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Now, apart from the play of words, saying that we're better than the Daily News, which is implicit in that slogan, quite apart from that, what we are doing is selling ourselves as much, as a paper that is much, gives the reader very much more than the mere news.

Well, that's all very well if you want to do it. It's just not my idea of what the New York Times should be, and this really illustrates the difference.

I admit that the people who disagree with my view, and who think that this is a kind of an unrealistic, puristic approach are obviously the ones that are running the paper, and are making a reasonable financial turnaround on it, it so appears, although actually the circulation hasn't gone up all that much, but it has improved, and from a declining state it's in a slightly increasing state, except on Sunday. So there - and the advertising has increased, and of course, the business conditions generally have improved, so one can't be absolutely sure that there's a causal relationship here.

Nevertheless, I think, from the most negative possible point of view, the business results of this change have certainly been good enough to warrant the people who have designed this, feeling reasonably satisfied that they were right. So I can't deny that. I think it isn't the Times that it ought to be, however.

What interested me too, though, is the suggestion of this - the suggestion inherent in this quite drastic change, that Argyris was wrong, that the institution wasn't incapable of change.