Austin Bay has a follow-up on the New York Times treachery describing the Times and its sources as the "Axis of Abuse." I agree with much of Bay's analysis, but this part shows just a fundamental misunderstanding of how the news business works.

Bush Derangement Syndrome doesn’t explain the Wall St Journal– just “me too” follow-on behavior after the horse has escaped the barn.

The dirty secret of the newspaper business is that a large swath of newspaperpeople want to work at the Times, or they are Times alumni, or they think it’s simply smart to curry favor with the organization. Hence there is –if not a code of silence– a code of permission based on aspiration and admiration. There may also be a trace or two of fear.

The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal published the story not because they're gunning for jobs at the Times, but simply because there's no reason for them to sit on their parallel reporting once the news is out. The main difference between the Times and the Post and Journal appears to be the fact that the latter papers took the Bush administration's pleas for secrecy with far more seriousness than did the Times.

Let me put this in an easier to understand context. Let's say that several companies are working on a new and improved GPS locater device. The government asks them, for national security reasons, not to put the product out on the market. A short time later, one of the companies thumbs its nose at the government and puts it out on the market. The other two companies soon follow. Why? Not because they all want jobs at the first company, but simply because there's no reason not to have their product on the market too.

There are bloggers and others who are ticked at the Los Angeles Times and the Wall Street Journal for reporting the SWIFT program the same day as the New York Times, but Bill Keller made the decision for all of the newspapers that knew about the program. Back in World War II, you could make a good argument that just because a paper in Chicago publishes that we've broken the Japanese code other newspapers would be irresponsible to echo that reporting. However, today we live in an Internet-connected world, and news travels far outside of the circulation area of any one paper.

Just for the record, here's a list of newspapers that I won't work for, just in case anyone wants to accuse me of gunning for a job at the New York Times.