New York Times editorial page editor Andrew Rosenthal announced the appointment of Frank Bruni to the august position of op-ed page columnist this week. The selling point for Bruni, whose last job was as the paper's restaurant critic, is that he is the paper's first openly gay op-ed columnist. Otherwise, neither Rosenthal nor Bruni appears to be able to explain the rationale for the choice. Rosenthal told New York Magazine that he expected "a sharp, opinionated look at a big event of the last week, from a different or unexpected angle, or a small event that was really important but everyone seems to have missed, or something entirely different." Bruni told Women's Wear Daily, "the Sunday column should be very clearly keyed to, and should very obviously stem from, something that occurred in the previous six days." The fact that the above descriptions could apply pretty much to just about any columnist writing about almost anything indicates that neither one appears to have given the matter of Bruni's subject matter much thought.
If I might be so bold as to offer a suggestion -- or perhaps a caution -- I would respectfully propose that Bruni stay the heck away from politics. During the period he covered the Bush presidential campaign and the early years of that administration, Bruni demonstrated almost perfectly how not to cover a presidential race and a new presidential administration. Indeed, if I were teaching a course on political coverage, one could use Bruni's Times coverage of George W. Bush -- together with his campaign memoir -- as examples of what every young reporter should take heed to avoid.
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