Free Republic

<p>Say what you want about the New York Times, but it still makes more news than any other paper in the U.S. By this, I don't mean in the sense of printing the news, as other papers do, but rather in the sense of news about the Times itself. Consider these recent items that made national news.</p>

NEW YORK (AP) - After an 11-week internal investigation of the Jayson Blair scandal, The New York Times said Wednesday it will create the first ombudsman's position in its 152-year history and re-examine the newspaper's policies on datelines, bylines and anonymous sources. The ombudsman, to be known at the Times as "public editor," will examine coverage, review reader complaints and write a periodic column in the newspaper, Executive Editor Bill Keller said Wednesday, his first day on the job. In addition, the paper will create two masthead-level jobs for a "standards editor" and an editor to oversee hiring and career...

TELEVISION / HOWARD ROSENBERG In TV news, taking credit is called business as usual By HOWARD ROSENBERG June 2 2003 A reporter taking credit for a colleague's work? For shame! Yet.... Many television newsrooms are surely puzzled by what happened to Rick Bragg at the New York Times. Either that or they're having a big laugh about it. Bragg, who has a Pulitzer Prize, quit the Times last week after the paper suspended him over a story that carried his byline. Trouble was, it was reported largely by a freelancer who received no credit as either a co-writer or contributor....

June 6, 2003 Times's 2 Top Editors Resign After Furor on Writer's FraudBy JACQUES STEINBERG owell Raines and Gerald M. Boyd, the top-ranking editors of The New York Times, resigned yesterday morning, five weeks after the resignation of a reporter set off a chain of events that exposed fissures in the management and morale of the newsroom. Fred R. Conrad/The New York TimesHowell Raines, left, announced his resignation in the newsroom yesterday, with Arthur Sulzberger Jr., center, and Gerald M. Boyd, right, in suit. In a hastily arranged gathering in the newsroom on the third floor, the newspaper's publisher, Arthur...

Editor's note: Just a few hours after this column was published, Howell Raines and Gerald Boyd resigned from their positions at The New York Times. The New York Times Corporation has long been a different kind of media enterprise. Just as there are two classes of NYT stock, there are two classes of companies that comprise the whole. In a class by itself is The New York Times newspaper. It is the raison d'etre of the larger enterprise. Everything else falls into the general category of "cash cow," there to feed 43rd Street. Much of the managerial dysfunction of The...

Had the Jayson Blair and Rick Bragg debacles happened on Joseph Lelyveld's watch instead of Howell Raines', would I be writing a column predicting Lelyveld's imminent departure from the executive editorship of the New York Times? I doubt it. When Lelyveld ran the paper from 1994 to 2001, he held great political stock in reserve and could call upon it in a time of crisis like the one currently muddying the paper. When the Times overplayed the Wen Ho Lee espionage story in 1999, nobody attributed its errors in judgment to Lelyveld personally, even when the paper published a crow-eating,...

If the New York Yankees were having the kind of year The New York Times is, they'd be in the cellar, or maybe the minors.L'affaire Blair is still sending out ripples, or rather tsunamis. The more The Times talks about it, the worse The Times looks. The red flags that covered Jayson Blair's whole career seem to have been mistaken for laurels. As for the editor who kept him on, Howell Raines, his resignation was never offered, let alone accepted.Meanwhile, more details emerge every day about the star system at The Times and its nefarious results.Will the uproar never end?The...

Who wrote Hillary's book?William F. Buckley (archive) June 2, 2003 | Print | SendThere is a swirl of controversy having to do with writing, with credit for writing, and with disclosure about who writes what and under what circumstances.One critic on television deems it outrageous that Hillary Clinton has been paid $8 million to write a book which she did in fact not write. It appears to be everywhere accepted that she didn't, one day, sit down and start reading the 5 million pages of news clips, election returns, campaign speeches, editorials, columns, journals, trip itineraries, and personal letters that...

LOS ANGELES - When O.J. Simpson was ruled not guilty of murdering his wife, the United States discovered overnight the chasm of difference in perception between blacks (who found the verdict reasonable) and whites (who found it insane). Something similar is going on with the fabrication scandals that have rocked The New York Times this month. Elite reporters and editors are reacting to the Jayson Blair and Rick Bragg revelations with sorrow and anxiety, while the rest of us proles revel in the spectacle of a haughty institution being humbled and mocked. Why are journalists so glum? Because The New...

Op/Ed - William F. Buckley Yahoo!News WHO WROTE THIS? By William F. Buckley Jr. There is a swirl of controversy having to do with writing, with credit for writing, and with disclosure about who writes what and under what circumstances... There is a swirl of controversy having to do with writing, with credit for writing, and with disclosure about who writes what and under what circumstances... The case is difficult to make, who all gets credit. The stream of commentators discussing the Bragg story for some reason (those I read or saw or heard) neglected to make the contextual point...

11.30amFresh embarrassment for New York TimesCiar ByrneThursday May 29, 2003The Guardian New York Times: reporter claimed it was routine practice for freelances to write large chunks of articles  A Pulitzer prize-winning New York Times reporter has quit the paper after he was accused of drawing too heavily on the work of a freelance writer, in a further embarrassing episode for the scandal-hit newspaper.Rick Bragg, a national correspondent based in New Orleans, tendered his resignation last night to the New York Times' executive editor, Howell Raines, after the paper published an editor's statement admitting he had relied heavily on the work...

6pmLeaked emails add to NY Times' woes Ciar ByrneThursday May 29, 2003The GuardianCan the headlines get any worse for the New York Times? Once a beacon of US broadsheet journalism, the Times has already been rocked by charges of plagiarism, and now its rival the Washington Post has heaped on fresh embarrassment by reporting an unseemly squabble between two senior journalists on the paper.According to leaked emails seen by the Washington Post, the Times' Pulitzer prize-winning Baghdad bureau chief, John Burns, was in high dudgeon when another Pulitzer prize-winning reporter, Judith Miller, filed an interview with Iraqi exile leader Ahmed...

ICONOCLAST DAILY NOTEBOOK.... NEW YORK TIMES OR MINISTRY OF TRUTH?-- Say Bye-bye, Howell Raines! ... May 31, 2003: Yesterday's New York Times had a piece buried on its back pages which tells us that Rick Bragg, one of Howell Raines' hottest correspondents, Pulitzer Prize winner, and teacher's pet, has resigned because it was revealed last week that he submitted stories written by (or largely researched by) others, and represented them as his work alone. He was suspended with pay last week, pending an investigation; and when the Washington Post interviewed him, he told them that dang blast it everybody does...

To: xxxxx@nytimes.com From: Adam Clymer (xxxx@nytimes.com) Subject: The Times Colleagues, I think it's time to take a deep breath and think about the New York Times. I share your contempt for Jayson Blair and Rick Bragg. And I share your anger at some of the failures of management that enabled them. I agree with a lot of what Times people have told outside reporters, either directly or in internal E-mails that have quickly found their way to the Internet. In particular, Peter Kilborn made the case against Bragg's excuses with telling effect. But I think by now we have hit...

BLAIR, BRAGG, DOWD ... KRUGMAN?Posted by Donald Luskin at 2:26 AM May 30, 2003I noticed that the Center on Budget Policy and Priorities was referred to as "a liberal group" in a New York Times article today (natch, the article was about something supposedly terribly wrong with President Bush's tax cuts). Is this something new for the post-Jayson Blair era? Nothing will ever stop the Times from being a mouthpiece for liberal advocacy groups, and reporting their opinions as news -- but perhaps at least the Times will now have the decency to disclose the political orientation of the source....

"I'm tired of cowering and rubbing my forehead"5/29/2003 11:02:18 AMFrom LISA SUHAY:I can understand the upset felt by New York Times staff writers who feel their image has been tarnished by Rick Bragg's use of an intern's material and the resulting presumption that staffers do not do their own work. I can understand it only if they are able to cast this stone in the firm knowledge that they themselves have never once used the work of another who did not receive credit. It is interesting that the people I know who actually do the invisible reporting (stringing/legs work) have a completely different...

US paper gripped by new crisis of ethicsAnother New York Times reporter forced to resign amidSuzanne Goldenberg in WashingtonFriday May 30, 2003The GuardianThe spectacle of a publishing institution in crisis moved to a second act yesterday after the bitter departure of a star writer from the New York Times. Rick Bragg, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his evocative features from the southern US, resigned on Wednesday night, days after the newspaper suspended him (with pay) and admitted that an unpaid assistant had done virtually all of the reporting for a story on oyster fishers in Florida for which Bragg...

SHOCK WAVES May 28, 2003 The controversy over former New York Times reporter Jayson Blair's plagiarized and fabricated stories has caused upheaval within the paper and has reverberated in newsrooms across the country. [Editor's Note: This discussion aired before Pulitzer Prize-winning national correspondent Rick Bragg officially resigned from The New York Times Wednesday night over a dispute concerning his crediting methods.] The NewsHour Media Unit is funded by a grant from the Pew Charitable Trusts   Online NewsHour:Media WatchMay 12, 2003: In the wake of the New York Times' trouble with plagiarism, Terence Smith reports on how newspapers can...

High-flyer quits amid plagiarism accusations By David Usborne in New York 30 May 2003 One of the most prominent writers at The New York Times has fled the newspaper after suffering a two-week suspension pending an investigation into a feature article he wrote almost a year ago on Florida oystermen that allegedly relied too heavily on the contributions of a freelance contributor. Rick Bragg, who won a Pulitzer prize in 1996, announced his resignation, saying that staying on would "only lead to more tension". He added: "I don't want to have that tension in my life, and I do not...

<p>May 29, 2003 -- The turmoil at the New York Times took another victim yesterday when Pulitzer-winning reporter Rick Bragg quit under fire.</p> <p>"Staying on only would have caused more division," Bragg told The Post.</p> <p>"I had hoped I could stay on a bit longer, but there is too much tension and I am tired," said Bragg, who is based in New Orleans and is a friend of the Times' executive editor, Howell Raines.</p>

press boxRick Bragg's Lousy AlibiThe suspended New York Times reporter insists - wrongly - that everybody does it.By Jack ShaferPosted Tuesday, May 27, 2003, at 4:27 PM PT On Friday, New York Times reporter Rick Bragg insisted to the Columbia Journalism Review he'd done nothing wrong in claiming 1) the byline for a story that an unpaid free-lancer had reported for him and 2) the dateline "Apalachicola, Fla.," after visiting the town only briefly. (See "Rick Bragg's 'Dateline Toe-Touch.' ") "I wouldn't have done anything different," Bragg tells CJR.Bragg reiterates that position to the Washington Post's Howard Kurtz again today...

Kitty GenoveseWhat you think you know about the Kitty Genovese case might not be true. According to the March 27, 1964 New York Times: For more than half an hour thirty-eight respectable, law-abiding citizens in Queens watched a killer stalk and stab [Kitty Genovese] in three separate attacks in Kew Gardens. ... Not one person telephoned the police during the assault... . The story became a cultural landmark, making infamous the phrase, "We didn't want to get involved." However, the undisputed evidence from the killer's trial and other sources shows that the Times story is mostly wrong.

NEW YORK - Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Rick Bragg resigned from The New York Times on Wednesday after the newspaper suspended him over a story that carried his byline but was reported largely by a freelancer. The resignation comes as the Times tries to rebound from a scandal in which the newspaper found fraud, plagiarism and inaccuracies in 36 of 73 recent articles written by reporter Jayson Blair. Bragg, who had blamed his suspension on what he called a "torturous atmosphere" at the newspaper since Blair's May 1 resignation, said he offered his resignation Wednesday evening. Executive Editor Howell Raines said...

NEWSWEEK WEB EXCLUSIVE May 28 — For days, the national correspondents of The New York Times have been burning up, furious that suspended correspondent Rick Bragg has defended himself by publicly describing a work environment in which senior writers send out interns and stringers to do the majority of on-the-ground reporting. Now, that fury is bubbling over into an open rage. On Wednesday, the Times’s Peter Kilborn sent out a blistering e-mail to more than a dozen colleagues and the two top editors on the national desk. “Bragg’s comments in defense of his reportorial routines are outrageous,” Kilborn wrote. “I...

Another Raines favorite, Rick Bragg, quits after being suspended for having an unpaid intern report most of a piece with Bragg's byline. (Great scoop, Howie.) The Wall Street Journal piece on Bragg is full of interesting nuggets (I read it on the plane back from Chicago.) The Apalachicola story wasn't the only time Bragg essentially passed off others' work as his own: a Miami intern, Ms Maribel Morey, claims "there were articles at the tobacco trial that are all of my quotes." Bragg concedes "a couple of stories where she did 'most' of the reporting, including conducting a long interview...

Reporter 'Puzzled' Over Suspension By Harry BerkowitzSTAFF WRITER May 28, 2003 Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Rick Bragg said yesterday that he is "puzzled" over why The New York Times suspended him and that there is "confusion" over the policy the newspaper cited in doing so. As for his own future, Bragg, 43, said, "I guess I'll do some stories" after returning to work. But then, he said, he will stick to a previous plan to resign this summer to write two books - a nonfiction book about laid-off cotton mill workers and a novel - that have won him a $1...

<p>May 28, 2003 -- INSIDERS say that the New York Times is preparing to make a correction on a portion of the massive correction it ran on May 11, regarding the fabrications, factual errors and plagiarism that appeared in disgraced reporter Jayson Blair's stories over several years.</p>

<p>In the summer of 2000, Maribel Morey, a sophomore at the University of Notre Dame, worked as an intern in the Miami bureau of the New York Times. Many days, she was sent by reporter Rick Bragg to gather quotes for a handful of stories carrying Mr. Bragg's byline about a historic tobacco liability case in which cigarette makers were slammed with a $145 billion judgment.</p>

washingtonpost.com Suspended N.Y. Times Reporter Says He'll QuitRick Bragg Decries 'Poisonous Atmosphere' By Howard Kurtz Washington Post Staff WriterTuesday, May 27, 2003; Page C01 Month after month, year after year, Rick Bragg said, his mission was to "go get the dateline," even when that meant leaning heavily on the reporting of others. "My job was to ride the airplane and sleep in the hotel," the New York Times correspondent said yesterday from his New Orleans home. "I have dictated stories from an airport after writing the story out in longhand on the plane that I got from phone interviews and...

Anger made him do it, Jayson Blair claims in a rage-filled book proposal hawking the tale of his downfall at The New York Times. Hoping to cash in on his newfound infamy, Blair proposes to write a book titled "Burning Down My Master's House," in which he admits to alcohol and drug addiction but accuses The Times of racism. He also vows to expose the newspaper's "darkest secrets," including "an editor caught sleeping with his intern" and "cocaine parties on the fifth floor of the newsroom," according to his eight-page proposal, a copy of which was obtained by the Daily...

N.Y. Times Said to Suspend Correspondent [Burning Down My Master's House NEW YORK - Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Rick Bragg was reportedly suspended by The New York Times for two weeks as the newspaper published an editors' note about his handling of a feature story about Florida oystermen.   Bragg, a Times national correspondent, declined comment when reached at his New Orleans home Saturday. The newspaper also has refused comment on the suspension, reported Friday on the Columbia Journalism Review's Web site. The report comes in the wake of the scandal surrounding former Times reporter Jayson Blair, who was found by...

<p>May 24, 2003 -- The New York Times has suspended Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Rick Bragg - sending new shock waves through a newsroom already reeling from the Jayson Blair scandal, sources told The Post. The action came yesterday - the same day the paper ran an "editor's note" regarding a front-page story on the lives of Florida oystermen that ran last June 15 with an Apalachicola, Fla., dateline under Bragg's byline. The Times said a reader questioned where the reporting took place, prompting it to review the material.</p>

Rick Bragg, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for The New York Times, has been suspended for two weeks from writing for the paper, the Columbia Journalism Review has learned. The news comes after the Times published an Editors’ Note Friday clarifying Bragg’s handling of a front-page feature story last June in the small, oyster-shucking town of Apalachicola, Florida. Earlier in the week, a reader had written to the Times expressing concern that Bragg had never been spotted in Apalachicola. According to the Editors’ Note, and Bragg himself, it was Bragg’s intern at the time, J. Wes Yoder, who did all the...

<p>May 24, 2003 -- The New York Times has suspended Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Rick Bragg - sending new shock waves through a newsroom already reeling from the Jayson Blair scandal, sources told The Post.</p> <p>The action came yesterday - the same day the paper ran an "editor's note" regarding a front-page story on the lives of Florida oystermen that ran last June 15 with an Apalachicola, Fla., dateline under Bragg's byline. The Times said a reader questioned where the reporting took place, prompting it to review the material.</p>

NEW YORK - The New York Times has suspended Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Rick Bragg for two weeks, the Columbia Journalism Review reported Friday, the same day the newspaper published an editors' note about his handling of a feature story about Florida oystermen. The note said that while Bragg wrote the June 15 article and visited the Gulf Coast town where it originated, interviewing and other reporting at the scene were done by a freelance journalist working for the newspaper. The note did not make it clear whether Bragg's editors had known the role of the freelancer at the time. Times...

The New York Times has another reporter problem. This time, it's Rick Bragg. The paper will publish an editor's note today stating that the Pulitzer Prize-winning national correspondent did not do all the reporting on a story from rural Florida that carried only his byline. Bragg - a friend and favorite of the executive editor, fellow Alabaman Howell Raines - could bring a heap of extra trouble on the top Timesman if the writer's stories are questioned. It was unclear last night whether Bragg faced any punishment. The Florida story investigated by Times editors was published last year and datelined...