Orland Evangelical Free Church | Tracking the New York Times Most E-mailed List

The readership of the New York Times is disproportionately influential and affluent, according to a 2005 Mendelsohn study. 76% of the weekday readers are college graduates and 58% are in professional/managerial positions. Their median personal income is $83,368 a year. Their spouses or partners earn still more: their median household income is $141,943.

Their jobs give them a large say in how our society runs day-to-day. They are executives, lawyers, doctors, teachers, and engineers. But they influence others even when they’re not at work. They lead society in how they spend money.

What do people in this select group think? What upsets them? What are they curious about?

The Times allows us a peek. It maintains a list of its top ten most e-mailed articles.

The endocrinologist ambles into her office and drains her lukewarm mocha to the grounds. She pulls up the Times and spots a series called, “The New Gender Divide”, with the headline, “Facing Middle Age With No Degree, and No Wife.” She blasts through the piece and e-mails it to three friends writing, “You’ve got to read this!”

Why the reaction? What does she see in the article that she thinks her friends will recognize?

And why did the readership make this the most e-mailed article last weekend?

The answers would reveal something about the ethics and priorities of this large, influential group.

Maybe the endocrinologist and her three friends are among the 46% of the readership who are unmarried (MRI, 2006) and so identify with the stories and dilemmas. Maybe they belong to the married 50%, but they know men like the ones described in the article – high school graduates in their 40s, economically unstable, single. Maybe they were each married to this category of man in the past.

A better explanation for their interest in this article might be found in the ethical principles it assumes. There are three that may be significant.

First, success in life depends on protecting yourself. You have to weigh probabilities and choose the safest course. Is the man you’re dating “likely to be an economic dependent”? If you bicker with your partner, is moving in together smart? If you marry the woman you’re dating, will she divorce you and take your house?

This assumption says no one can take care of you. You have to take care of yourself.

This assumption says you protect yourself by controlling the terms of your contracts.

Third, the way to become a better person is through education. Married men who are college graduates are “more responsive and ready to accommodate” the new expectations of their wives. Blue collar men are likely to be “sworn off” in favor of men who are “educated” because a man has to “contribute something” to a relationship. Education is the route to financial and personal independence.

This assumption says educational attainment signals something about a person’s goodness.

The article doesn’t argue for these principles. They are the framework through which the article interprets the decline of marriage.

And the readers of the NYT assume these principles too. When the endocrinologist sees an article that confirms her beliefs – reinforces principles on which she’s based tough personal decisions – she passes it on.

This blog will analyze the NYT’s most e-mailed list as an American cultural artifact. We may better understand the course of our society if we consider what grabs and preoccupies some of our most influential neighbors.