When I was in Denver for the DNC, I got stuck on one of the convention shuttles with a couple of New York Times reporters. Immediately, something struck me about them: good God, they were all so old.

The New York Times is a veritable journalistic institution and one of the most credible sources of information on this earth, but I am consistently shocked at the increasing amount of irrelevance that pervades its pages. As Ned mentioned in his article about New Media, there is a difference between true avant garde New Media, and simply making a web version of your print paper. Perhaps the Times does not pride itself on accurately gauging the pulse of the young American populous, but the trend pieces on fads that are literally three years old and the nagging notion that the reporters are constantly trying to prove that they are indeed relevant gets not only tiresome, but also mildly offensive.

The New York Times Magazine attempts to act as somewhat of a hip cultural counterpart to the otherwise dry news pages of the paper. They put interesting people on the cover and are constantly struggling to prove that even as Olds they know what the internetz is. Look, there’s Emily Gould half-naked with her laptop! Oh wow, this reporter knows how to navigate Facebook! And yet, every Saturday morning when it arrives on my doorstep, I open it to find the same old thing: more articulate articles about a topic some blog has already exhausted, both through original posts and guest comments.

My problem with the Times is not that they refuse to cater to a technological, self-absorbed generation that will inevitably hate on their well-researched pieces with a poorly spelled rant on Wordpress, but instead that they attempt to cater to our generation and fail miserably.

This week’s T Magazine included the piece by Clive Thompson, “I’m So Totally, Digitally Close to You,” an article about—you guessed it!—ways in which social networking sites are shifting real world dynamics. The thesis is interesting: the fact that we are all constantly connected has created an “ambient intimacy,” a feeling that we are close to each other without actually being physically close.

Surely this is something that millennials have recognized for ages: ambient intimacy is receiving a raving e-mail from a fan of your blog, or solely using AIM to talk to friends from high school who now live in different cities. This is not a fresh phenomenon to those of us who have grown up with it, so perhaps the Times’ obsession with social networking and its crucial impact on our lives reflects upon the fact that their staffers are indeed an extension of Old Media. Perhaps they do not fall asleep cradling a stack of sweetly smelling newspapers, waking up with ink dotting their crinkled cheeks, but there is something decidedly Old Guard about them that can be off-putting to young journalists who have always had faith in New Media and are looking to eradicate the negative thinking surrounding it.

But who can blame print for having an existential crisis? Most people get their news from blogs and other online sources these days, the idea of opening up a newspaper to learn about current events has receded into archaic nothingness along with beepers and Walkmen. The irony, then, is that it seems for once the kids have it all figured out—at least when “figured out” means freelancing for $300/week to afford your studio in BedStuy—and it’s the more established journalistic elite who are struggling for a respected place in this new world.

Photo: Flickr by wallyg used under Creative Commons