Why the New York Times love eminent domain: elite newspapers and liberal activists embrace the Kelo decision at their long-term peril.

• Author: Welch, Matt
• Position: Column

On September 24, 2001, as New York firefighters were still picking their comrades' body parts out of the World Trade Center wreckage, New York Times Co.Vice Chairman and Senior Vice President Michael Golden announced that the Gray Lady was ready to do its part in the healing.

"We believe there could not be a greater contribution," Golden told a clutch of city officials and journalists, "than to have the opportunity to start construction of the first major icon building in New York City after the tragic events of Sept. 11." Bruce Ratner, president of the real estate development company working with the Times on its proposed new Eighth Avenue headquarters, called the project a "very important testament to our values, culture and democratic ideals."

Those "values" and "democratic ideals" included using eminent domain to forcibly evict 55 businesses--including a trade school, a student housing unit, a Donna Karan outlet, and several mom-and-pop stores--against their will, under the legal cover of erasing "blight," in order to clear ground for a 52-story skyscraper. The Times and Ratner, who never bothered making an offer to the property owners, bought the Port Authority-adjacent property at a steep discount ($85 million) from a state agency that seized the II buildings on it; should legal settlements with the original tenants exceed that amount, taxpayers will have to make up the difference. On top of that gift, the city and state offered the Times $26 million in tax breaks for the project, and Ratner even lobbied to receive $400 million worth of U.S. Treasury-backed Liberty Bonds--instruments created by Congress to help rebuild Lower Manhattan. Which is four miles away.

If you think the Times' editorial division would be outraged to see the business side trampling the Little Guy, you probably haven't been following the political evolution of the nation's leading newspapers. For decades now, the country's elite dailies and those papers that emulate them have deliberately eschewed individual stories in favor of broader "trend" pieces (especially when it comes to crime); routinely endorsed government action to cure society's ills; and mocked the "tabloid" populism of the more right-leaning media organizations that dwell on single cases of outrage. Like the activist who loves The People but despises every actual person he meets, the Times' editorial page takes liberal stands when the issue is safely abstract--but when it comes to the paper's...