New York Times' biz section's populist movement

TheDeal.com Executive Editor Yvette Kantrow notes that the New York Times’ recent story about how chief executive officers use corporate jets is just the latest story from the newspaper that attacks the excesses of corporate America.

Kantrow writes, “Such is the state of affairs over at the Times, which in recent months has gone after public company CEOs with the kind of zeal typically reserved for problematic public servants. Whether it’s Gretchen Morgenson’s near-weekly urging of shareholders to rise up against executives and boards they don’t like — or more accurately, executives and boards she tells them not to like — or the paper’s front-page damnation of Wall Street CEOs who golf with (gasp!) fellow board members, the Gray Lady these days can’t seem to keep its mitts off the business elite and their jet-setting, golf-swinging ways.

“In fact, it’s just the latest iteration of the faux populism that began bubbling up on the Times’ business pages when the bubble burst, and the paper began positioning itself as the protector of the little guy, aka, the shareholder. Weirdly enough, this all occurred even as the paper stepped up its lionizing coverage of rich people and their conspicuous consumption, a trend recently noted by The New Republic.”