Newspapers historically have done a pretty good job of examining the performance of everyone but themselves.
They scrutinize government, report about other businesses and critique theater, film, restaurants and even a competitor, television.
So the New York Times’ announcement Wednesday that it would start casting an eye inward caught journalists’ attention.
It’s a good first step but won’t necessarily, by itself, right the big apple cart that Jayson Blair overturned three months ago. Blair, you may recall, is the young writer who plagiarized the work of a journalist at another newspaper, made stuff up and lied about his whereabouts while supposedly doing research.
And, as noted in a memo from Times Publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr., he subjected his newspaper to “the sneers of television comics for whom the loftiest reputation in all of journalism had become a laugh line.”
All that may seem far removed from Central Florida, but the Times’ reliability and reputation matter here, too, because the Sentinel, like news organizations nationwide, makes use of the New York newspaper’s vast resources.
In accepting a committee’s recommendation that he appoint a public editor, incoming Times Executive Editor Bill Keller noted earlier resistance to that idea. “We worried that it would foster nit-picking and navel-gazing,” he wrote to colleagues, “that it might undermine staff morale and, worst of all, that it would absolve other editors of their responsibility to represent the interests of readers.”
The presence of a public editor won’t likely alter materially the level of nit-picking or navel-gazing at the Times or any other newspaper, and newsroom morale tends to undulate under the best of circumstances. But Keller has good reason for concern about shifting responsibility.
If reporters and editors assume that the public editor will take the heat for the newspaper’s transgressions, insulating them from their critics, the one-year experiment will fail.
Aggrieved readers don’t call and write to be mollified. They want answers; they want corrections; they want an echo. And they can get that, ultimately, only from the people whose work has puzzled or offended them.
A public editor can serve as a liaison, but the success of that effort depends on the participation and cooperation of the entire newsroom.
Just as vital is the newspaper’s tolerance for criticism.
It seems odd, but newspapers, which constantly hold others up to scrutiny, are notoriously thin-skinned. That may explain why, of the nearly 1,500 daily newspapers in the United States, fewer than 40 have public editors or ombudsmen by other titles.
Newspapers, though, depend on their credibility, which a willingness to admit failures only enhances.
The Times will take measures in addition to the appointment of a public editor to remedy its problems. It plans to appoint a standards editor and another to oversee staffing and career development, to guard against the sort of unwarranted promotion that allowed Blair’s excesses. It will reorganize its management structure and performance evaluation.
And it will work to improve internal communication — a skill that seems in short supply throughout this communication industry.
All that will help the Times. More importantly, it will help readers.
