Nicholas Kristof writes his first column of the new year stating he is dropping his middle initial "D" from his byline. Personally I think if we all dropped our middle names from our bylines, the world would be a better place.
An early candidate for the dumbest column of the year, newspaper division. Tough competition.
Via Weasel Zippers
If you look closely at my Times byline, beginning with Thursday's column, you'll notice something odd. Well, actually, you probably won't notice it.
Thanx for the 411, Nick.
I've knocked out my middle initial for the new year. I acquired it in my byline because as a college journalist at The Harvard Crimson, we were all encouraged to use full names with middle initials. In the fall of freshman year, I wasn't going to argue, so I became Nicholas D. Kristof. And I have been, in the Times and in my books, ever since. The middle initial adds a bit of authority and gravitas, and when you're a 25-year-old Times reporter covering global economics and hoping to be taken seriously, that's very welcome.
And here all these years, I thought it would be concise writing and the fair presentation of facts in a news story that would add "gravitas" (whatever that is). Silly me.
His whole writing career has been an effort to overcome the gravitas provided to him by his middle initial...
So why am I dropping it? First, I don't think it buys any clarity. As far as I know there isn't a single other Nicholas Kristof anywhere in the world, so I'm unlikely to be confused with Nicholas G. Kristof or Nicholas S. Kristof III.
Yeah, why confuse your 11 readers with a single alphabetical letter. Nick, I get the sense you regard your readers as a buncha morons, which is what liberals, by definition are.
More broadly, I think in the Internet age, the middle initial conveys a formality that is a bit of a barrier to our audience.
I would be afraid to tell a narcissistic writer for the New York Times any of my objections to his slanted writing, because of a single initial. And I guess that applies to everyone else, as well. Now, without the letter I can fearlessly tell Nick he is a liberal baboon.
It feels a bit ostentatious, even priggish.
And if anyone know priggishness and what is ostentatious, it's a NY Times writer.
If my aim in my 20's was gravitas, now I want to reach people and connect with them, and I wonder if the stuffiness of the middle initial isn't a little off-putting.
The NY Times by the very nature of its reporting and location is by definition off-putting.
I doubt if it makes much difference, frankly, but at the margin I think that we're moving to a kind of journalism that is more casual, more informal, more personal, and a very formal byline seems as out of place as a three-piece suit in the newsroom. Speaking of which, when I started at the Times in the business section in 1984, I wore a business suit and the middle initial was a nice accoutrement to pinstripes; now I wear an open collar, and I don't need the middle initial any more than a necktie.
He's a rebel and he'll never, ever be any good. I bet the ladies swoon whenever you enter the newsroom now, huh Nick. |