The New York Times Magazine cover story by political correspondent Jim Rutenberg, "A Dream Undone -- Inside the 50-year campaign to roll back the Voting Rights Act," is a 10-part, 10,000-word doorstop (issued with the baleful threat "The first in a series") comparing current attempts to stop voter fraud as a return to Jim Crow, with particular focus on North Carolina. Rutenberg also relayed more Times misinformation about Ronald Reagan's 1980 campaign and his appeal to "states rights" in Mississippi.
Jim Rutenberg
In Huge NYT Mag Cover Story, Jim Rutenberg Sees New Jim Crow in North Carolina, Smears Reagan as Racist
By Clay Waters | August 2, 2015 | 8:17 PM EDT 
By Tim Graham | January 23, 2015 | 2:26 PM EST
Sunday’s New York Times Magazine includes a generally favorable story on "The Megyn Kelly Moment" by Times reporter Jim Rutenberg (once a media-beat specialist).
Rutenberg acknowledged how throroughly Kelly dominates her time slot and is battling with Bill O’Reilly for the top of the cable-news mountain. Liberals are complaining about Kelly's positive press.
Double Standard: NYT's Q&A Reporter Fawned Over Lefty Doonesbury Cartoonist, Got Testy With Rep. Steve King
By Clay Waters | December 14, 2014 | 8:03 PM EST Two recent Q&A sessions by New York Times reporter Jim Rutenberg for the paper's Sunday magazine made for a convenient encapsulation of the paper's liberal double standards, with challenging, testy questions thrown at conservative Iowa Rep. Steve King in this Sunday's edition, versus a sympathetic, almost fawning session with lefty "Doonesbury" cartoonist Gerry Trudeau last month.
NY Times Gives Liberal Doonesbury Creator Space to Mock Reagan, Celebrate Obama's 'Complex' Brain, Bash Bushes
By Clay Waters | November 10, 2014 | 11:33 AM EST Garry Trudeau, creator of the once-famous, sometimes controversial, always smugly liberal political cartoon Doonesbury, was interviewed for the New York Times Sunday magazine contrasting Ronald Reagan's "damaged brain" with Obama's, which contains "layers of complexity." The cartoonist's clear spite for the Bush family comes through, as he repeats a classless joke about the first President Bush, now 90.
By Tim Graham | September 27, 2014 | 12:42 PM EDT
Sunday's New York Times Magazine includes an interview with former "American Idol" runner-up Clay Aiken, now running against Republican Rep. Renee Ellmers in North Carolina's 2nd district.
Late in the interview, Times reporter Jim Rutenberg brings up the dangerous question: How favorably do you view Barack Obama? Clay got out the ten-foot pole -- Aiken fans might hear him singing "From A Distance" by Bette Midler.
By Tim Graham | July 6, 2014 | 11:08 PM EDT
Jay Carney is doing a round of interviews fresh out of the White House. In The New York Times Magazine, Jim Rutenberg threw briefing-room softballs like this: “Do people in the first row like to showboat?”
Carney said yes: “If you look at the difference in tenor between the on-camera briefings and the on-the-record-but-off-camera gaggles, it’s night and day.” That’s not just due to the TV audience, it’s due to the idea that gaggles are more designed to set up the briefing and the day’s coverage. In this and other interviews, Carney tries sneakily to dismiss the idea that Obama didn’t live up to hise pledge to be transparent.
Surprise: New York Times Actually Takes Seriously Obama 2007 Video Praising Rev. Wright (With Caveats)
By Clay Waters | October 4, 2012 | 5:03 PM EDT In a bit of a surprise, New York Times reporters Jeremy Peters and Jim Rutenberg filed a longish article on a recently unearthed Obama video from 2007 showing the president in a fiery, racially charged mode and praising his anti-American pastor Jeremiah Wright, a video downplayed or ignored by most of the mainstream media: "Race at Issue for Obama As Right Revives '07 Talk."
Less surprising was the snotty text box: "New fodder for a favorite topic in conservative circles." And the reporters took care to trace the tape's provenance down the conservative media food chain.
As Other Outlets See Romney Debate Win, NYTimes Plays It Neutral: 'Feel of Seminar as Accusations Fly'
By Clay Waters | October 4, 2012 | 11:21 AM EDT The first Obama-Romney presidential debate of 2012 ran under this less-than-informative banner headline in Thursday's New York Times: "Obama and Romney, in First Debate, Spar Over Fixing the Economy." The actual headline to the story by Jeff Zeleny and Jim Rutenberg also failed to capture the sense, overwhelming even among the liberal press, that Romney had helped himself with a sharp, energetic performance at the University of Denver: "Feel of Seminar as Accusations Fly From Rivals."
The Washington Post's banner headline was more direct and captured the consensus of the night: "Romney takes fight to Obama," while the story claimed the president "found himself on the defensive repeatedly." Other headlines from around the country captured the same effect.
By contrast, you had to parse the Times to sense that Romney won the night. (One significant Timesman, former Executive Editor Bill Keller, reluctantly awarded Romney the debate on his Twitter feed, calling Romney's performance "shameless but masterful.")
By Clay Waters | September 21, 2012 | 4:26 PM EDT
Friday's New York Times front page featured Jeff Zeleny (pictured) and Jim Rutenberg's "Political Memo" on the "daunting" struggles of the Mitt Romney campaign: "Daunting Path Greets Romney Before Debates – He's Hoping to Change Campaign Dynamic."
Again the Times focused on the political damage fostered by Mitt Romney's (accurate) statement at a fundraiser that 47 percent of Americans do not pay income taxes. Meanwhile, the Times buried two controversial Obama comments. One is an old audio tape of Obama saying "I actually believe in redistribution," a remark reporter Richard Oppel Jr. actually defended in Thursday's edition.
NYTimes: Hidden Mitt Video Calls Into Question if 'Romney Is, at Base, an Empathetic and Caring Man'
By Clay Waters | September 18, 2012 | 2:45 PM EDT A secretly recorded video of Mitt Romney speaking at a fundraiser about the "47 percent of the country who are dependent on government," put out last night by the liberal magazine Mother Jones, calls into question whether Romney is "at base, an empathetic and caring man." That's according to the New York Times, which rushed the Monday night breaking news onto Tuesday morning's front page in a story by Michael Shear and Michael Barbaro, "In Video Clip, Romney Calls 47% ‘Dependent’ and Feeling Entitled."
Predictable: NYTimes Fills News Gap With Overblown Stories on Discord Among 'Straight-Laced' GOP 'Squares'
By Clay Waters | August 28, 2012 | 5:21 PM EDT How painfully predictable: The New York Times filled the news gap caused by the cancellation of Monday's events with rumors of party discord. In fact, the Times first tried to gin up controversy at the 2012 Republican National Convention long ago. Here's a May 13, 2010 report from Damien Cave on how toxic beaches in Tampa might ruin the Republican convention, then over two years away:
The wrong mix of poverty juxtaposed with Republicans partying - perhaps against a backdrop of oil-stained beaches – could give Democrats just what they need to portray their opponents as woefully disconnected from the middle class."
By Clay Waters | August 27, 2012 | 9:56 PM EDT
Even the weather is tilting against the GOP, Jim Rutenberg (pictured) and Michael Shear reported from the Republican National Convention in Tampa for Monday's New York Times. They cynically employed the threat of Tropical Storm Isaac, shaping it into a desperate pro-Obama weapon to use against Republican principles of limited government: "Storm Rewrites G.O.P.'s Script For Convention."