Figuring out why the media love to harp on the New York Times is like figuring out, um, why the media love to harp on Katie Couric: There must be a reason, but it's sort of ambiguous.

Couric, like the Times, serves a worthwhile purpose: Delivering the news and instigating debate.

But also like Couric, the Times, once a revered institution, has become an easy punching bag when any reporter, blogger, or self-professed media critic is looking for an easy punching bag.

Why?

In between transcribing interviews for Vanity Fair literary editor Wayne Lawson, Matt Pressman asks some folks who might know:

• VF's Michael Wolff: "Almost in inverse proportion to its own survivability, The New York Times becomes more and more holier-than-thou. You’ve lost your way journalistically, you’ve lost your way from a business standpoint, you’ve lost your way from an authoritative standpoint, and yet you are still so holier-than-thou. [...] Once, it mattered. Once, it set an agenda,” he says of the Times. “But it’s like a time delay: We know you’re over with, but you don’t know it, and you’re still here, so die! Let’s not put a fine point on it. They don’t do anything right. Their journalism is not good, their view of the world is not correct.”

• Gawker's Alex Pareene: "It occupies a position that no other newspaper does. So you get more offended when they’re using that platform to promote David Brooks or something.”

• National Review's Jonah Goldberg: “The Times is the coxswain, the one setting the pace for the entire culture. Sociologically, it just matters more.”

• Slate's Jack Shafer: "“People love to hate their newspaper for the same reason they love to hate their relatives. There’s aggravation built into any relationship that’s really close. If you read any newspaper—The New York Times or the Kalamazoo Gazette—you’re going to get wound up in it, you’re going to be delighted by it occasionally, and you’re going to be pissed off by it. [...] I would tell the people [who say the Times is a lousy product] to go fucking soak their heads,” he says. “What newspaper do they think does a better job? If you go to the library and start cranking through the microfilm of 30-year-old New York Timeses, I think you’ll quickly realize that it’s a more lively, more intelligent newspaper than it was 30 years ago. And it wasn’t a bad paper then. Does the paper aggravate, does it contradict itself? Yeah, but it’s a huge, huge monster. It’s on practically every continent every day, and our expectations of The New York Times are huge, as they should be."

• The Times' David Carr: "People have a very intimate relationship with the Times, and they bring a very high level of expectation to it. [...] I’ve got a 15- or 16-year-old minder out there, I think he lives in Kansas. That kid is on me all the time, and I used to hate the guy. I just thought, Shouldn’t you be playing with a Wii, or something like that? But I’ve come to see it as a ferocious kind of love. The indignation that goes with it I’m not fond of, but the message of ‘We expect better,’ I take it pretty seriously.”

• Jossip (not asked for comment , but we're including ourselves anyway): "Because they're trying to stop people from climbing their building. And that's just good urban fun."