It's because we love it so much that there is so much talk these days about The new New York Times. How are we - primarily people in journalistic circles - reacting to the changes? The following are the findings from my personal survey taken mostly in and around New York:

***

About color on the editorial pages:
 In the anti column:
 "It looks like a comic book." (Television network business manager)

 "It trivializes the news." (Former Times editor)

 "Now your eye goes directly to the pictures instead of the headlines. It instantly takes you away from the substance of the news." (Magazine editor)

 "It changes the way I read the paper. The headline used to tell me what was the most important story. Now the picture leads the news." (Newspaper editor)

 "Did you see that four-column photo on the Girls Choir of Harlem? That's the front page news? It's not front page news. The color and the pictures are driving the definition of news. And all that space!" (News guru)

 "I love the color, except on the front page because it distorts what's news." (Publishing executive)

 "Too much space is being given to the pictures." (Graphic designer)

 "It's just a promotion and packaging gimmick. It doesn't improve the reporting." (News curmudgeon)

 "The color reproduction itself is a mess. Half the pictures seem to be double exposure." (Newspaper executive)

 "I can't stand it, I can't stand it. The color cheapens everything. Besides, the different inks overlap and blur." (Spouse of a magazine editor)

 On the positive side:
 "I love it. It doesn't change anything. It just makes the whole thing look better." (Media critic)

 "The color reproduction is the best I've seen in a newspaper. It's really stunning." (Newspaper executive)

***

 And then there's this:
 "Who cares about the color? The point is that the Times is so PC, it never reports anything accurately or honestly anymore." (Columnist)

***

 About color in advertising, there was either a passive acceptance or active embrace:
 "The ads look great." (Publisher)

 "If it helps advertising, might as well have it." (Editor)

 "That's where color belongs, if you have to have it. That's where you are supposed to be selling, not in the news columns." (Intelligent reader)

***

 An analysis of the findings, by group, indicates that there is clearly an age gap. Younger people and today's media leaders accept, even embrace, the migration of color into the old order of black and white, with a few exceptions. Older people, that is, formerlys and media priests, generally reject the change on substantive grounds - editorial substance, that is, not business substance.
 

***

 About the addition of new sections, while almost entirely negative, the comments ranged from sneer to despair:
 "If they have an arts section every day and call it Arts, why do they name their daily sports section, SportsMonday, SportsTuesday, SportsWednesday? Why not just Sports, like Arts? It doesn't make sense." (Editor)

 "Some sections are so thin, you think it's a flyer." (Businessman)

 "What's the point? I suppose the extra sections are to attract advertising, but there's almost no advertising in some of those sections." (Media executive)

 "Technology rules, not thought anymore." (Academic)

 "You can't allow advertising to determine everything." (Advertising executive)

 "I hate it." (Businessman)

 "I hate it." (Lawyer)

 "I hate it." (Regular readers, over and over)

 "I can't find anything anymore." (All of the above)

 In the opposite column:
 "Wake up and grow up! Almost every newspaper has full color and many sections. The Times was late to the party and is just now catching up. Soon the readers will wonder how they ever lived without color." (Magazine editor)

***

 Maybe I need to widen my social circles. Not maybe. I do. The sample is small. (I haven't been going out all that much, and the crowd skews older.) But as we say to our children, the only reason we are criticizing you is because we love you so much. We want you to grow up to be the best you can be.
 People are talking about theirNew York Times - and not just in and around New York - because it means so much to them. The New York Times is, for so many of us, our perpetual dinner party, our shared cultural blankee, our validated passport to an outside world. The New York Times means the world to us, even when the world is our beat. We even believe the Times belongs to us, that a great newspaper on our doorstep every day is our right, which, of course, it isn't.

 Unfortunately, whether criticism or positive reinforcement is the better strategy in raising the child one never knows until it is too late.

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