The New York Times and Its New, Top-Secret Editor . . .

by Little Miss Attila on September 28, 2009

Althouse, quoting the criticism/self-criticism of The New York Times after it got caught with its pants down regarding the ACORN scandal (for starters):

Jill Abramson, the managing editor for news, agreed with me that the paper was “slow off the mark,” and blamed “insufficient tuned-in-ness to the issues that are dominating Fox News and talk radio.” She and Bill Keller, the executive editor, said last week that they would now assign an editor to monitor opinion media and brief them frequently on bubbling controversies. Keller declined to identify the editor, saying he wanted to spare that person “a bombardment of e-mails and excoriation in the blogosphere.”

So you’re assigning somebody to get the clues you’ve been too lame to pick up, and yet you don’t want people to be able to send him clues because — you’ve got to be kidding! — he’d get too much email. Who with any level of connectedness has not learned to deal with a ton of email?! Come on. I want to just yell “bullshit!,” but I’ll spell it out.

I get 100s of email messages every day, and it’s not even my job to pick up clues. I deal with it, and it’s not even that hard. You have an email address that is different from the one you use with people you know and trust, and you scan the first lines as they appear in the inbox. From that alone, you can see what’s going on, and you can choose to click through to whatever you want and spend as little as half a second reading it if you are any good. Damn, if your clue-getter isn’t able to do that, you might as well give up and write more stories about what middle-aged moms in Park Slope are saying about popsicles and iPhones.

And as for the desire to avoid excoriation in the blogosphere… have a nice day.

Wow. She must be furious. (By the way, I added a paragraph break for her in the blockquote, for readability.)

Via Insty, who also links to Taranto’s takedown of the Times: Secret Agent Editors.

Hoyt writes, of the sex-slavery sting, that “most news organizations consider such tactics unethical–The Times specifically prohibits reporters from misrepresenting themselves or making secret recordings.” True enough. But even James O’Keefe told the Acorn employees his name. At least in that sense, he was more honest with his targets than the Times now is with its readers.

Yup.

{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }

William September 28, 2009 at 12:15 pm

You miss the point of the real story. The quote from the NY Times blamed their slow response on lack of “tuned-in-ness” to issues dominating Fox News and talk radio. And to correct the problem they will now assign an editor to monitor “opinion media.” Herein is the real story. Talk radio and Fox News are considered opinion media by the NY Times, not real, reputable news organizations. It just goes to show you that Acorn scandals, Van Jones scandals and the host of other “real news” that is reported by Fox and talk radio are only viewed as someone’s opinion that a scandal exists, not that they are real scandals. Hence, Acorn and the like are not worthy of reporting by the esteemed NY Times because these are not really scandals in their enlightened minds. Another display of contemptable arrogance by left-wing media.

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Peter September 28, 2009 at 4:41 pm

I’m with William. Fox is “opinion media because they let a couple of conservatives on as well as center-right and lefties. Meanwhile a slew of writers slightly left of Leon Trotsky is just plain truth.

Anyhow, just persactly how long does it take to look that the front page of Drudge a couple times a day? I suspect that someone with a resonably fast internet connection could keep up with an overview of what the right side of the spectrum is up to in maybe two hours a day. Drudge, Insty, Cyntia Y’s nifty sidebar and done. They must assign one person to do this because everybody else on their staff is afraid of catching conservative cooties.

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