[Timesink]

Oh, you GOTTA read this one.

[Lancey Howard]

"HA-haaa"

[zarf]

Too bad for Bragg. He's a hell of a writer. His books on the South are wonderful.

I hope Howell gets his nuts kicked.

[Timesink]

Schadenfreude

This is the New York Times Schadenfreude Ping List. Freepmail me to be added or dropped.

I'm copying as fast as I can!!

[Political Junkie Too]

I guess it's not about sex anymore. These lies can't be swept under the rug.

-PJ

[Madstrider]

A. Rick Bragg is quite simply one of the best spot reporters in America.

B. The practices he describes are, indeed, more common than people know. Somebody has to "get the dateline," and EVERYBODY relies on Nexis research for background. That is not plagiarism, so long as credits are properly given.

C. Want to guess how many stories datelined "Crawford, Texas" were mostly written on the plane trip from Washington and actually filed from a motel in Waco?

[demkicker]

Bragg quote: "Obviously, I'm taking a bullet here," he said of the suspension imposed last week. "Anyone with half a brain can see that." But, he said, "I'm too mad to whine about it."

This is rich. Since the article is nothing but a self pity party, I hope Brag gets a little stinky cheese to go with his whine.

[xm177e2]

There's another important dimension to this: Howell Raines tried to dump this news on the friday before Memorial Day (fridays are good days to dump bad news because few people read the papers on the weekends).

But Bragg resigned on Monday, which means the story is going to hit the papers on Monday, the most important day of the week (in terms of the news cycle). So this is going to hurt the Times.

[SkyPilot]

"The problem with this, Rick, is that you wrote it too good."

I realize I am not a mighty newspaper editor, and I am certainly not an English linguist expert, but should that not read "you wrote it too well."???

"I will take it from a stringer. I will take it from an intern.

Spoken like a true Democrat.

[GOPJ]

The New York Times is using Bragg to change the subject. Bragg's "infraction" will move the light from bad policy, racist policies, and rampant favoritism.

It's like when liberal papers have two equal stories -- one about a democrat who rapes and murders young women and the other about a Republican who jaywalks. The jaywalker is the villain, and the top story.

Bragg is the jaywalker.

[OrioleFan]

The local editor of the Dayton Daily News once admited that he has staff write a lot of his editorials and he just approves the final copy.

[Liz]

Obviously, I'm taking a bullet here," (Bragg) said of the suspension imposed last week."

Harsh language for a liberal. Liberals with guns? Militant liberals? Rick suggests
liberals are (gasp) gun-toting militias. Quick, call Chuckie Schumer, and the ACLU.

[Servant of the Nine]

"The reporting was done -- there was no reason to linger." ....
Such Times stringers and interns "should get more credit for what they do," Bragg said, but in "taking feeds" from such assistants, "I have never even thought of whether or not that is proper. Maybe there is something missing in me. . .
"I will take it from a stringer. I will take it from an intern. I will take it from a news assistant. If a clerk does an interview for me, I will use it. I'm going to send people to sit in for me if I don't have time to be there. It is not unusual to send someone to conduct an interview you don't have time to conduct. It's what we do.

And the amazing thing is that these top level Pultizer Prize winning reporters don't see that as fraud.

If leaders in any other business operated this way, they would rip their guts out in print daily.

So9

[withteeth]

What does he mean, he has to 'get the dateline'? I don't understand this. Is that a new expression for 'deadline'? Or does it mean he has to travel and spend an hour at the city's airport in order to make his date-line true?

BTW, check out Bob Herbert's Friday column about the NYC smoking ban. Herbert quotes someone and parenthetically notes they were interviewed by one of his assistants. CYA time. Pretty funny.

[aristeides]

William McGowan confirmed on C-SPAN this morning that Bragg is going to quit. He also said the proper thing would be for Howell Raines to resign.

[dead]

"I'm too mad to whine about it," he whined.

[NathanR]

Bragg freely admits he did little firsthand reporting for the June 2002 story about Florida oystermen that prompted an editor's note last week. That note said credit should have been shared with freelancer J. Wes Yoder, who was hired by Bragg as a volunteer assistant and spent four days in the town of Apalachicola. "I went and got the dateline," Bragg said. "The reporting was done -- there was no reason to linger."

"I went and got the dateline," Bragg said. "The reporting was done -- there was no reason to linger." That says it all. He shows up, submints his story, and goes home. He might just as well, have phoned it in. (In fact, he did.)

[CobaltBlue]

>>When a jury convicted Timothy McVeigh in 1997 in the Oklahoma City bombing, Bragg wrote a lead he can still recite by heart: "After the explosion, people learned to write left-handed, to tie just one shoe. They learned to endure the pieces of metal and glass embedded in their flesh." The details, he said, came from "a stack four feet high" of clips from the Oklahoman, Dallas Morning News, Houston Chronicle and other papers.

"From each one of the stories I took a piece of the pain he had caused people," Bragg said. "We backed it up with interviews. That's what we're supposed to do. We gather the string that's out there."<<

This is not at all what I expected from the NY Times.

[Ditto]

"I have dictated stories from an airport after writing the story out in longhand on the plane that I got from phone interviews and then was applauded by editors for 'working magic.'

Hey Rick. Get one of these.

[Kay Soze]

"It is shameful that some people are using it in a power grab at the newspaper. It's just about the saddest thing I've ever seen."

Did he actually see it or did he hire a stringer to see people using the situation to get even?