FT Wins Hands Down over NYT

Despite embarrassing snafus like today's sidebar on the FT front page adverting to a page 7 article on Dan Brown's lawsuit on The Da Vinci Code being commandeered by a full-page ad for AT&T, the FT is clearly a superior broadsheet to the NYT, both in its world section articles and its Op-Ed variety.

The NYT's solemn sanctimony on the left is obvious; an editorial today advocates the vote for convicted felons, a party plank for the Democrats as criminals naturally vote the Dem ticket, other editorials by Barry Rosen, Bob Herbert, and Paul Krugman parrot the left's world view faithfully and not very well.

FT's take on Venezuela and Uganda in its ed-page, the NYT takes on Nigeria. The FT has an Op-Ed by Foreign Affairs managing editor, Gideon Rose, which describes the opposition to the DP port takeover as racism, pure and simple, especially hypocritical coming from Democrats habitually incensed over "racial profiling." One should recall that Foreign Affairs tends to the left on its selection of articles on foreign policy, so this is a signal from a supporter that the Dem base is out of line. Rose even calls GWB "far wiser than his critics."

Actually, the comparison is more apples and oranges, as the FT verges on the WSJ's turf as often as the NYT. One could call the FT a two-fer, as its editorial base is wider than either the NYT or WSJ. Colin Powell read the FT every day while Sec State and I suspect Condi Rice does the same.

The FT has added Christopher Caldwell and Jacob Weisberg, one from each end of the spectrum, to their stable of columnists.

But the best thing in the FT on Mondays is the irrepressible Lucy Kellaway who this week takes the cake with her take-down of academics. Although she describes Larry Summers of Harvard "brilliant, infantile, and insensitive, with an EQ of almost zero," she pegs the following tails on the asses of the perfessoriate:

The reason is that academics, especially good ones, make employees from hell. There is little about their abilities, dispositions or the structure of their work that equips them to be components in a modern, flexible organisation. I can think of seven things that make them entirely unsuited for such a part.

■They are very clever. This is not an advantage in most institutions as it means that they can think for themselves. (They may not actually be that clever, but they think they are – which may be worse.)

■Some have spectacularly low levels of emotional intelligence, which is often more important than IQ in getting things done.

■They are not team players, to put it mildly. Many are introverted. Moreover, the structure of university life means their colleagues (in most subjects save science) are their rivals.

■Criticism is a way of life. The mind of the academic is trained to pull holes in things. So when presented with a new initiative, they question it and deem it a waste of time as a matter of course.

■There is no line of authority. In a big company everyone sucks up to their bosses and agrees with them. In a university, there is less to be gained by brown-nosing, so disagreement prevails.

■They are complacent and have an interest in the status quo that has given them secure jobs and pensions.

■Because their status largely depends on their research, which may only be understood by a tiny number of people, insecurity, pettiness and bitchiness often result.

She could have added that the tenured radicals don't like to teach undergraduate classes and one famously told Summers when she was asked to do so: "You are talking to me like an employee...." Gosh, must have been a "dollar-a-year" prof.

But I'll bet not.