Everyone's a critic.

• Author: McGowan, William
• Position: Letter to the editor

Jim Sleeper's review of my book Gray Lady Down: What the Decline and Fall of the New York Times Means for America [May/June 2011] is guilty of three classic mistakes of book reviewing. One is to blame the author for not writing the book the reviewer thinks should have been written. (Sleeper would rather have a book about the "near-cataclysmic upheavals in the newspaper industry" than the one I wrote about the ideological biases and other factors behind the Times's fall from grace. Fine, let him write it.) Another is to contest the accuracy of certain minor points of argument or research in order to undercut the credibility of the whole book. A corollary of this is to make factual errors of his or her own in the course of trumpeting what are alleged to be the author's. (Bill Kristol wrote once a week for the Times's op-ed page, Jim, not twice.) And then there's the accusation, especially on books involving ideologically sensitive issues, that the author has a political agenda when it's the critic who is playing ideological footsie.

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Sleeper says, "In the end, McGowan seems driven more by his mostly conservative passions concerning race, sexuality, immigration, and law enforcement than any poor reportage the Times may be guilty of." He also says the reporting he considers "in error" isn't just that--it's "either...