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KELLER TALKS: NEW EDITOR OF NYT EXPLAINS BLAIR, BRAGG Tue Jul 15 2003 22:39:02 ET In tomorrow's NEW YORK OBSERVER, Off the Record columnist Sridhar Pappu interviews incoming NEW YORK TIMES executive editor Bill Keller. *** Though Mr. Keller said he did not "want to start off my new job with an argument with one of my predecessors," watching Mr. Raines' interview had "dredged a lot" of the feelings about the former executive editor's tenure to the surface. "The collateral damage, intentional or accidental in all of the things that were said were these people," Mr. Keller said, gesturing metaphorically to his new staff. "You know, the notion that the people who knocked themselves out covering an endless scandal, an impeachment in Washington, an election, the Florida recount, a couple of Balkan wars that I remember--the notion that these people were in the least bit complacent or lethargic was insulting to a lot of first-class professionals." *** Deeming Mr. Blair an aberration, Mr. Keller said the case did however display the basic vulnerability of a place that relies on trust in its reporters to get its stories out the door every day. "Even after you've vetted somebody's resume, talked to their references, watched them during a trial period, looked over their accuracy records, and so on," Mr. Keller said, "it can still be not enough. You can do a lot of things to monitor somebody's performance, but you basically trust them to do their job. We're not going to start assigning minders to reporters or bug their phones. We're not going to enact The Patriot Act at The New York Times. That would just be horrible! Who would want to work at a place like that?" Mr. Keller went on to call the actions of Rick Bragg, Mr. Raines' beloved star reporter whose excessive use of stringers in his reportage and subsequent claim that the practice was typical made him a pariah of 43rd street, "outrageous." "He didn't just take something that everyone else does and push it a little further," Mr. Keller said. "If anybody really had a sense of what he did, he would have been out of here in a heartbeat. The notion that these guys are somehow symptoms of how The Times did its work is ludicrous. So, you don't want to strip all the trust from the newsroom just because of a couple of rogues." *** Coming out of the now legendary town hall meeting in May, Mr. Keller remembered his assessment of the reign of Raines: it would survive this. Mr. Raines would make it because he was "a smart guy with extraordinary political instincts, and it was pretty clear the publisher at that point wanted to give him a chance." "What I underestimated at that point was that quality that Maureen Dowd refers to as 'The Lord of the Flies' quality, where, on top of all the legitimate grievances, a lot of extraneous baggage, frustrations exploded up. It was clear that people at the paper were not going to let it go. There was a small part of me that thought of it as poetic justice, but there was a much bigger part that thought it was excruciating to watch, because I'm devoted to this place and a lot of these people--and I don't know if you can really have friends when you're the executive editor--but a lot of these people have been my friends until now. And it hurt to watch them. " *** Also, Times sources tell Mr. Pappu that at 1 p.m. on July 14, Bill Keller stood before the top editors and managers of The New York Times in an 11th-floor dining room at its West 43rd Street headquarters. He would not, he told his new subjects as they ate their lunches, "divide the paper into friends of Howell and friends of Bill." At the meeting, according to Times sources, he specifically rejected published reports that assistant managing editor Andrew Rosenthal was headed for an exile desk far from the power center--a punishment for being an ally to Mr. Raines and former managing editor Gerald Boyd during their tenure; also rumors floating around about the existence of a list of "Howell hires" whose careers were now in dire straits. Looking at the group, according to sources present at the lunch, he said he knew there were people in the room who had done "extraordinary work under extraordinary duress," adding: "I admire people who can lead under duress." Developing... |
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