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The New York Times, saying they took up too much time and space (not to mention their appeal to a mostly older audience), has dropped its bridge column after 80 years and chess column after 52 years.
Phillip Alder has written the bridge column three days a week since 2005. It takes up about a column of space.
NYT public editor Margaret Sullivan said the bridge column was particularly time-consuming for the copy desk to edit since “you have to play the game in order to check it and make sure it’s right.”
Sullivan got 2,500 emails from dissatisfied readers including Lee Traub who said loss of the column was
another diminishment of daily pleasures.” The column ran on Mondays, Thursdays and Saturdays.
NYT Culture editor Danielle Mattoon told Sullivan that NYT management told her to cut nearly 20% of her nonpersonnel budget amounting to nearly a half million. Features such as the bridge column and movie listings came under the “culture” heading.
No Hope For Return
Sullivan said NYT is reinventing itself from mostly a print newspaper to mostly a digital news and information company.
Bridge fans are upset by the moves but Mattoon said there is no hope that protests will bring the bridge or chess columns back. More budget cuts are ahead, Mattoon told Sullivan.
Sullivan said she can’t argue with Mattoon’s decisions which “seem to have been carefully, even agonizingly, considered…work of its critics and reporters and those who support and edit their work must be the top priority.”
NYT pursues some subjects such as football injuries, the alleged threat of global warming, and arguments over the legality of gay marriage with almost unlimited budgets, editorial space, and assignment of reporters and editors.
Robert Hartman, CEO of the American Contract Bridge League, called on members to express their "outrage" to NYT for dropping the bridge column. He urges members to email and phone Sullivan, telling her the column was not only enjoyed in New York City but by tens of thousands of bridge players throughout the world. He said Sullivan is supposed to be the "independent voice of the Times." He said bridge fans should show that NYT readers "still value intellectually challenging columns."
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