When I was young, I used to be able to make up for a week’s newspaper avoidance by reading the NY Times Week in Review on Sunday. There I would find, well, the week in review.

Now what’s in it?

Page 1:

Two thirds of the page are devoted to an article on statistics vs. intuition in baseball. The other article is an interesting one on our worries about distributing better weapons to the Iraqis.

Page 2:

Occupying the the top third is a piece on the Pat Robertson embarrassment, presented comic-strip style. The middle is an article with accompanying infographic that tries to make clear how much data is going over the wires. About 7 column inches are devoted to virginity, keying off the movie The 40-Year-Old Virgin. There are also three editorial cartoons.

Page 3:

Two thirds of the page are spent on Timothy Treadwell, subject of the just-released Herzog movie, Grizzly Man, who was eaten by bears in 2003.

There’s also a selection of answers to moral and normative questions, centering women-men relations, on Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani’s web site.

Page 4:

The major article is on the safety of lighter cars. Interesting, but not exactly news. But that’s ok, because page 4 is the “Ideas & Trends” page, as opposed to pages 1-3 which are the “Infographics & Movie Plugs” pages.

There’s also an article on the political leanings of law professors at the top law schools. Answer: They’re Democrats.

Page 5:

The page contains a single article. It’s on Sudoku, a sort of numeric crossword. The article is by Puzzles Editor Will Shortz who has been publishing books of Sudokus. At least the author blurb at the bottom notes the conflict of interest.

That’s it for The Week in Review. The rest consists of editorials, letters and op-eds.

Read it end to end and you won’t know what went on this week. You will, however, be better prepared to watch baseball and go to the movies. [Tags: nytimes media]

Categories: Uncategorized dw