As the old saw goes....

God decides that the Human Experiment has run its course and it's come time to end it. He contacts the editors of USA Today, The Wall Street journal, and the New York Times and tells them, "In twenty-four hours I will obliterate Earth."

Headlines the next day:

USA Today: "God to end life on Earth"

WSJ: "God to destroy Earth, Stocks take a dive"

NYT: "World ends! Women and Minorities Hardest Hit"

The cliche is now legendary. I know the staff at the NYT have heard this one, so why do they continue to put out pieces like this one?

RIVERHEAD, N.Y. - Eight years ago, Sister Margaret Rose Smyth had to go out of her way to find illegal immigrants who might need her help, listening for Spanish conversations at the Kmart on the North Fork of Long Island.

In New York, day laborers in the Jackson Heights section of Queens hoped for jobs that pay as little as $60 a day.

Now every day, Sister Margaret, a Roman Catholic nun who is the director of the North Fork Spanish Apostolate, typically sees off two early-morning buses filled with laborers seeking work along the Long Island Expressway, giving them business tips and moral support.

By the time her workday ends 12 hours later, she has met with scores of other workers seeking her advice on everything from alcoholism and burial arrangements to documents and wages.

"The housing and construction boom has more people working," Sister Margaret said, noting that now she sees 1,000 immigrants from Mexico and Central America, most of them undocumented, at church each week.

[...]

Indeed, the housing boom, with its promise of consistent and better-paying work, has in the last five years attracted undocumented laborers not just to Long Island, but also to hot housing markets across the country - among them the areas around Chicago; Washington; Freehold, N.J.; Raleigh, N.C.; and Jupiter, Fla.

But unlike the agricultural work that traditionally drew immigrant laborers to little-populated areas of the country, construction labor is conspicuously in the heart of the suburbs, with laborers gathering in Home Depot parking lots, outside convenience stores and on street corners...

It goes on and on... I know. Fish, barrel. I understand. But why don't they understand how silly this make the NYT look? They're bravely plowing forward in the face of dropping revinues and I'm baffled, frankly.