I read the NY Times. I skim the headlines about three times a day, usually read at least two full articles off the site, and I often link to the NY Times when I’m looking for an authoritative source. Now, I know the NY Times is often called a liberal elitist newspaper, but being a liberal elitist, I don’t usually notice. However, I just read what might be one of the most elitist articles I’ve ever seen.

In an article entitled — (I shit you not) — “:-) !!!! )-: !!!!!!! (-: What’s All This? Admission Angst”, Susan Saulney rips apart students for blogging about their lives.

It’s not that she was cautioning them about the fact that you can’t trust what you read on blogs, which, though a bit cliche at this point, might be good advice, but it’s that she was making fun of them about blogging in the first place.

Ms. Saulny writes:

[Students] have discovered the addictive joys of chronicling their [college] admissions experiences in excruciating and often embarrassing detail online in blogs and on forums.

But she doesn’t talk to any student who regrets posting on their blogs. In other words, she was embarrassed, not the students. She also writes:

(Note to readers: the use of multiple punctuation marks is practically required!!! As is the prodigious use of emoticons :-) End note!!!)

Is she trying to be clever? Or do the readers of the NY Times not understand that the blogs, e-mails, and instant messages of high school students tend to be rather loose when it comes to the rules of grammar? What possible motivation would Ms. Saulny have to include this in her news report if not to make fun of and look down upon the students?

It’s sad too, because it could have been a really good article. I’m sure there are high school students who need to calm down about the admissions thing, and who need to know that there is a place for them to go to find information, that maybe instead of just adding to the “amplified neighborhood chatter,” as one knowledgeable college advisor put it, they should, for a nominal fee, contact a knowledgable college advisor, and find out that, you know what? no one can tell you anything until you get the damn letter. While I’m sure that there are students would benefit from such an article, I can’t help but wonder if Ms. Saulny couldn’t have written a better one.

Perhaps Ms. Saulny could have followed a lead that came in from one of the education consultants she interviewed, who said, “The college admissions process itself seems increasingly mystical, so families and students are seeking soothsayers in the forms of blogs and chat rooms.”

Now, you tell me: What would have been more beneficial for the community? To tell students to stop posting to blogs and to pay money to hear information that really doesn’t help? Or to figure out why colleges have such opaque admissions processes in the first place, and why a student must be put through agony when there’s nothing to stop the college from being wide open when it comes to where (and why) an applicant is in their system?

Unfortunately, Ms. Saulny decided to be clever instead of helpful.