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Boyd said the Fairfax prosecutor, Robert Horan, had told the Times that he didn't have a problem with Blair or the newspaper but with whatever sources were providing inaccurate information. It is not clear whether Blair made up those unnamed law enforcement sources.
Raines sounded contrite, according to participants, when he said he knew he was viewed as pushing the newsroom too hard You think there s a star system. What little applause there was went to Metropolitan Editor Jonathan Landman, who wrote an e-mail in April 2002 We have to stop Jayson from writing for the Times.
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Tension, Anger at NYT Staff Meeting
Sure, we know there's terrorism in Saudi Arabia, SARS around the world, a presidential campaign at home, yadda yadda yadda. But everyone in our world -- okay, everyone in our Zip code -- is still buzzing about the Jayson Blair meltdown at the New York Times, to the point that we can't make it to the men's room without hearing four theories and three new rumors.
So let's lead this morning with our report on what happened at the Gray Lady yesterday, and then we'll get back to the rest of the universe:
Howell Raines told a tense and somber gathering of New York Times employees yesterday that he would not resign as the newspaper's executive editor, but acknowledged that many reporters view him as "inaccessible" and "arrogant," and vowed to improve the newsroom climate.
Asked by business reporter Alex Berenson if there were any circumstances under which he would consider quitting over the handling of Jayson Blair's serial fabrications, Raines said: "My plan is to have this job and perform it with every fiber in my body as long as this man next to me," Publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr., allowed it. At that point, Sulzberger declared: "If he were to offer his resignation, I would not accept it."
As recounted by numerous participants, some of whom took notes, the session, attended by more than 500 people at a movie theater near the West 43rd Street newsroom, was marked both by contrition on the part of the newspaper's top editors and angry exchanges in which they appeared testy and defensive.
Joe Sexton, a metropolitan desk editor, used a profanity in demanding to know how the paper could have sent Blair, a 27-year-old reporter with a checkered record, to cover the Washington sniper case. "You guys have lost the confidence of much of the newsroom," Sexton said.
Raines told Sexton sharply not to "demagogue me" or use curse words, saying the discussion should be more civil. But he also said: "I'm sorry I don't have your trust. I hope I can win it back."
The two-hour meeting capped four days of growing tension since the Times, responding to earlier news reports, acknowledged in a four-page spread that Blair had faked or plagiarized at least 36 stories.
The fallout represents the biggest crisis of Raines's 20-month tenure, and comes just a year after he was basking in the glow of the paper having won an unprecedented seven Pulitzer Prizes. Yesterday, his strong-willed style appeared to be on trial as much as the admitted failure to detect Blair's lies.
What little applause there was went to Metropolitan Editor Jonathan Landman, who wrote an e-mail in April 2002: "We have to stop Jayson from writing for the Times. Right now." That memo went only to the associate managing editor for administration and the assistant to Managing Editor Gerald Boyd, Raines said, adding that he never saw it until after Blair's resignation.
Sulzberger, the company's CEO, made no attempt to minimize the damage, saying: "If we had done this right, we wouldn't be here today. We didn't do this right. We regret that deeply. We feel it deeply. It sucks."
Boyd apologized for his mistakes but said it was "absolute drivel" to suggest that he had acted as a mentor to Blair, who, like the managing editor, is African American. "Did I pat him on the back? Did I say 'hang in there'? Yes, but I did that with everybody."
Blair had been cultivating Boyd, nominating him for a National Association of Black Journalists award and writing up the prize in an employee newsletter.
Boyd said he had had only two serious talks with Blair--one after the Sept. 11 attacks, when Blair's behavior became more erratic, and again after Blair was accused of plagiarizing an article from the San Antonio Express-News, urging him to come clean.
"This is not about a failure of minority journalists," Boyd said, or about being "too compassionate. ... Let's not make this about race or youth or anything that divides the most talented newsroom in the country and indeed the world."
Raines sounded contrite, according to participants, when he said he knew he was viewed as pushing the newsroom too hard: "You think there's a star system. You think there's a culture of fear where editors are afraid to bring Howell bad news. Obviously that's not what I want."
Sulzberger told the staff that "if your trust in us is broken, all I can tell you is we are committed to repairing it. If it is only bent, bless you."
From the moment Berenson asked about resignation--saying it was a difficult question but one he'd ask of the boss at any other company under the circumstances--it was clear that long-simmering staff resentment was bubbling over.
Raines said that Landman had been "right all along" in warning about Blair, and Boyd acknowledged he didn't tell National Editor Jim Roberts of Blair's previous problems when the reporter was moved to the national staff to cover the sniper case and interview the families of soldiers in Iraq.
The paper's response to Landman's warning, Raines said, was for Boyd's assistant to write a "strong memo" to the personnel file, saying Blair was in danger of losing his job. It is not clear if anyone else saw the memo.
The most difficult exchanges came when the metro desk's Sexton asked why no action was taken after the strong challenges to Blair's reporting in the sniper case--including from the paper's own Washington bureau. The U.S. attorney in Maryland disputed a Blair article that said suspect John Muhammad's interrogation was cut short just as he was about to confess, and a Fairfax County prosecutor called a news conference to denounce a second piece as "dead wrong."
Raines and his team "did nothing" to verify "the authenticity or quality of his reporting," Sexton said. Why, he asked, did no senior editor demand to know the identities of Blair's unnamed sources?
Raines said it was his failure not to ask about the sources. He said he had "a political reporter's DNA," not "a police reporter's DNA." But he also said that after examining Blair's story and a Washington Post account, he believed the story about the truncated interrogation was at least partially true.
Boyd said the Fairfax prosecutor, Robert Horan, had told the Times that he didn't have a problem with Blair or the newspaper but with whatever sources were providing inaccurate information. It is not clear whether Blair made up those unnamed law enforcement sources.
A young reporter, Shaila Dewan, said it was "very demoralizing" that no other younger reporters, and no women, were given a chance to help out on the sniper coverage, when someone with Blair's baggage was chosen.
Some Times staffers say what they call Raines's "autocratic" management style--a "culture of favoritism," as one described it--helps explain why Blair was deemed untouchable. Since Raines took over in September 2001, several top editors--including the national editor, assistant national editor and two investigative editors--have either left the paper or moved to other assignments. Staffers have complained that Raines runs a top-heavy "Politburo" in which their influence was greatly reduced and managers were categorized as being either on or off the team.
During the same period, nine national reporters--including Kevin Sack, who just won a Pulitzer for the Los Angeles Times--have either quit or moved to other slots. Some have complained about pressure from Raines to travel more and file more pieces rather than pursue larger features.
One staffer asked yesterday about the departure of Sack and other seasoned reporters, who are widely seen as having been driven out by Raines. The executive editor said he had to do a better job of retaining talent.
Raines was also asked whether other Times reporters were getting a pass for sloppy or inaccurate reporting. He said it "would be wrong to start cannibalizing those achievers on our staff."
Toward the end of the meeting, piped by phone into Times bureaus around the world, Raines called it "illuminating, painful and honest."
The Times reported yesterday that the U.S. attorney's office in Manhattan has asked for information about Blair, but the nature of the request, and what laws might have been violated, were not disclosed.
Separately, a Times spokeswoman confirmed earlier this week that Blair has a relationship with a clerk at the paper who is a friend of Raines's wife. The New York Daily News reported that the woman, Zuza Glowacka, has worked in the Times photo department--an important fact because the Times says Blair faked some details in his stories by gaining access to the paper's computerized photo archives.
Blair told the News in a statement read over the phone this week that "I remain truly sorry for my lapses in journalistic integrity. ... I continue to struggle with recurring issues that have caused me great pain."
The New Republic, http://www.tnr.com/etc.mhtml meanwhile, enters the Jayson Blair fray:
"The policy Howell Raines and other Times executives were administering when they overlooked these things wasn't affirmative action; it was the fetishization of diversity, which is a complete perversion of affirmative action. And any fetish--any monomaniacal fixation on a single goal, whether the goal is diversity or proper grammar or having a certain type of Danish at editorial meetings--can be exploited by a pathological rogue looking to game the system. (Though it should be pointed out that the lion's share of the blame still lies with the pathological rogue, regardless of who or what made his rogue behavior possible. It should also be pointed out that we, of all publications, are not immune to pathological rogues.) ...
"Howell Raines was apparently practicing a form of authoritarianism that isolated him from his staff and reinforced his personal fixations. And it came back to haunt him."
American Prowler's http://www.spectator.org/article.asp?art_id=2003_3_31_1_57_9 Wlady Pleszczynski scoffs at the Times investigation:
"If executive editor Howell Raines were at Enron, his name would be Kenneth Lay.
"Sunday's report of its investigation into the Blair scandal simply takes one's breath away. Let's start with what's said. The paper concedes that reporter Blair committed countless acts of plagiarism, misrepresentation, and other deviousness over the course of his meteoric Times career. It admits Blair was appointed and promoted by the paper's top guns, despite warnings from less powerful editors at the paper (which immediately puts the lie to its official claim that what the paper had here was a failure to communicate). It denies any of this had anything to do with its open championing of affirmative action, the elephant in the room it mistakes for a gnat. ...
"As for not wanting to demonize Jayson, that's exactly what the Times has done, but without taking any responsibility for its own actions. If John Ashcroft had compiled Sunday's report, the paper would have squawked that his privacy had been violated at every turn. But with a huge score to settle and even greater embarrassment to escape, the Times gives it hard and good to its once proud project. Among other things we learn that he drank too much scotch, ran up tabs at bars, borrowed company cars and accumulated parking tickets on them (was he moonlighting at the U.N.?), smoked heavily, ate junk food, and was as sloppy in his appearance as he was in his work. On top of that, he had maxed out on his credit card. What a loser!"
We would have thought that William F. Buckley Jr. http://nationalreview.com/buckley/buckley051303.asp would defend Bill Bennett in the gambling flap, which seemed to be dying down. Instead, the National Review founder declares Bennett washed up:
"The sad business of William Bennett requires discouraging commentary. There is, first, the existential point, which is that Bill Bennett is through. We speak, of course, of his public life. He is objectively discredited. He will not be proffered any public post by any president into the foreseeable future. He will not publish another book on another virtue, if there is any he has neglected to write about. It is possible that the books written by him on the subject, sitting in bookstores, will work their way to the remainder houses. These are the consequences of the damage he has done to himself. It could always be that his inherent talents will prevail over undiscriminating fate. There are those who hope it will be so.
"A second question immediately arises: Has justice been done? Only in a raw parsing of the term, because what he did can correctly be deemed a private act immune from retributory sanction. It was wanton behavior, indisputably, but it was his own money being dissipated. The manner in which this was done raises eyebrows. If he had spent millions in decorating costs, his story would merely have been the tale of one more spendthrift. There is something about gambling when done other than on a scale associated with gin rummy and bridge, that is inherently censorious. Sensible criticism focuses on the unbounded character of his dissipation. When connected to stories of arrivals at casinos at three o'clock in the morning, to pump the $500 slot machines until dawn, what is depicted is addiction at pathological levels. The public thinks to reproach such conduct, not to okay it under the libertarian rubric."
Buckley complains about "the evident delight taken by what has happened to William J. Bennett. It justifies itself by spurting out that we have here the simple joy of holding hypocrisy to the flame of public ridicule. There's the procedural problem for Bennett critics who hold that private behavior is private behavior and should no more justify the impeachment of Bill Bennett than of Bill Clinton. But we cannot shake off the special animus here. What some critics are saying is that Mr. Bennett is the nation's premier secular catechist of virtue, and that the bigger they come the harder they fall."
Tough stuff, that.
It's too little, way too late for the Saudis:
"Saudi Arabia ignored repeated U.S. requests to tighten security around residential compounds housing American citizens before this week's terror attacks, the U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia said yesterday," reports USA Today. http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2003-05-14-saudi-usat_x.htm
"We continue to work with the Saudis on this, but they did not, as of the time of this tragic event, provide the additional security we requested,' Robert Jordan said in an interview on CBS' The Early Show. Jordan said the U.S. government asked the Saudis for the security improvements 'on several occasions.'"
The Nation's http://www.thenation.com/edcut/index.mhtml?bid=7 Katrina van den Heuvel is tired of the Hillary-bashing:
"Can't the Republican Presidential Task Force come up with more imaginative ways of raising money than attacking Hillary Clinton? Last week it sent out a mass mailing seeking funds to stop any prospective Clinton presidential candidacy.
"'If Republicans don't take immediate steps to counter her,' writes Senator George Allen, chair of the Republican Senatorial Committee, 'Senator Hillary Clinton will continue to rise unimpeded to the very pinnacle of power in Washington and we will see the dawning of a new, more liberal Clinton era.'
"Spare me. The specter of Hillary Clinton as Senator--and now President--may be one of the great rightwing moneymaking gambits of our time. (Also one of the most fraudulent given Hillary's longtime centrist record.) HillaryNo.com helped Rudy Giuliani, her then assumed rival for the New York Senate, haul in an unprecedented 19 million dollars in campaign contributions. Since then, scores of rightwing writers have cashed in by pillorying Hillary. Conservative publishing houses have grown fat from Hillary-bashing. Talk radio's revenues would be cut in half without the Clintons, and Hannity, Scarborough, Savage and O'Reilly could go out of business without Hillary to kick around. ...
"At least retailers are no longer reporting brisk sales in nine-inch Hillary voodoo dolls or doormats bearing her likeness."
The Cleveland Plain Dealer http://www.cleveland.com/news/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/news/1052904990293670.xml does a little fact-checking on its hometown candidate:
"Rep. Dennis Kucinich, a Democratic presidential candidate who has harshly criticized an economic plan reducing the taxes investors pay on dividends, co-sponsored a similar bill in 1998 when the economy was vibrant and the federal budget was in surplus.
"Kucinich, a Cleveland Democrat, said yesterday that he wouldn't vote for his own bill if it were up for consideration now."
The Raleigh News and Observer http://www.newsobserver.com/edwards/coverage/story/2537207p-2355689c.html tracks the latest attack on its home-state guy:
"A conservative pro-business group is taking whacks at Sen. John Edwards, both at home in North Carolina and on the presidential campaign trail.
"Americans for Job Security sponsored a full-page ad in The News & Observer on Tuesday suggesting the politically ambitious Edwards had sold out to trial lawyers and forgotten the people he's supposed be serving back home. ...
"Slated to run for several months, the billboards will portray Edwards as an obstacle to tort reform. One that's being planned shows pictures of donkeys and Edwards, with the following text:
"'A Montana man named Jack Ass sued the MTV show 'Jackass' for $10 million saying they plagiarized his name. ... Next time you see him, tell John Edwards lawsuits like this are asinine.' ...
"It's not surprising to us that a Republican-backed group that's employed [President] Bush's lawyer and has ties to [Bush political strategist] Karl Rove ... is trying to attack John Edwards in his home state,' campaign spokeswoman Jennifer Palmieri said."
Both these stories are prime examples of how home-state reporters often provide the most telling coverage of presidential candidates -- a phenomenon we wrote about in The Washington Post http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A47675-2003May12.html the other day.
Finally, Paul Krugman of the NYT and Fox's Neal Cavuto are really going at it. First, Krugman: http://www.pkarchive.org/column/051303.html
"Neil Cavuto of Fox News is an anchor, not a commentator. Yet after Baghdad's fall he told 'those who opposed the liberation of Iraq' -- a large minority -- that 'you were sickening then, you are sickening now.' Fair and balanced."
Mr. Cavuto: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,86795,00.html
"Exactly who's the hypocrite, Mr. Krugman? Me, for expressing my views in a designated segment at the end of the show? Or you, for not so cleverly masking your own biases against the war in a cheaply written column?
"You're as phony as you are unprofessional. And you have the nerve to criticize me, or Fox News, and by extension, News Corporation?
"Look, I'd much rather put my cards on the table and let people know where I stand in a clear editorial, than insidiously imply it in what's supposed to be a straight news story. And by the way, you sanctimonious twit, no one -- no one -- tells me what to say. I say it. And I write it. And no one lectures me on it. Save you, you pretentious charlatan."
We hate it when they hold back.
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