A full-page house ad in Sunday’s New York Times  proclaimed the following in a bold three-line headline:

“The truth / demands / our attention.”

Then, in wispy sans-serif type, a block of seven lines of this prose:

“New York Times journalists are committed to / reporting deeply, delivering definitive coverage / of the critical issues shaping our nation and the / world, investigative journalism, expert analysis, / an unwavering focus on the facts and multiformat / reporting provide a more complete, undistracted / view of the full story.”

Then:

“Read. Watch. Listen.”

Imagine the above 53 words set in a broadsheet page of white space.

What do they mean?

What does the word “our” mean in the headline: the New York Times’s,  or Times readers’?

If the newspaper’s journalists are committed to the best reporting, do they decide what “the critical issues shaping our nation and world” are and what “the full story” is, or are those decisions made by non-journalists in another department?

What are “the facts” that need to be laid out for Times readers?

When are readers and listeners and viewers of Times “multiformat reporting” worldwide going to get “a more complete” picture of what’s really going on? Or are they expected to be “undistracted” by other perspectives than the Times presents?

The ad could mean that “the newspaper of record” has been quietly investigating, possibly for years and possibly in sync with a consortium of other news organizations, what actually happened before, during, and after the mass murders of September 11, 2001, thousands of those murders in its own front yard, and is preparing to start publishing a series of comprehensive reports laying out what it came up with, for the consumption of a world that has been waiting for nearly 17 years.

Readers and listeners and viewers are waiting.

— Mark