NY Times

<body topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 marginheight=0 marginwidth=0> <table cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 border=0><tr> <td valign="top" colspan=2 height=90 BGCOLOR="#006699" TEXT="#080000" background="055d05a3.jpg"> <div> <FONT SIZE="5" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Arial" ><B>Blithe Spirit</B></FONT><B>    </B><B> |     </B><A HREF="index.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Blithe Spirit"><U><B>home</B></U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id56.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Summer trip, 2003"><U>Summer trip, 2003</U></A>   |   <B>NY Times</B>   |   <A HREF="id46.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Relativism smashed"><U>Relativism smashed</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id48.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="3/31/03"><U>3/31/03</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id54.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="PreTrip stuff"><U>Pre-Trip stuff</U></A></div> <div> </div> </td> </tr><tr> <td valign="top" width=210 BGCOLOR="#FFCC66" TEXT="#080000" background="056d2123.jpg"> <bR> </td> <td valign="top" height=390 BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" TEXT="#080000"> <div> <I>NY Times</I></div> <div> <I><B>TIMES</B></I><B> MARCHES ON AND ON</B><FONT SIZE="6" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Courier New" ><B> </B>. . .</FONT><FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Courier New" > <B>Stopped by the PC last Sunday, not yesterday, on way to church, checked e-mail, and found word of NY Times self-flagellation in long p-1 article about its reporter who done wrong, Jayson Blair.  He faked and faked, conning men old enough to know better -- a great black hope for an almost all-white (liberal!) newspaper, too smart for his own and their good.</B></FONT></div> <bR> <div> <B>The Sunday message included praise for the Times for telling all.  To which I responded that the Times owed us as much.  I might have added they owed as much to the Newspaper Affirmative Action Movement, which had taken a mighty hit.</B></div> <bR> <div> <B>Many, many others have weighed in -- there's a columnist in South Dakota down with the flu who has not -- because when Homer nods, it's news.  (Just more of the same, said, nastily, the UK Guardian, which pulled out a laundry list of American foolers of readers in the past few years.)  </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>Right off, on the web Newsweek hit on the con-man aspect, with attention to Blair having a higher-up black friend, the managing editor, saying that was not explored in depth in the supposed tell-all.  The m.e. later said bunk to that.</B></div> <bR> <div> <B>It wasn't just the m.e. anyhow.  The exec editor Howell Raines -- his cousin Claude, spelled differently, gave us the usual-suspects line, didn't he?  Casablanca? -- was more firmly on the hot seat.  If Blair bragged about being close to him and the m.e., so did Raines (no relation to Claude that I know of, was just kidding about that) brag to the black newsies' convention about this hot young black product.  (Item is repeated below, lest you think this is not edited.)</B></div> <bR> <div> <B>Raines said this while in effect covering for him, not telling this editor what that one had said, like about Blair's breaking the corrections record for reporters, 50 or so in three years.  Egad.</B></div> <bR> <div> <B>Raines liked stars, we read.  If he made you, you were in, and people didn't question him.  Some stars he did not make left the paper, including excellent religion reporter Gustav Niebuhr.</B></div> <bR> <div> <B>FUNNY PAPER </B>. . . <B>I personally have been urged not to gloat over the Times problem, its tale of the Reporter Who Lied, because it's liberal and I'm not.  Or it's liberal by today's standards and I am not.  And I surely will not gloat.  You don't kick a guy when he's down, not even the bully, tempted though you might be.  </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>But some deconstruction of publisher talk is in order, I don't care what fair-play fanatics say.  Consider this from Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., he of the choir-boy countenance, scion of the Most Famous Family in Newspapers, in last Sunday's long story about Blair.</B></div> <bR> <div> <B>"The person who did this is Jayson Blair," said Arthur.  </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>Did what?  Promoted the guy when he was "a train wreck waiting to happen," as a reporter told Newsweek?  We are letting bishops off the hook who abided pederastic priests?</B></div> <bR> <div> <B>"Let's not begin to demonize our executives," said Arthur Jr., the scion, "either the desk editors [who are not or not mainly on the pan] or the executive editor [who is] or, dare I say, the publisher."  [How dare you.]</B></div> <bR> <div> <B>THAT WAS THEN, THIS IS 8 DAYS LATER </B>. . . <B>So it's been a week and a day since the Big Story.  The dedicated commentator is surfeited with this simony -- sale of outward signs not of grace but of what's going on in the world, sale because with these signs the Man Who Fooled the Times bought temporary residence in the heart of his editors who counted.</B></div> <bR> <div> <B>Among conclusions to be drawn, one is that NY Times can't be trusted as before, especially if the story is by a black reporter.</B></div> <bR> <div> <B>How are we not to conclude that Raines and his m.e. gave this guy a pass because he's black?  Raines boasted about him to black journalists, ignored warnings from sub-editors -- unless the underling did not tell him the bad news, fearing execution of himself as messenger.</B></div> <bR> <div> <B>It was a "terrible mistake," said Raines.  Uh-oh, the M-word, beloved of malefactors from President Bill to Rev. Jesse to your average bank robber down the street.  Raines will assemble "a task force."  Yes!  What this newspaper needs is a task force!  Tell it, Brother!</B></div> <bR> <div> <B>A POSITIVE NOTE </B>. . . <B>The tell-all story says Blair dined in NYC while supposedly elsewhere, etc., never putting in for expenses for flights etc.  </B><I><B>This could be why he got so far.  Can you imagine how much a paper would save if nobody ever went anywhere?</B></I></div> <bR> <div> <B>MANAGERIAL INEPTITUDE </B>. . . <B>The issue is not how bad Blair was.  That is to say, it's conceded and has no further interest except to psychologists.  The issue is how badly managed the Times was, though never having managed a newspaper, who am I to say?  But a sloppier operation can hardly be imagined.  </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>Raines was "shaking things up," as they say in managerial circles, getting rid of "dead wood," putting in "his own men" and all that.  Riding a varicolored charger, he was having a ball -- delighting in Blair's work, bragging about him, as above, ignoring his middle managers.</B></div> <bR> <div> <B>Chi Trib's David Greising 5/18 compares him to the top man at Enron, who publicly praised his key underling so highly that no one felt free to criticize him.  There was a newsroom "filled with stars and a detached boss," says Greising.  No wonder the city editor sent his stop-Blair memo and let it go at that.</B>  <B>[5/19/03]</B></div> <bR> </td> </tr></table></body>