Raines: “Important, Explanatory Point” Was Missed
Former New York Times Executive Editor Howell Raines writes that it was learning that disgraced reporter Jayson Blair had undergone treatment for drug problems that caused him to approve the assignment of Blair to cover the Washington-area sniper shootings despite problems with his previous work.
In a 20,000-word article titled “My Times” in the May issue of The Atlantic Monthly, Raines said that writers who have quoted his remark at a Times staff meeting last May 14, at the height of the Blair controversy, that “race had probably played a role in my approving the suggestion . . . failed to make an important explanatory point” — that Raines thought that Blair had become a better reporter because he had undergone drug treatment.
Elsewhere in the piece, which covers his two-year tenure as executive editor, as well as other aspects of his 25-year Times career, Raines:
- Describes how in 1997 a disappointed Gerald Boyd had to be restrained from walking out of a dinner when he was told he was out of the running for managing editor (he later became the first African American in the job when Raines became executive editor, and he left the paper with Raines).
- Says he felt the paper was out of touch with communities of color when he took the top job; citing the paper’s “perfunctory” coverage of the death of the singer Aaliyah in the summer of 2001.
- Defends the 14,000-word front-page story tracing Blair’s fabrications, despite criticism from many, including “one of my mentors, Arthur Gelb,” that it was overkill. He said the paper’s previous errors in covering Wen Ho Lee, the scientist accused by the Clinton administration of spying for China, had not been “sufficiently explained.” Gelb is a retired editor who spent five decades at the Times.
- Mentions fears that Blair would kill himself after his fakeries were discovered. “Jayson had sent word through Lena Williams, the Newspaper Guild’s Unit Chair, that he would no longer talk to anyone at the Times, because he was upset that his integrity was being questioned. Lena was fearful that Jayson might kill himself, and Gerald assured me he had taken steps to see that Jayson was not alone after his dismissal,” Raines writes.
- Says that Blair’s rate of corrections “averaged out within the normal range,” despite suggestions by some media writers last year that the rate was extraordinary and were excused because Blair is black. “I learned during the course of my inquiry that editors overseeing new employees become alarmed when five percent of a reporter’s stories provoke corrections. That sounds like a high number, but it should be remembered that corrections are often the result of production or editing errors that have little to do with the substantive reporting of a story. In fact, some of our most respected veteran reporters actually had higher correction rates,” Raines writes.
- Dismisses the conclusions of the Siegal Committee, the panel that investigated the Blair affair, as “a hymn to the old status quo, drafted by the very people who most strongly resisted the idea of a more vigorous and inclusive way of producing the paper.”
An excerpt from the article, on Raines’ reasons for assigning Blair to the sniper coverage, is at the end of today’s posting. The May issue goes on sale April 13.
CUNY Plans J-School in 2005, Seeking a Dean
The City University of New York, whose students are 50 to 60 percent black, Latino and Asian, plans to open a school of Journalism in the fall of 2005 offering a one-year master’s degree program, a spokesman told Journal-isms today.
It will be “the first such master?s degree to be offered by a public university in the Northeast. The program will concentrate on urban journalism with New York City as the focus of exploration,” a statement from the university says.
Though New York is “the media capital of the world and a major source of employment, until now there really wasn’t a viable alternative for the students that we have” to study journalism at the graduate level, said Michael Arena, university director of media relations. “Just the kind of folks” that the big media companies say they want, Arena added. He said the university, which has 19 campuses and 215,000 students, plans a journalism school campus in midtown Manhattan. It is expected to start with 50 students and work up to 200 to 250 over four years, he said.
By contrast, the private Columbia University’s School of Journalism had 331 students last September, of whom 10 percent were Asian, 9 percent Hispanic, 3 percent South Asian and 6 percent African American, a spokeswoman there said.
City College of New York, the centerpiece of CUNY, was once known as “the Harvard of the poor.” CUNY introduced open admissions for all high school graduates in 1970, but began phasing it out above the two-year college level in 1999.
Meanwhile, the new school is seeking a dean.
“The successful candidate will be an innovative leader who can respond creatively to the demands of a new institution within a complex system. He or she will bring to the job significant academic achievement in journalism education or professional experience as a journalist or writer, with a solid professional publication record and an understanding of media and media technologies,” the job description begins.
Writer Says Jack Kelley Traded in Stereotypes
“A Jewish settler named Avi Shapiro vows to eliminate the ‘sons of Arab whores.’ He dons his yarmulke and, along with 12 vigilantes, riddles a Palestinian taxi with bullets. A Pakistani youth unfurls a photo of the Sears Tower and sneers, like a villain in a Chuck Norris movie, ‘This one is mine.’
“Those are scenes that Jack Kelley, formerly a star reporter for USA Today (he quit in January), claimed to bear witness to in the Mideast,” writes John Gorenfeld in the online magazine Salon.
“What stands out in Kelley’s phony oeuvre — remarkable by any standard, with imagined Cuban refugees drowning by moonlight and multiple fake decapitations at a suicide-bombing in Jerusalem — is the way he trafficked in particularly explosive stereotypes,” Gorenfeld says.
In the Baltimore Sun, meanwhile, media critic David Folkenflik writes that, “Since Kelley’s forced resignation in January . . . it has become clear that during the last 12 years, a number of questions were raised about his professionalism that could have triggered [editors’] concern.
“The committee is still conducting its investigation. It has yet to describe how a major newspaper — in this case, the nation’s largest circulation daily — could put such trust in a person who appears to have repeatedly proved so unworthy of it.”
New Owner Promises Vigorous Black Press in L.A.
“The family of Danny J. Bakewell, activist, real estate developer and leader of the Los Angeles Brotherhood Crusade, has purchased a controlling interest in the Los Angeles Sentinel, the oldest and largest black-owned weekly newspaper in the West,” Eric Malnic and Arlene Martínez report in the Los Angeles Times.
“Bakewell said he would become the paper’s executive publisher, board chairman and chief executive officer.”
“We intend to make the Sentinel the premiere black newspaper in this country,” Bakewell said in the piece. “We want to make sure that the voice of the black community echoes loud and clear.”
“Bakewell, who has been on the paper’s board of directors since last year, said he would take steps to increase the weekly paper’s sagging circulation, which he said currently is about 30,000. He said the innovations will include the establishment of news bureaus in Inglewood, Lynwood, Compton, Rancho Cucamonga and the San Fernando Valley.
“We’re going to add an obituary section and a business section, build a strong editorial influence and do more investigative reporting,” Malnic and Martinez quoted Bakewell as saying.
Jackson “Feeling Good” About Sun-Times Chances
Jesse Jackson’s son Yusef Jackson, who along with billionaire family friend Ron Burkle made a bid estimated at more than $850 million for the Chicago Sun-Times and Hollinger International Inc.’s other Chicago properties, “has no plans to back away from his offer. On the contrary, he is said to be ‘feeling good’ about his prospects of winning,” according to columnist Jim Kirk in the Chicago Tribune.
“He’s so confident, in fact, that there already may be plans in the works to step away from the day-to-day operations at the distributor,” Kirk quotes a source as saying. Jackson runs an Anheuser-Busch beer distributorship.
Bundles Charges Plagiarism of Madam Walker Book
A’Lelia Bundles, director of talent development at ABC News and the biographer of her great-great-grandmother, Madam C.J. Walker, the hair-care products entrepreneur, “has filed a formal complaint alleging that sections of her critically acclaimed book have been plagiarized by Beverly Lowry, author of a competing biography of Walker that came out last year.
“It is the latest and most serious criticism leveled at Lowry by Bundles, who has been critical of the Lowry book since it was first published,” as Calvin Reid reported Monday for Publishers Weekly.
“Bundles has filed a formal complaint with George Mason University, where Lowry teaches, calling for academic peer review of Lowry’s Her Dream of Dreams: The Rise and Triumph of Madam C.J. Walker, published by Knopf in 2003, claiming ‘academic plagiarism’ as defined by the George Mason University faculty handbook and by other references for academic standards. She alleges that in at least 28 instances, Lowry has ‘lifted my actual words, paraphrasing several sentences, paragraphs and sections of my book without the appropriate quotation marks or citations,’ Reid wrote.
“Bundles is also alleging that Lowry has used her original research, which includes personal family documents and formal research at research facilities in more than a dozen U.S. cities, without ‘proper attribution.’ . . . ‘I’m confident that any literate person who makes a sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph comparison of the two books will see that Lowry has plagiarized portions of my work and claimed credit for research that I know, I personally developed,’ Bundles says.”
Reid reported today that a George Mason University review panel rejected the claims of plagiarism.
“In a telephone conversation, Deborah Kaplan, chair of the English Dept. at George Mason University, said that the matter had been ‘handled according to university procedures,’ and that the panel ‘has found no basis for the allegations.’ Kaplan declined to describe the review or even say how long the review process took.
“Told that GMU had found that was ‘no basis for the allegations,’ Bundles said, ‘I’m not surprised that her university would circle the wagons. This is an expected response from an institution.’ She added, ‘USA Today defended Jack Kelley for a very long time until they could no longer justify doing so. Despite the conclusion of the English Dept. at George Mason University, I still feel confident that the examples I have provided show that Lowry has taken material from my book without proper attribution.’ As we went to press, Lowry had not responded to a phone call requesting comment.”
Listeners Upset by WLIB Switch to Air America
Longtime listeners to New York radio station WLIB’s Caribbean programming are upset that the station is becoming the home base for the new “progressive talk” network Air America and will broadcast talk most of the day.
Meanwhile, the Chicago Tribune reported that Progress Media, Air America’s parent company, “is purchasing the rights to program 24 hours a day, seven days a week, on WNTD from Multicultural Radio Broadcasting, which is in the process of buying the station.” The move would displace the current Spanish-language programming.
In New York, “Many Caribbean immigrants living in the city have depended on [WLIB] for news from home,” reported NY1, the all-news cable station.
?It was sort of a pan-Africanist view,? said Brooklyn City Councilwoman Yvette Clarke in the story. ?We’re able to understand issues that arise instantly. So in real time people are able to find out what’s happening with their friends and neighbors and relations back home and be able to address their concerns here in the U.S. LIB, on a day-to-day basis, was able to link up with just about every nation throughout the Caribbean. Now, there is going to be a delay.?
?We’ll see if Al Franken will be giving results of the election in Haiti. We’ll see if Al Franken or Janeane Garofalo will be interviewing candidates on Eastern Parkway come Labor Day,? said ‘Dylan,’ a popular DJ who was among those who were let go from ‘LIB to make way for Air America, the piece said.
“Some are also concerned that Caribbean-related businesses in the city that advertise on WLIB will suffer.
“Rival AM station WWRL has hired fired LIB DJ ‘Ian the Goose’ to work weekends. WWRL hopes to pick up more Caribbean listeners.”
Job Opening at NPR’s “Morning Edition”
Bob Edwards, who for 25 years has been the signature voice of National Public Radio’s “Morning Edition,” is being removed from the show by NPR managers, effective April 30, as Bob Thompson reports today in the Washington Post.
The action creates a vacancy in the job of hosting the No. 1 morning show on radio, with almost 13 million listeners.
“We have established an internal process for choosing Bob’s successor in an expeditious way,” NPR spokeswoman Laura Gross told Journal-isms. “Anyone interested in hosting opportunities at NPR can always get in touch with NPR’s Sr. VP for Programming Jay Kernis or NPR’s VP for News Bruce Drake.”
Edwards, 56, told the Post that, “I would have loved to have stayed with ‘Morning Edition.’ But it’s not my candy store.”
“An NPR announcement that he would become a senior correspondent for NPR News was premature, he said yesterday,” Thompson’s story continued.
“NPR executive vice president Ken Stern called the change part of a ‘natural evolution’ that ‘had to do with the changing needs of our listeners.’ It was ‘a programming decision about the right sound,’ said Stern, who expressed confidence that Edwards would remain with the network,” Thompson reported.
A news release said that, “Beginning in May 2004, NPR’s Steve Inskeep will co-host the program from Washington, DC, and NPR’s Renee Montagne will share hosting duties from the NPR West studios in Culver City. They will serve as interim hosts pending NPR’s selection of Edwards’ successor.”
However, Gross told Journal-isms that, “We hope to have a successor soon — before Bob’s official last end date.”
Raines on Assigning Blair to Sniper Coverage
During a tumultuous meeting of the entire Times staff, which was held at the Loew’s Astor Plaza Theater, in Times Square, on May 14, three days after our front-page reconstruction of the Blair affair, I told the assembled reporters and editors that race had probably played a role in my approving the suggestion (by Gerald Boyd and Jim Roberts) that Jayson be added to the team covering the Washington, D.C., sniper story.
The fact that Jayson was black and had been hired under a program designed in part to bring more young minority reporters into the paper had created a racial climate unlike any I had ever seen at the Times. Minority staffers feared a white backlash against affirmative-action hiring designed to increase the modest presence of blacks, Latinos and Asians on our staff. Many whites in the newsroom were openly denouncing a purported “double standard” in our personnel practices.
I tried to put into context my own background. “Where I come from, when it comes to principles on race, you have to pick a ditch to die in. And let it come rough or smooth, you’ll find me in the trenches for justice. Does that mean I personally favored Jayson? Not consciously. But you have a right to ask if I, as a white man from Alabama with those convictions, gave him one chance too many by not stopping his appointment to the sniper team. When I look into my own heart for the truth of that, the answer is yes.”
But many news accounts have failed to make an important explanatory point. Whatever slack I was cutting Jayson had nothing to do with his accuracy problems. I thought I was giving this apparently talented and engaging young man a second chance based on a different problem that had been brought to my attention around the end of 2002.
That was when Gerald had informed me that Jayson had told him that he had gone to the Times’s Employee Assistance Program and requested treatment for alcohol and drug abuse. Under a long-standing Times policy, the EAP itself cannot reveal the nature of an employee’s problems, whether physical, psychological, or chemical in origin. Managers are simply informed that the employee is on leave, and when the EAP returns that employee to work, the presumption is that he or she is fit for duty.
As a manager in Washington and New York, I had dealt with the cases of two brilliant writers who went on leave for treatment of alcoholism.
In both cases the writers had done Pulitzer-level work after their treatment. I believed strongly that people should not be penalized for seeking help from the EAP. Since that department was forbidden to give managers detailed information, I was relying on my experience with the previous two cases when Jayson Blair returned to work. I had learned something about how to spot the warning signs of relapse and also about those signs of energy, productivity and sociability that indicated a recovery was in progress. I passed Jayson’s desk often after his return, and I saw in him a level of vitality and social engagement that I took to be evidence of recovery. These positive signs, I thought, warranted giving him a spot on the team covering the D.C. sniper story.
