NYT | Private-school beat to gin up 'yakkers'

Ain't this rich! "Yes, we're finally doing it: Creating a full-time beat covering New York's private schools," New York Times metro section editor Joe Sexton told staff in a memo this week, according to Gawker. "It is, perhaps, the one topic other than real estate that lights up cocktail party conversation."

The memo continues: "Dalton. Brearley. Fieldston. Spence. Collegiate, Horace Mann and Riverdale. . . . They are bastions of aspiration and privilege both, places that inspire fierce competition and intense curiosity, worlds known to few outside their citizens yet critical to the shaping of the wider one. OK, maybe that's a bit much, but we know this: The stories are yakkers that race up the most e-mailed list and get noticed; we're talking about the kids of the people who run the world here."