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The New York Times

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Keeping Environmental Reporting Strong Won’t Be Easy

By MARGARET SULLIVAN

Those who care deeply about environmental issues were understandably concerned Friday after learning that The Times was dismantling its special team – or “pod” – of seven reporters and two editors.

Beth Parke, executive director of the Society of Environmental Journalists, told InsideClimate News that The Times’s decision was “worrying.”

“Dedicated teams bring strength and consistency to the task of covering environment-related issues,” she said. “It’s always a huge loss to see them dismantled … it’s not necessarily a weakening to change organizational structure, but it does seem to be a bad sign. I will be watching closely what happens next.”

On Twitter, Dan Froomkin, a journalist, wrote: “NYT dismantles its nine-person environment desk — but says that won’t affect climate coverage. How is that possible?”

And Ben Grossman-Cohen, writing for OxfamAmerica.org, joined the chorus, calling the decision “an unmitigated disaster.”
Read more…

Creative Use of White Space in Sports … Discuss

By MARGARET SULLIVAN

Readers who picked up Thursday’s print edition and turned to the Sports section could be forgiven if they did a double-take or choked on their morning coffee. For what they saw on the front page of the section was … well, nothing. Or actually, almost nothing: The page was more than three-quarters blank, topped with a headline, in most editions, that read “And the Inductees Are …”

The design decision memorably recognized what many knew was coming, that the Baseball Hall of Fame voters, in the wake of the steroids scandal, would induct no living players into Cooperstown this year.

Reaction came quickly from the media world, and it was largely positive. The sports blogger Ed Sherman wrote that it shows how design can be a “profoundly powerful tool.” Dana O’Neil of ESPN called it “exceptional.” Read more…

In the Spirit of Ada Louise Huxtable, a Times Critic Reinvents His Role

By MARGARET SULLIVAN
On Criticism

Looking at the impact of New York Times cultural criticism.

Michael Kimmelman’s piece on Ada Louise Huxtable, who died this week at age 91, in Tuesday’s Arts section is tagged “An Appraisal,” but it could easily have been called something more enthusiastic: an appreciation. For by his own eager admission, Mr. Kimmelman – who took over as architecture critic in September 2011 — owes much to Ms. Huxtable, whom he calls a role model.

If Ms. Huxtable invented the role of newspaper architecture critic in the 1960s and 1970s, then Mr. Kimmelman has spent the last year or so inventing it anew – with more than a nod to the woman whose work he grew up reading and admiring.

“She’s been a role model and an inspiration,” Mr. Kimmelman told me Tuesday. “I exist in her shadow as somebody who aspires to see both the art and the social and political role of the built environment, and to treat this job as a bully pulpit for making better places to live.”

Unlike many of the other culture critics at The Times, the architecture critic has considerable freedom to choose his own assignments and areas of interest – not bound, as others are, by the equivalent of the blockbuster movie, the big Broadway premiere, or the major exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The role is “an outlier among the critics,” he said.
Read more…

Was a Reporter’s Role in a Government Prosecution a Reason to Recuse Him?

By MARGARET SULLIVAN

It’s a generally accepted rule in journalism that if you’re involved in a newsworthy situation, you shouldn’t cover it. Most of the time that makes excellent sense.

The Times made an exception to that rule on Sunday with Scott Shane’s riveting piece on John C. Kiriakou, the former C.I.A. operative who is facing prison for giving information to a freelance reporter.

Mr. Shane, a national security reporter in the Washington bureau, became a tangential part of the situation when Mr. Kiriakou was also charged with revealing to “Journalist B” the name of a person who had participated in the operation to catch the Qaeda terrorist Abu Zubaydah, which the government said was classified.

Some readers found fault with Mr. Shane’s writing of the story, given his involvement. One was James Savage, a former longtime investigations editor with The Miami Herald.

“There’s an easy way to avoid this glaring conflict of interest,” he wrote in an e-mail. “Assign another reporter to write the story. That reporter could interview Mr. Shane and include his comments, properly attributed, in a balanced story.”

That point certainly occurred to me on Saturday when I first read the story online, and again later when I saw it prominently displayed on the Sunday front page. I was also interested, as I read deeper into the article, to see Mr. Shane writing in the first person – that’s rare for a news story in The Times.

But my overall reaction was sheer fascination with the tale he told — an invaluable glimpse inside a secret world, one that provided rare insights into the reporter-source relationship. It also illuminates a troubling subject that does not get enough attention: the Obama administration’s prosecution of government employees who leak information to the press – an effort with major implications for press freedom and the ability to inform the public.

I talked with Mr. Shane and with two editors who were involved in the decision-making. They told me that, after quite a bit of discussion, they decided that the pros far outweighed the cons.

“Having Scott tell the story wasn’t a downside; it enriched the story, by allowing us to give readers insight on how Kiriakou operated,” said David Leonhardt, the Washington bureau chief.

Mr. Leonhardt added, “So long as the story made the disclosures that it did, I don’t see the argument that the reader would have been better served by someone else writing the piece and Scott being quoted in it.”

The piece originally was intended to appear in The Times Magazine on Sunday, but was moved to the news pages to get it published sooner. “We felt competitive pressure,” said Dean Baquet, a managing editor. Editors thought another news organization might be writing a similar story.

The article’s point of view, and Mr. Shane’s writing in the first person, might have seemed more at home in the magazine. But the value remained, despite its change of places. More than 500 readers commented on the story, and it generated plenty of attention on Twitter and elsewhere.

Mr. Shane, who proposed the piece to his editors months ago, saw an opportunity to tell a story from a different angle.

“It was a chance to be more direct about the dilemma involved when we report publicly on the secret activities of government,” he told me. “That involves rather risky relations between reporter and source – more risky now than it’s been in the past.”

I’ve been writing recently about the debate over reportorial impartiality and its role in the truth-telling that makes journalism worthwhile. One crucial element when impartiality comes into question is transparency.

This story is an example of just that. The reporter’s involvement is disclosed, and readers can draw their own conclusions.

“It’s always awkward when you’re a part of it,” Mr. Shane said, “but I thought it was justified.”

I agree. In this case, no one could have told this important tale as well. Those who have read it know more about how government and reporting work than they did before.

It’s the kind of story that makes you think; it may make you question the status quo. That’s a pretty good definition of what effective journalism does.

January 7, 2013, 2:08 pm
Sunday Column: When Reporters Get Personal | 

The journalistic ideal of impartiality is coming under attack. My column for this week. Read more »

Want a Long Obituary? Be President, Pope or Publisher

By MARGARET SULLIVAN
The longest obituary of the past 30 years did not appear on the front page.The New York Times The longest obituary of the past 30 years did not appear on the front page.

Combining my last two posts – one on long stories, one on front-page obituaries – here are a few more numbers to ponder.

Last year’s obituary for the former Times publisher Arthur O. Sulzberger was the fourth-longest obituary in the last 30 years.
Read more…

Front-Page Obituaries More Than Doubled in 2012 — Here’s Why

By MARGARET SULLIVAN

Are prominent people dying at a faster rate these days, or is it just your imagination?

You might well wonder that if you’re a regular reader of The New York Times’s print edition where front-page obituaries, this past year, became something less than a rarity.

In fact, the number of front-page obits more than doubled in 2012 over the year before – there were 30 … in 2011, there were 14.

The trend began with Joe Paterno, the longtime Penn State football coach, last January, and ended with Jean Harris, the headmistress-turned-convicted killer, last Saturday. Read more…

It Was a Big Year for Long-Form Journalism at The Times

By MARGARET SULLIVAN

As George Harrison once sang, it’s “been a long, long, long time.” I’m talking about 2012, when many long, long, long stories appeared in The Times.

One reason for that is that The Times published a lot of great journalism over the past year. Hugely ambitious projects often take a lot of space to tell (though length certainly is not synonymous with greatness).

And while greatness is subjective – though one thinks of Wal-Mart’s abuses, “Donna’s Diner” and the wealth of the Chinese prime minister’s family in that context – length is not.

So here are the numbers: Read more…

‘Snow Fall’ Tells a Story About an Avalanche and a Newspaper’s Digital Progress

By MARGARET SULLIVAN

With its spectacular graphics and photography, and its beautifully written narrative, “Snow Fall: The Avalanche at Tunnel Creek” was a compelling project, even for those who might not have been particularly interested in the topic.

The effort, which appeared last week, received around 2.9 million visits, and the visitors shared some qualities that are much desired by The Times. First, many of them – maybe as many as one-third — were new visitors to The Times. Second, they spent a lot of time with the project, about 12 minutes, which amounts to eons for a single digital story.

In an e-mail to the newsroom, Jill Abramson, the executive editor, called it a “wildly new reading experience.” She summed it up by noting that “rarely have we been able to create a compelling destination outside the home page that was so engaging in such a short period of time on the Web.”
Read more…

Adam Lanza, Asperger’s and a Misleading Connection With Violence

By MARGARET SULLIVAN

1. Did Adam Lanza, who authorities have identified as the gunman in Newtown, Conn., ever receive a diagnosis of Asperger’s syndrome?
2. If so, would that be relevant?
3. And has The Times been scrupulously responsible in the way it has reported on this aspect of Friday’s massacre at the Sandy Hook Elementary School?

In brief, here are my conclusions, based on my own reading and a number of interviews and conversations this week.

1. Possibly.
2. It would not matter to the killing; it would help in understanding the personality and experiences of the gunman.
3. The Times’s early reporting and presentation of the information was well-intentioned but flawed. (It began to remedy those flaws in a blog post Monday afternoon but had not yet done so in print on Tuesday.)

This subject is important to many of those whose lives are affected by Asperger’s or other forms of Autism Spectrum Disorder. They are troubled and angered by how the topic has been treated in The Times and other news organizations over the past several days. Read more…

Errors in Newtown Shootings Coverage Reflect Growing Pressures

By MARGARET SULLIVAN

Many Times readers wrote to me over the weekend with concerns about the coverage of the unfathomable events in Newtown, Conn. I’ll do my best over the next few days to answer and shed some light on the major questions and complaints.

I expect to do this in pieces. This initial blog post will be a start, but not the last word on the subject.

I’ll also state, from the start, that as the former managing editor and chief editor of a metropolitan newspaper, as well as a former beat reporter, I know too well that some mistakes may be inevitable on a major, fast-moving story, working against brutally demanding deadlines. That’s not an excuse, just a reality. Other mistakes are avoidable – sometimes that means being slower on the draw, which runs counter to every competitive news gatherer’s DNA. Read more…

DealBook Conference Was Impressive, Lucrative and Chummy

By MARGARET SULLIVAN

There was a lot happening at the inaugural DealBook conference on Wednesday — and much of it was undeniably impressive.

Here is what the invitation-only conference had going for it: Big Wall Street names, flashy graphics, edgy Global Chill music, weighty discussions of economic challenges, a few good laughs and even some news tidbits. And, with the pricey tickets and the all-platforms-blazing corporate sponsorships, the event brought in plenty of much-needed revenue for The Times.

Here is what the conference did not have going for it: A great deal of distance between sources and those who cover them — something traditionally thought to be a bedrock journalistic idea. Read more…

December 13, 2012, 11:29 am
Sunday Column: An Empty Seat in the Courtroom | 

Bradley Manning and WikiLeaks are a major story for The Times, so why was the paper so late to cover the soldier’s pretrial hearing?Read more »

Did the Mainstream Press Really Bungle the Campaign’s ‘Single Biggest Story’?

By MARGARET SULLIVAN

In one of the most fascinating media-related pieces I’ve read in a while, Dan Froomkin interviews Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein, two longtime Washington observers who wrote a book together and soon after, they say, found themselves near pariahs in a city that didn’t want to hear what they had to say.

Mr. Froomkin’s piece from The Huffington Post is titled “How the Mainstream Press Bungled the Single Biggest Story of the 2012 Campaign.”

And that bungled story, he says, is that Republicans lied their way through the campaign with impunity. As Mr. Froomkin writes, the pair’s major splash took place last spring, when The Washington Post published their essay “Let’s Just Say It: The Republicans Are the Problem,” adapted from their book, “It’s Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided With the New Politics of Extremism.” Read more…

Some Second Thoughts and Reader Feedback About the Middle East and Social Media

By MARGARET SULLIVAN

When I wrote last Wednesday about The Times’s Jerusalem bureau chief, Jodi Rudoren, and criticism of her social media use, many readers – and some of those quoted in the blog post – responded. Readers who are on Twitter can see some of it there (though, let’s face it, in the Twitter universe, something that old is about as fresh as Chaucer), and others can see a lively and provocative discussion in the comments below the post.

But I do want to make two points, after having some time to consider what I wrote and the reaction.

1. As has been pointed out to me by a number of readers, I should have provided more context for the quotation from Jeffrey Goldberg, briefly describing him, as I did another source of criticism, Philip Weiss. Read more…