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In Saturday's L.A. Times, Tim Rutten summarizes ex-NYT Editor Howell Raines' 21,000-word disgorgement in The Atlantic as "a devastating appraisal of his former newspaper and its prospects." He sheds some light on how Raines came to write the essay for Atlantic senior editor Robert Vare, who had edited Raines at the New York Times Magazine.
"Two weeks after Howell's dismissal," Vare recalled this week in an interview. "I wrote him a letter and invited him to write a piece for us." Raines declined, but suggested that he might want to write something about the coming presidential campaign. Last fall, Vare called with an idea for such a piece, but Raines said he "had an idea taking shape and really would like to discuss it over lunch."
The pair met in early December and, according to Vare, the former Times editor "started laying out the story that was everything I had hoped for. He wanted to give an account of what had occurred to him, but also to take a long historical look at the Times." A second lunch attended by Atlantic editor Cullen Murphy followed, and Raines agreed to begin writing immediately after the holidays. "He said he would deliver in a month," Vare recalled, "because he said he needed to get it out."On Feb. 12, he delivered a first draft of 30,000 words. We worked without letup for the next month to produce the 21,000 words we published." As an editor, Vare said, he was impressed with "the extreme candor with which he dealt with the subject.... The biggest surprises were his candor about his relationship with Arthur Sulzberger and the unglossed way he presents his own feelings. That sort of frankness is rare in a memoir."
On Sunday, David Shaw agrees with San Francisco Chronicle Editor Phil Bronstein's decision to remove the reporter and photographer covering gay weddings after they got married themselves.
We in the media are deluding ourselves if we think the public automatically accepts our simple assertion that we can report fairly on issues we not only feel strongly about but are personally involved in...Critics say the questions raised by Bronstein's actions are far broader than the issue of two lesbians covering one story.
Should a woman who's had an abortion be allowed to cover the abortion issue?
Should black or Latino or any other minority reporters, especially those who have suffered personal discrimination because of their race or ethnicity, be allowed to cover stories that involve those issues?
Should a Jewish reporter or a Muslim reporter be allowed to cover hostilities in the Mideast?
Daniel Okrent, the New York Times public editor, wades into the question of whether op-ed columnists have a duty to use only supportable facts, and to correct any that are wrong. The paper's stance is that errant facts should be corrected by the columnist at the end of a succeding column. But it's not consensus, Okrent notes.
In the consciously cynical words of a retired Times editor, speaking for all the hard-news types who find most commentary to be frippery, "How can you expect fairness from columnists when they make up all that stuff anyway?"