Posted on 06/04/2005 7:56:06 PM PDT by neverdem
IT'S time to write Chapter 2 of the public editor chronicles at The New York Times.
Recently retired after almost 40 years at The Wall Street Journal, I've agreed to become The Times's second public editor - an outsider dedicated to representing readers and serving as a watchdog over the paper's journalistic integrity. In this first column, I hope to provide a sense of who I am and how I intend to tackle the job.
The first public editor, Daniel Okrent, boldly established the genuine independence essential to carrying out the job and elegantly dissected many of the major issues of journalistic integrity. A bit more of a nitty-gritty newspaperman, I hope to raise the blinds at The Times in some new ways to allow readers to get a clearer view inside the newsroom process. Greater transparency, I believe, can help you as readers better understand the news judgments that shape each day's paper - and hold The Times's news staff more accountable.
In the months ahead, there are three new approaches to transparency that I'm especially keen to try in this space: (1) publishing stimulating and thoughtful e-mail messages and letters from readers - with responses from the editors and reporters involved; (2) presenting question-and-answer interviews with key editors and round-table discussions with editors and reporters; and (3) occasionally offering commentary on two or three different topics, rather than one.
I also plan to make greater use of the Web. I intend to post more actual reader e-mails - with responses from Times editors and perhaps from me, if appropriate - on the Public Editor's Web Journal. My first commentary, posted there two weeks ago, questioned the Washington bureau's slowness in pursuing the significance of the so-called Downing Street memo on planning for the Iraq war.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
I'm not too optimistic. The Wall Street Journal's news pages was definitely for the underdog.
They're pretty transparent right now. They just don't know it.
Stick a fork in 'em.
It's not unprecedented. The two ideas are not mutually exclusive. Up through the Korean War, that was exactly how MSM functioned.
There is no doubt in my mind that becoming "internationally neutral" (and thereby providing aid and comfort to the enemy) has cost us many thousands of American lives since.
Something I don't see changing anytime soon.
Which should not take very long, as the paper HAS no journalistic integrity.
New coat of paint for the old Edsel...
Trade it in for the web...
*My Web journal can be found at nytimes.com/byroncalame.*
"I'm not too optimistic. The Wall Street Journal's news pages was definitely for the underdog."
Strange that Calame wrote "actual"...
It's a "transparent" beginning for the NY Times - but fumigation works better and faster.
Before one can instigate "integrity control" one has to have a viseral sense of integrity.
"I intend to post more actual reader e-mails..."
Calame's comment tends to imply there were less "actual reader e-mails" posted before...hummm!
The operative words being "actual reader"...suggesting that the NY Times has a fiction department.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.