The Tea Makers

The de facto Tea Makers of the New York Times, the NYTPicker, explains why he, she, it, or they remain anonymous (really, pseudonymous):

Our goal was – and is – to offer information you can’t get anywhere else.

We’ve broken news stories…, reported on patterns… and spotlighted the career paths of little-known NYT personnel…. We also try to catch the NYT publishing inferior journalism – which it often does…. We showcase bad ledes. We like stuff, too….

[T]hen why do we remain anonymous? Shouldn’t we be proud enough of our Web site to put our names on it? A reasonable question.

The answer is that if you knew who we were, it would compromise our ability to function. Everything we say would become filtered through the reader’s perception of our qualifications, our conflicts, and our personalities. This way, for better or worse, you focus on what we say, not who we are. We like that.

We don’t like the “coward” label very much… because it doesn’t really apply to us…. The NYTPicker sticks to the NYT itself, and to the people inside it. Everything we write about is public. Sometimes we go for a laugh, but hey, that’s show biz.

Oh, and by the way: We love the NYT. Isn’t that obvious?

While there are noticeable differences between the NYTPicker and the Tea Makers that commenters will instantly seize upon, the Picker’s post neatly summarizes the issues involved. Fundamentally, though, both organs operate in a climate of fear. Surely it says something that only the outside-the-Corpse writers of the Tea Makers make their identities known. Then again, the NYTPicker’s evaluation is correct in that the Tea Makers writers with known identities are the ones ritually attacked for who they are. (I would settle for a way to keep the various Anonymoose distinct.)

Meanwhile, who is John Galt?