I count as authoritative someone who hasn't misled me too much.
Well, I sat with one of these authoritatives last night and she was giving me news, future news about the news.
She was credible, having been the first to suggest to me that the print edition of Mort Zuckerman's U.S. News and World Report was going under and would be supplanted by its website. She was correct.
What other tidings did she have?
That Newsweek was also going to the web exclusively.
And that the March of Time would make Time a monthly. Less Time, I guess.
Then we had a long and inconclusive conversation about The New York Times Company. One of its properties, the Boston Globe, is now so thin that there's now pretending it abides by the oath pledged on the front page of the Times itself every day: "All the News That's Fit to Print." In the emaciated Globe, there's hardly room to print anything. If it were to vanish only the sports fans would notice.
And as for the future of the Times itself: let us pray.