Yes, the coverage the NYTimes has given women's basketball has been a recent favorite target of mine. Back in 2006, he was emailed the question (not by me -- honest!):

--Why don’t you guys cover the New York Liberty?

You may recall Mr. Tom Jolly's reponse:

A. We report the results of all Liberty games, albeit usually in short items. Again, it's a question of resources. Except for the major teams, we're less about covering events and more about reporting on the bigger stories that transcend a particular sport. For instance, rather than merely cover the Connecticut-Washington playoff games this weekend, our reporter John Eligon wrote about two players, Taj McWilliams-Franklin and DeLisha Milton-Jones, with interesting back stories.
.....

The Times is a general interest newspaper, though, and our mission is to report on the big issues of the sports world. Just as our Foreign, National, Metro and Culture sections pick and choose the events and news they cover, we look for stories that are of broad interest.

The beauty of the Internet is that people who want to read more about a particular sport can easily do so by finding a Web site devoted to that sport. And you can count on us to be there when those sports are involved in news that elevates them to general interest, just as we were for the World Cup, the Olympics and the Tour de France.

(Sort of -- you may recall the word count tracking I did of the Women's National Team v the Men's Basketball)

A couple of months back, TJ was answering questions again. I've noticed (as other readers have) a significant change in the volume of coverage given to wbball, so I dropped him an "atta boy" email ('cause, you know, you need to use a carrot AND a stick. Though, I'll admit, wielding a stick can be more viscerally satisfying).

Seems TJ responded! (Back in Feb '08 -- who knew! And if you did, why didn't you tell me!).

A. See what I meant about readers viewing us differently, depending on their perspective?

Dr. Johnson, your complaint about our coverage of women's basketball refers to our Web site and is related to the earlier question about the availability of golf scores. Those statistics are provided by a third party vendor; we simply don't have the personnel to be able to keep up with all of the statistical information in sports. Unfortunately, the amount of data that's available relates to the perceived interest in each sport. Like it or not, women's basketball has not yet achieved parity with men's basketball.

As for *that damn WHB gadfly's* observation, I confess that you're keeping closer track of that than I am. *you bet your sweet bippee I am. And honestly, I don't believe you* We look for good stories in all sports and even if women's basketball isn't yet on par with the men's game in popularity, *we know that and appreciate the "yet"*it's got a significant following and lots of interesting topics.*we knew that -- glad you've figured it out*

By the way, both of you might be interested to know that I heard an ESPN radio commentator saying he can't stand women's basketball and that there was no way The New York Times was going to force it on him. *Yes, we've heard. Don't you love the fact that a couple of old grey ladies like the NYTimes and the WHB's gadfly can drive the poor, paranoid ESPN sod to distraction? I'm tempted to forward him some of Mechelle and Graham's articles. Does that make me evil? heh. heh.*

Again, it all depends on your perspective. *Or your personal biases*or media economics*or reader input*