There Is No Such Thing as 'the Times'
By James Fallows
Sep 17 2012, 12:38 PM ET In response to this item yesterday, about mainstream media outlets figuring out how to cope with "post-truth politics," a writer who is a regular contributor to the New York Times and other publications (and is not a NYT staff member) writes with this elaboration:
*snip*
By James Fallows
Sep 17 2012, 12:38 PM ET In response to this item yesterday, about mainstream media outlets figuring out how to cope with "post-truth politics," a writer who is a regular contributor to the New York Times and other publications (and is not a NYT staff member) writes with this elaboration:
I enjoyed your piece on the Times' new public editor, and agreed with most of it, but I think there's an underlying fallacy to it, slight but significant, which your readers should understand:
There's no such thing as 'the Times', really. It is, of course, an enormous organization operating on very tight deadlines; there are hundreds of reporters and editors, each of whom acts at least somewhat autonomously, and often in a mad scramble to get the news out on time. The paper -- like any news organization -- has its standards, of course, but they're flexible and not always easy to enforce, and in many cases it's up to individual actors, faced with specific circumstances, to decide how to phrase things. A certain amount of oversight takes place, but a certain amount of freedom is granted, as well.
I mention this because I think readers, and people in general, often think of the Times --or the Washington Post, or CBS, or CNN -- as a monolithic entity, a single organism with a consistent approach to news-gathering. I suspect the Times likes to think of itself that way, too. But in my experience, this simply isn't true: reporters are given leeway; editors change things, or they don't; something gets rewritten by the desk at the last minute, because space is short or a new piece of information came in; phrases are added or dropped. I wouldn't describe it as arbitrary, but I think it's more contingent, messy, and catch-as-catch-can than most readers realize.
I like reading the Public Editor columns, but I think they're a bit misleading. They imply that there's a 'Times policy', and often there is, -- but often there isn't, or it's imperfectly enforced. We would all be better off, I think, if readers understood that the paper, like all papers, is a large and contentious organization, made up of strong-willed and opinionated people in a half-mad dash to produce a fair account of what's going on. It's message, methods, style and results are nowhere near as controlled as, say, a corporation, or a political campaign. The paper's editors try, and I'm glad they try; but they seldom succeed, and I'm glad they seldom succeed.
There's no such thing as 'the Times', really. It is, of course, an enormous organization operating on very tight deadlines; there are hundreds of reporters and editors, each of whom acts at least somewhat autonomously, and often in a mad scramble to get the news out on time. The paper -- like any news organization -- has its standards, of course, but they're flexible and not always easy to enforce, and in many cases it's up to individual actors, faced with specific circumstances, to decide how to phrase things. A certain amount of oversight takes place, but a certain amount of freedom is granted, as well.
I mention this because I think readers, and people in general, often think of the Times --or the Washington Post, or CBS, or CNN -- as a monolithic entity, a single organism with a consistent approach to news-gathering. I suspect the Times likes to think of itself that way, too. But in my experience, this simply isn't true: reporters are given leeway; editors change things, or they don't; something gets rewritten by the desk at the last minute, because space is short or a new piece of information came in; phrases are added or dropped. I wouldn't describe it as arbitrary, but I think it's more contingent, messy, and catch-as-catch-can than most readers realize.
I like reading the Public Editor columns, but I think they're a bit misleading. They imply that there's a 'Times policy', and often there is, -- but often there isn't, or it's imperfectly enforced. We would all be better off, I think, if readers understood that the paper, like all papers, is a large and contentious organization, made up of strong-willed and opinionated people in a half-mad dash to produce a fair account of what's going on. It's message, methods, style and results are nowhere near as controlled as, say, a corporation, or a political campaign. The paper's editors try, and I'm glad they try; but they seldom succeed, and I'm glad they seldom succeed.
*snip*
