In the last couple week, flip flopping has been a popular topic. From Presidential candidate John Kerry being ridiculed by George W.’s campaign to Richard Clarke sometimes seeming to talk from both sides of his mouth down to former NY Times editor Howell Raines now deciding that there are big problems at the paper after supporting it time and time again.
Now I understand that in Raines’ former role at the Times he had to keep on the company face, so to say, but let’s be realistic - you’re in journalism, you’re at the highest profile newspaper in this country and possibly a good portion of the world, and you don’t expect people to know what’s really going on?
The Agonist leads us to Paul Colford’s “Raines tears into The Times” in the New York Daily News, which covers the much ballyhooed monster article in the May issue of Atlantic Monthly. In it, Raines takes some potshots - probably all legitimately - at editors and the politics at the Times as a whole. But I take issue with some of the things he has to say - which seem to be countering things he said at earlier times.
He mentions the “calcified front page” that he inherited from predecessor Joseph Lelyveld and says senior editors now in place, who include successor Bill Keller, “seem to be picking their way across a minefield, having seen the destructive power of a change-resistant newsroom.”
While I would assume it would be tough to make changes at the paper, this article at TimesWatch seems to speak otherwise. In one example of a need for change managment in the newsroom, they report 2002’s comments by Jonathan Landman, who wrote in an email, “We have to stop Jayson from writing for the Times. Right now.”
Does that sound complacent?
Raines accepts responsibility “for the failure to catch” Jayson Blair - a reporter who plagiarized and fabricated stories - but claims he didn’t know about Blair’s error-prone ways until the writer left the paper.
He says no one told him.
If that’s the case, then he should bear the responsibility, because after the comments about Blair’s actions back in 2002 come out into the public eye, either someone did say something and nothing happened, or the Times culture frowns upon such suggestions by the staffers, therefore creating an unfortunate environment to have to work in.
It’s just so funny how everyone likes blasting their ex-employers once they’ve found something new and exciting to do. If only we all had 23 pages of much-talked about magazine to fill.
1 response so far ↓
1 Rep. Mark B. Cohen // Apr 15, 2004 at 12:24 am
In reviewing Howell Raines’ Atlantic article for bopnotes.com, I found myself getting angrier and angrier at Raines as I thought about what he had written. His focus on demographics undermined the core mission of the Times: journalistic excellence on important public issues. While he was giving us the play by play on Jayson Blair and the demographics wars, he totally ignored the buildup and beginning of our war in Iraq–by far the most important event of his editorship.
He is a brilliant man, and a great writer. But he misses what is vitally important, obsesses about transitory events, denigrates those whose support he needs and who have dedicated their lives to quality journalism.
There are undoubtedly many roles he has filled well and will fill well, but his account makes clear that Sulzburger had reasons to let him go, despite a general culture of not not firing people.