For many people the New York Times is the greatest newspaper anywhere. But there has long been a small pool of conservative dissenters in its hometown. For them, the Times is left-wing, inaccurate, devoid of humor, and, worst of all, unopposed (they never seem to count the Wall Street Journal. which, to be fair, doesn"t write that much about the Big Apple). Now these criticisms are being made, daily, and often wittily, by a flee web-based publication. The publisher, reporting staff and editor of smartertimes.com is Ira Stoll, a 28-year-old former managing editor of Forward, a Jewish weekly. At 6 o"clock every morning he picks up a copy of the Times at a Brooklyn news-stand and, within four hours, unleashes an invariably scathing report on something he thinks either ridiculous or wrong. Categories on the website range from the pedantic—"New York, lack of basic familiarity with" (noting unbearable geographic errors) and "Misspelling of names" (including that of the Sulzberger family, which controls the Times)—to weightier topics such as taxes and immigration. Most of the time, Mr. Stoll is on the look-out for left-wing bias masked as objectivity. He is particularly tough on the citation of allegedly impartial "experts" in back up predictable Times conclusions—that the poor are getting poorer, private education is bad, welfare reform has failed, public housing is vital, and Republicans and policemen are insensitive, racist or mentally challenged. Occasionally, Mr. Stoll"s pieces precede (or perhaps cause) a correction. He was, for instance, the first to spot that the Times had attacked John Ashcroft, the conservative attorney-general, with a shortened and misleading quotation lifted from another newspaper. More often the sins are of leftish omission. Last weekend"s ode to the joys of traveling in Cuba, he points out, avoided "any mention of the country"s horrible human-rights record". Like other zealots, Mr. Stoll sometimes asks too much. Even the weekly newspapers occasionally get things wrong; it would be surprising if a daily as big as the Times never did. And Mr. Stoll"s bias, though overt, can get a little boring. This week he nicely skewered an absurdly solemn Times piece about a plan in Connecticut to stop high schools starting work before 8:30 a.m, because teenagers do "not physiologically wake up", for not even wondering whether it might be a good tiling for the little dears to go to bed earlier. But did Mr. Stoll really need to add a carp about those tired teenagers having sex "with the assistance of taxpayer-provided free contraceptives"? All the same, Mr. Stoll seems to have struck a nerve. In only seven months, with no marketing, he has developed a subscriber list for a daily e-mail of almost 2,000 people (including, inevitably, Newt Gingrich). And the Times seems to be taking some notice. Three of its journalists have already taken him out for lunch.
单选题
New York Times was not criticized by the conservative because of being______.
【正确答案】
B
【答案解析】解析:事实细节题。根据第一段"For them, the Times is left-wing, inaccurate, devoid of humor, and, worst of all, unopposed",批评反对者的眼中,《纽约时报》左倾、极端、失实、不幽默,尤其是在业界好像没有对手。选项"极端的";"幽默的";"不如实的";"无对手的"中,只有答案选项正好与其批评的内容相反。
单选题
The content of smartertimes.com includes all of the following topics EXCEPT______.
【答案解析】解析:推理判断题。第五段一开始就说"Like other zealots, Mr. Stoll sometimes asks too much."而后又举了他在批评有关推迟开学时间的问题时提到青少年用避孕套的例子来说明这点。选项"Mr. Stoll离谱了";"周报经常出错";"青少年不应该有避孕套";"他的行为对青少年有益"。因此答案选项最为恰当。
单选题
Which one is NOT true?
【正确答案】
A
【答案解析】解析:推理判断题。"Stoll在事业中取得很大成功",从最后一段来看,虽然目前Stoll的事业有一定起色,但也不能说取得了非常大的成功;"Stoll拥有固定的阅读群体",最后一段提到他没有广告宣传都赢得2000人的订单,那么一定拥有一个稳定的客户群;"Times会针对Stoll的行为采取措施",最后一段提到Times已经采取了一定措施,如"Three of its journalists have already taken him out for lunch";"作者并不赞赏Stoll",从整篇文章来看,作者对Stoll的感觉的他过于小题大做,吹毛求疵了。