There are two dimensions, I think, to Arthur Sulzberger's decision to hire Bill Kristol. The most important, which Todd mentions, was my central argument on January 6 in "Arthur Sulzberger's Cracked Kristol Ball," Almost as important and sad, as I noted two days later in "At Times Op-Ed Page, The Plot Sickens," is that Sulzberger and Kristol are old schoolmates and that, as Charles Kaiser noted at Radaronline, Kristol's father, Irving, and Times editorial-page editor Andy Rosenthal's father, Abe, were old friends and neo-conservative comrades. A basic problem is Sulzberger's by-now famously bad judgment in balancing the Times' profit imperatives with its civic-republican obligations.

One can never go wrong if one is a neo-con. Being wrong, as in advocating war crimes and other atrocities, sure. But that's the beauty of it. Fuck shit up, move on, never admit you were wrong. Repeat.
Just like Klein, Friedman supported Bush and the war until it went irreparably south. Well, at least we have "liberals" in the press...

On a bit of a related note this jumped out at me upon first reading this -

In an August 2002 column in The Weekly Standard, as the Bush administration began marshaling its case for war...

I do so enjoy the crafty manner in which some have come to employ the English language. You see where they say "marshaling its case for war" I say "lying to the American people and the Congress". I suppose that's why they get paid the big bucks and have a platform to enlighten us with their informed opinions.

"Arthur is scared to death of The Wall Street Journal," the former veteran Times staffer said. "That's what's behind the Kristol appointment."

The operative phrase here is "scared to death".

And this pathetic cowardice is precisely what the right wing has and continues to count on from the media just as it does from the cowardly Democrats in Washington who, for decades have tried to accomodate the extremists of the right in similar, self-defeating ways.  The extreme right is nothing but a bunch of pansies. But they are pansies who understand that the liberals with power are bigger pansies than they are.  Thus, like any bully in any schoolyard, they figure all they have to do is talk and act tough and they'll get what they want.  And unless and until someone stands up to them that is exactly what occurs.

The irony of course, is that it's easy to back them down.  You just look em in the eye and tell em you aren't afraid.  But that's something these pantywaist liberals simply cannot do.  They would rather watch the media degenerate into a gossip and scandal sheet and the government turn into a trough for the fattest of pigs to feed at so long as nobody calls them mean names.

It's genuinely sickening.

Corvid

I've worked at several newspapers since the 1970s and one unifying theme I've seen is the utter cravenness at the top, the sickening, weepy sensitivity to criticism from whatever source or political direction. Publishers aren't just thin-skinned, they're absolute hemophiliacs when it comes to taking a barb of any sort.
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I've never worked at the NY Times or Wash Post, but it appears things are no different there. So one wonders about The Wall Street Journal. Pre-Murdoch, at least, they had some integrity in their news columns. And their editorial and op-ed pages have been the subject of a perpetual blowtorch of criticism, yet they're impervious. Nothing fazes them.
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I guess it must be the nature of the Journal's core readership, which loves that kind of op-ed crap. But don't ordinary newspapers, including the Times and Post, have readers who have their own values, like an appreciation for reporters and columnists who make an honest, unbiased effort in their work? Do these publishers not feel there's enough of a market for this sort of thing, enough so they can resist the temptation to skew the news and publish columnists they absolutely know are full of baloney?