NY Times: "Some" of the news that's fit to print?
 

A gay couple, planning their legal union in Vermont, sent a wedding announcement to the New York Times. The New York Times refused the announcement because it was "editorializing."

Right? Wrong?

Since this marriage will be recognized as legal by the state of Vermont, why shouldn't an announcement be accepted by the NY Times?

The Times is behind the times. The Minneapolis paper has been accepting same-sex announcements (for commitment ceremonies) for at least several years and has been publishing them mixed in among the straight couples.

But it’s not news per se, it’s paid advertising. With classified advertising revenue in near-freefall mode, it seems like a particularly dumb thing for The Times to be doing. And it’s The Times that’s doing the editorializing here, not the couple.

Both the Denver Post and the Rocky Mountain News both state in their classified advertising section that the paper reserves to right to choose to not publish any advertisement. A newspaper is still a private enterprise, and if they don't want to publish something then that's certainly their right as a business.

Frankly, in a town as liberal as New York, I'm surprised that the paper would choose to not accept the ad. I bet that some of their classified ads have far more "racey" stuff in them.

Just as a point of information, while the NYT does have a (very small) section of paid classified marriage announcements, I suspect that this case refers to the much larger section of unpaid marriage announcements that are formatted as news stories in the society section of the Sunday NYT.

(Fraz: can you confirm this?)

My husband and I sent in our marriage announcement for this section and, amazingly enough, it was accepted. I can tell you that it is not easy to get an announcement accepted, even for a more "traditional" couple.

They pick and choose couples who meet their rather inscrutable criteria for "newsworthiness" and require that the information be submitted in a very rigid format: full names and occupations of bride, groom and their respective parents, name of exactly one officiating person (this was a big problem for us as we had co-officiants and strongly wanted to recognize both of them, but were forced to make a choice), academic information on bride and groom, etc.

You can submit a photo (again, very rigid criteria for the size and layout of the photo) which they may or may not deign to print. My husband and I apparently had sufficiently impressive academic and professional qualifications (and parentage) to merit a listing, but were not good-looking enough to merit a photo.

So, in point of fact, the majority of announcements submitted to the society page (as opposed to paid announcements) are, in fact, rejected.

Personally, I don't see any reason to reject an announcement based on the sexual orientation of the union, but then again, I don't particularly care for the NYT's decision-making process in general. And for a paper that only relatively recently (what was it -- 15, 20 years ago?) agreed to call women "Ms." if they jumped up and down and insisted on it, their decision here doesn't surprise me.

I heard this on "The View" and they didn't specify whether it was a paid or unpaid announcement.