Nadine just posted this story from Newsweek about the poisoned atmosphere in the New York Times newsroom over the Bragg story, coming on top of Blair. The reporters say that they are not operating like Bragg, and resent the special treatment he got.
A new CNN Poll says that 62% of the Public does not believe the press is accurate. The highest number ever reported.
I just watched a review of this on PBS News. John Temple, of the "Rocky Mountain News" said he had changed his policy on running Times stories after calling the paper and finding that they were not checking "anonomous" stories. As a result of this, he spiked the Times story last week about Bremer's "Shoot to Kill" order, and was glad he did. The story did not stand up.
Firestorm in the Newsroom
Newsweek Web Exclusive
For days, the national correspondents of The New York Times have been burning up, furious that suspended correspondent Rick Bragg has defended himself by publicly describing a work environment in which senior writers send out interns and stringers to do the majority of on-the-ground reporting.
NOW, THAT FURY is bubbling over into an open rage. On Wednesday, the Times's Peter Kilborn sent out a blistering e-mail to more than a dozen colleagues and the two top editors on the national desk. "Bragg's comments in defense of his reportorial routines are outrageous," Kilborn wrote. "I hope there is some way that we as correspondents, alone or with the support of the desk, can get the word out there, within The Times and outside, that we do not operate that way. Blair lies, cheats and steals. We don't. Bragg says he works in a poisonous atmosphere. He's the poison."
Kilborn said his e-mail was inspired by a story in The Washington Post in which Bragg described his reporting methods. In it, Bragg is quoted as saying: "I have dictated stories from an airport after writing the story out in longhand on the plane that I got from phone interviews and then was applauded by editors for 'working magic.' ... Those things are common at the paper. Most national correspondents will tell you they rely on stringers and researchers and interns and clerks and news assistants."
"I was really offended," Kilborn said in a phone interview on Wednesday. "I bust my ass chasing facts and I go to weird places I've never been and I have to root around to get the story. The whole idea [of using stringers to do the bulk of the reporting] is anathema to decent journalism."
Bragg was suspended for two weeks with pay last week after an internal investigation of one of his stories determined that an unpaid intern, J. Wes Yoder, did the bulk of reporting on a June 2002 story about Florida oystermen.
Reached today, Bragg said he wasn't surprised to this colleagues' reactions to his public comments. "That's bound to come," Bragg said from his home in New Orleans. "Of course, most of the time we do our own reporting, most of the time I do my own reporting, and sometimes I get help, sometimes from stringers."
Neither Times National Editor Jim Roberts nor the paper's spokeswoman, Catherine Mathis, could be immediately reached for comment. But independent phone conversations with a half-dozen correspondents revealed uniform, if unwritten, rules about how the paper's reporters use stringers and interns. Both are used for breaking news stories when there are multiple scenes unfolding at once--say, a tornado or a flood--or in cases where the paper's correspondent is unable to get on scene immediately. Stringers are also used for "voice" or "roundup" pieces, when, for example, the Times might run a story featuring the reaction of a dozen families to the president's State of the Union address. The consensus view is that reporters never use stringers for features.
Bragg, who has published 24 stories in the past twelve months, specializes in feature reporting. Bragg told The Washington Post he suffers from a debilitating form of diabetes which causes circulatory problems in his legs, and that he had been intending to leave the paper for years but stayed after a personal request from executive editor Howell Raines.
Kilborn's e-mail also touched on a number of other long-simmering complaints about the culture at the Times. "In the last couple of years, especially, I've bitched about being pushed into corner-cutting jams. Some of us were seen as slugs compared to the high-stepping Blair. But there is a line we don't cross however strident the new institutional demands for speedy production and instant datelines from everywhere.
"On the national staff, with the exceptions of Bragg and Blair, I have never had reason to think reporters operate any less honorably than I think I do. However intense the heat recently because of under staffing and demands to produce, we don't take short cuts, and we don't fake it."
Within minutes of being sent to about 20 other national correspondents and two editors, replies started to come in. Tim Egan wrote, "Glad to hear you say what I have been feeling ? Airports and hotels--and everything else is just ornamentation, made up by the gifted stylist. What a crock! The problem is we've had a two-tier system that has allowed Bragg to carve out one system for him, (cutting corners, using a huge stringer network, telling people he can't be edited) and another for everyone else ? Also, it's long been an open-joke among national staffers that anything Bragg wrote ... gets on page one, automatically, while everyone else has to earn their way out front. All of this is corrosive, hypocritical, and ultimately undermines a gifted staff. What will come of this infighting, cannibalism, and soul-searching? Hopefully, we'll go back to valuing what we have: people who care about the drift of this country, and are given the time and respect to tell it right."
Soon, Todd Purdum replied as well. "Leave it to you, Mr. Class, to sum it all up so well ? Of course, we use stringers on fast-breaking stories in multiple places: school shootings, natural disasters, political campaigns. Of course, we use stringers to baby-sit at long trials, listen to procedural motions, fetch documents and monitor routine press conferences, especially if other, more important elements of a story are happening elsewhere and the principal reporter has to monitor those developments. Of course, when we do roundups, we take feeds from all over. But nobody, and I mean nobody that I've ever heard of (besides Rick Bragg!) farms out the chance to spend a day on an oyster boat (eating some of the nation's best oysters, by the way!) for a wholly leisurely, discretionary, writerly feature story! These stories are why journalists are lucky to get paid for our work! ? Any correspondent, editor, manager or reader who thinks this remote-control method remotely reflects the way we do our jobs is living in a dream world. I'm terribly sad that our family problems have become fit fodder for the world to pick apart. But Rick Bragg's method is not typical. It's aberrant and repellent. Some of our colleagues have known this for years. Now the world knows it, and we're all the poorer."
For now, the infighting looks like it can only grow more bitter. Bragg asked Amie Parnes, a former stringer of his in Miami, to call NEWSWEEK with examples of Kilborn's use of her as an uncredited stringer reporting on investigative stories--a practice that everyone at the Times calls legitimate. Later, Bragg called back offering to give more examples of stories in which correspondents used stringer reporting for the bulk of their feature stories. And so on ...
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