeklies, it would attempt to compete and bigfoot these smaller and less well-financed publications.

I had a bird’s-eye view of this territorial incursion because, at the time the paper launched its new City section, I was executive vice president of a public company that owned more than a dozen community newspapers in New York City, including four in Manhattan that I ran day-to-day. Because I had worked briefly at the Times during graduate school as a news clerk, the editor of the new City section remembered me and reached out to have a meeting. Flattered, I accepted.

“How do you cover community boards?” the editor inquired when we met in my dilapidated office on West 30th Street. “Are school board elections important?” He peppered me with questions that my newspapers had focused on for years. I got a lump in my throat when I realized the mighty Times was muscling in on our territory.

Lucky for me and my company – but unlucky for local journalism – the City section folded in 2009. The year before that, the Times killed the daily paper’s standalone Metro section. Within a few years, local news stories were relegated to the back alley of the first section (around A20 for Times aficionados) – near the obituaries – rarely extending beyond a mere two broadsheet pages. By 2020, it was hard to find any trace of the paper’s metro section.

When I recently heard a rumor that The Times was giving up on municipal endorsements, my initial reaction – like many other insiders and politicos – was one of anger and shock.

How dare the opinion editors think that getting behind a New York City mayoral candidate or a congressional nominee was no longer worthy of their attention? After all, who else has the credibility or bandwidth to do the deep dives that the Times editorial board did for so many decades?

But on further reflection, I realized that this might actually be a blessing in disguise. Municipal elections already have paltry primary turnouts (rarely more than 15% of eligible voters), and a large block of voters from places like the Upper West Side or brownstone Brooklyn lazily pulled the poll lever for the Times’ choice on primary day.

Now, those voters will actually have to do their homework and really scrutinize candidates for local office, before deciding on their own which one to support. No more shortcuts afforded by the doyennes of the Times editorial board.

Besides, when one thinks back on competitive Democratic mayoral primaries, when was the last time the Times actually endorsed the eventual winner for mayor?

In 2021, despite lifting Kathryn Garcia from virtual obscurity, the Times’ pick ultimately fell short of winning. In 2013, the Times endorsed Mike Bloomberg’s favored candidate, Christine Quinn, who came in a distant third, behind Bill de Blasio and Bill Thompson.

In 2001, the Times supported eventual Democratic nominee Mark Green but once again backed another loser, as the former public advocate was upset by upstart GOP nominee Mike Bloomberg in the general election, post-9/11.

That’s more than two decades of mayoral endorsement futility. Other historical Times endorsement misses include David Dinkins in 1993 (Rudy Giuliani won) and Mario Cuomo in 1977 (Ed Koch was victorious).

In the interest of full disclosure, I co-owned a chain of weekly newspapers that endorsed local candidates – from City Council members to governors – from 2001 to 2012. The publication I founded, City & State, made a brief foray into political endorsements about a decade ago, but we ultimately decided to end this practice after just one election cycle. It was too fraught to support candidates when our predominant coverage areas are elected leaders and political campaigns.

Maybe the Times’ decision not to endorse municipal candidates in 2025 (and presumably beyond) will force the elite part of the city’s electorate to really focus on the issues and policies being advanced by candidates.

And maybe by sitting out the endorsement process, the paper of record has finally found a way to avoid any more losing picks in the quadrennial mayoral elections.