Editorial Substance vs. Online Style

Here's one way the print version of a daily newspaper beats the online version.

Paul Krugman's NYT column this morning, "Freezing Out Hope," begins:

After the Democratic "shellacking" in the midterm elections, everyone wondered how President Obama would respond. Would he show what he was made of? Would he stand firm for the values he believes in, even in the face of political adversity?

Halfway down the column a pullquote, in large type, underscores its theme. The online version of the column doesn't have the pullquote. It could have. There's no technical reason for not having it.

Maybe it's a style choice. None of the articles in the online Times have pullquotes. But it's a stupid choice -- style over substance. For that matter, using pullquotes online to break up those long columns of type would be a stylistic improvement.

Speaking of substance, there are those on the left of course, including me, who believe "Obama is something like a Manchurian candidate," as a friend put it, "a so-called extreme liberal who gets into office and just coincidentally behaves not so differently from Bush/Reagan."