‘Follow Me Around’ and the Long, Strange Trip to a Times Correction

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Most corrections are simple. The Times gets something wrong – inevitable when it publishes well over 100,000 words a day – gets a complaint, and quickly publishes a correction. This may happen dozens of times in a typical week.

Others turn into something far more complicated before a correction is ever published, if indeed it ever is. Editors meet with other editors. Parts of the story are re-reported by Times researchers. The writer pushes back. Days go by. Weeks. Even, on rare occasions, months.

Such was the case with a correction to a Sunday magazine cover story about the former senator and former presidential candidate Gary Hart, an excerpt from a book by a former Timesman, Matt Bai, now at Yahoo, titled “All the Truth is Out: The Week Politics Went Tabloid.” The story appeared in print on Sept. 21, after going online the previous week. The correction appeared Monday online (it can be found at the bottom of the story) and will appear in print, in the magazine, later this month, or about two months after the article was published.

Behind it is a tale worth telling. (Michael Calderone, the media reporter at the Huffington Post who doesn’t miss much, wrote a good account of this on Tuesday.)
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The Upshot and the Midterms: Big Test, Good Grade and Lessons Learned

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Two years ago – during the coverage of the 2012 presidential race – the relationship between Nate Silver’s Five Thirty Eight (then based at The Times) and the paper’s political team seemed tense. And an observant reader could sometimes pick that up in the journalism.

The data-based Five Thirty Eight had one strong narrative based on Mr. Silver’s algorithm: President Obama very likely would win re-election handily. Political reporters were presenting the race, based on traditional reporting and analysis, as either side’s to win. And Mr. Silver’s efforts were generally not integrated into the whole of The Times’s coverage.

This year’s midterm elections were a different story. The replacement for Five Thirty Eight (Mr. Silver left The Times for ESPN last year) is The Upshot, headed by a Times insider, David Leonhardt, who had been the Washington bureau chief. And Times coverage leading up to the election not only integrated what The Upshot was predicting but reflected what it was predicting: a big Republican win in the Senate.
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Shaky Times, Strong Journalism

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Updated, 2:50 p.m.

Although the finances at The Times aren’t strictly within my brief as public editor, I take a keen interest in them. After all, the health of the company is bound to affect the journalism. (One clear indication of that: For cost-cutting reasons, 100 newsroom buyouts or layoffs are in progress this month and next.)

So the coverage and commentary that followed last week’s third-quarter financial statements are worth pulling together here. Here are some highlights, plus interpretation.
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Responding to Reader Concerns on Ebola Coverage

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In terms of capturing the public’s attention, there may be no bigger story right now than the spread of the Ebola virus. The Times has given the story a great deal of attention with news stories, analysis, editorials, Op-Ed pieces and more. And most of it, from my reading, has been very good.

However, I have heard from readers with legitimate concerns or complaints about some important specifics. Here are three examples:
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Off to Denmark – and Off the Grid for a Few Days

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I won’t be posting here this week as I am heading for Copenhagen to give a talk about media ethics in the digital age.

Denmark, it seems, has had something of a rough year on that topic, as Columbia Journalism Review wrote in May:

On April 28, Danish newspaper BT broke the news that the gossip magazine Se og Hør (“See and Hear”) purportedly paid a contractor for the banking services company Nets to monitor the credit card activity of members of the royal family and other celebrities.

A little over a week later, the case has become the biggest media scandal in Danish history, and new revelations emerge each day. It has profoundly shocked a country far more accustomed to being hailed as a model of transparency than for News of the World-type shenanigans. And although many here within the media believe Se og Hør’s to be isolated in its tactics, a few critics have openly wondered whether something isn’t rotten in Denmark’s media culture as a whole.

The foundation associated with a large Danish media group, Berlingske, is putting on a conference to consider the challenges. Nick Davies, the British journalist who is the author of “Hack Attack: The Inside Story of How the Truth Caught Up With Rupert Murdoch,” which took up the British phone-hacking scandal, is also scheduled to speak.

I’ll be back soon to pick up on the many topics that readers have brought to my attention in recent days. Thanks to those who responded in comments, emails and on Twitter to my second-annual report to readers in Sunday’s paper. I very much appreciate the kind words — and have taken note of your constructive criticism as well.

For James Risen, a Struggle That Never Ends

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Readers of this blog may know that I’m particularly interested in the situation involving James Risen, a Times investigative reporter who is at risk of going to jail to protect a confidential source from his 2006 book, “State of War.”

What’s happened to Mr. Risen is one of the two most telling journalism episodes of the past decade or so, the other being the Edward Snowden leak.  They share common themes, of course: the growth of post-9/11 government surveillance in America and the role of the National Security Agency in spying on American citizens, among others. (I interviewed Mr. Risen at his home in suburban Maryland last year about his and fellow Times reporter, Eric Lichtblau’s, extraordinary warrantless-wiretapping story that was delayed for 13 months, finally appearing in 2005; it won a Pulitzer Prize.)

There have been some developments in the Risen story — and some fascinating coverage. I’ll summarize them here and comment only to say that I admire Mr. Risen’s toughness and a great deal of his work.
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Should David Brooks Disclose His Son’s Israeli Military Service?

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Columnists play by different rules than news reporters. By definition, they express their opinions. Columnists also, appropriately, get a lot of leeway in what they write and how they write it.

Having acknowledged that, I nevertheless understand the complaints of those readers who are bothered by something they have recently learned about David Brooks: his son is a member of the Israel Defense Forces. In a recent Hebrew-language interview in Haaretz magazine, Mr. Brooks was asked about his worries as a father. The article noted that the columnist’s “connection to Israel was always strong.” It continued:

“He has visited Israel almost every year since 1991, and over the past months the connection has grown even stronger, after his oldest son, aged 23, decided to join the Israel Defense Forces as a ‘lone soldier.’ ” (The reference is to a soldier whose family is not living in Israel.)

Mr. Brooks described the situation as “worrying.” He added: “But every Israeli parent understands this is what the circumstances require. Beyond that, I think children need to take risks after they leave university, and that they need to do something difficult that involves going beyond their personal limits. Serving in the I.D.F. embodies all of these elements. I couldn’t advise others to do it without acknowledging it’s true for my own family.’”
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Like Sea Level, Times Environmental Coverage on the Rise

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It’s hard to dispute the public’s dismay over climate change. When hundreds of thousands of people take to the Manhattan streets, as they did in the People’s Climate March last month, something big is clearly happening.

But a year ago, the signs weren’t particularly good for coverage of the environment in The New York Times.

A special group (or “pod”) of reporters who had that expertise had been disbanded, and the Green blog had been discontinued. I wrote about it several times, including a column that demonstrated that the amount and quality of coverage had declined.

Now, I’m glad to report, things are looking up again. Since the survival of the planet ranks pretty high on my list of what matters, it seems worth noting here exactly what’s happening and why.
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Diversity, Strong Editing and Moving Forward From the Shonda Rhimes Furor

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In more than two years as public editor at The Times, I’ve encountered very few subjects that have aroused as much passion and reaction as an Arts & Leisure article about the TV producer Shonda Rhimes and the stereotype of the “Angry Black Woman” the story leaned on. I wrote about it on Monday, and quickly hundreds of readers responded in deeply felt comments; my email has been overflowing with more commentary; and many people I know, inside and outside The Times, have been eager to talk about it. And other writers (Emily Nussbaum at The New Yorker, Linda Holmes at NPR, and many others) have taken it up.

The article and its aftermath tapped into something important – actually, many things: racial issues, mainstream media coverage of race and people of color, diversity on The Times’s staff, the role of strong editing, how people encounter stories in the digital age, and much more.

I talked late Monday with Dean Baquet, the executive editor, to get his view. His opinion is of particular interest because he made history a few months ago when he became the first black editor to lead The Times; he replaced the paper’s first female executive editor, Jill Abramson.
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An Article on Shonda Rhimes Rightly Causes a Furor

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The article on the television producer Shonda Rhimes hadn’t yet appeared in Sunday’s paper, but the virtual world was ablaze in protest over it on Friday after it was published online.

Written by the longtime TV critic Alessandra Stanley, its first paragraph – with a reference to Ms. Rhimes as an “Angry Black Woman” – struck many readers as completely off-base. Many called it offensive. Some went further, saying it was racist.

Another reference to the actress Viola Davis as “less classically beautiful” than lighter-skinned African American actresses immediately inspired a mocking hashtag. (Ms. Stanley’s article was pegged to a show, starring Ms. Davis, that will debut this week on ABC, “How to Get Away with Murder.”)

One email from Patricia Washington, a longtime Times subscriber, addressed Dean Baquet, the executive editor, with a copy sent to me. She wrote:

I am deeply offended by the story written by Alessandra Stanley about Shonda Rhimes being an angry black woman. At first, I tried to give Ms. Stanley the benefit of the doubt and thought that she was attempting to be irreverent. Then I realized that she was being racist, ignorant, and arrogant. It is interesting that I have never seen any of Ms. Stanley’s stories refer to any white producers of TV or film programs in racist, stereotypical terms. As awful as the story is, she got her facts wrong because Shonda Rhimes is not the executive producer of the new show, “How To Get Away With Murder.”

I am a black woman and a lawyer. I have worked very hard to achieve in my profession and earn respect. I live in a very nice suburban community in Maryland. And yet, none of that makes one bit of difference because a New York Times writer can make whatever offhanded, racist opinions about a successful TV producer who is a black woman she cares to make, and because she has the protection of The New York Times behind her, can publish it. Because Ms. Stanley is a New York Times writer, her story has reached a national audience. Why is Ms. Stanley allowed to characterize Ms. Rhimes as she did and get away it? Why is she allowed to characterize Viola Davis as she did in her story and get away with it?

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