Posted on 06/20/2003 5:24:59 PM PDT by RonDog
The Orange County Baron Flies Again
Marty Baron would be a fine choice to replace Howell Raines at the New York Times.
He learned long ago that sometimes conservatives can be trusted.
by Hugh Hewitt
06/19/2003 12:00:00 AM
Hugh Hewitt, contributing writerNEWSWEEK'S media reporter Seth Mnookin handicapped the race for the job of New York Times executive editor last week, putting Los Angeles Times managing editor Dean Baquet as the 2-1 favorite, Bill Keller (runner-up to Howell Raines in the last go-round) in the second position at 3-1, and Boston Globe editor Marty Baron as a reasonable 5-1 shot.Baquet has widespread respect within the newsroom of the west coast Times, and Keller's writing since September 11 has often been riveting, but I'm hoping Baron gets the job. Baron has a peculiar advantage over the others: the experience of having blown a huge story because he distrusted the conservative messenger who brought it to him. It is the sort of scar that reminds its wearer not to repeat a painful mistake.
None of the candidates above--or any of the other long shots--are going to set the New York Times on a course of moderation and objectivity. The paper has sailed too far to the left during the last two decades to get itself back to "paper of record" status anytime soon. But if its leadership was committed to at least covering the failures and foibles of the political left, that would be a major and welcome change. Those stories often arrive on platters served up by the center-right. Some media elites sniff at such gifts and turn away. Baron is unlikely to do so.
Before his award-laden tenure at the Miami Herald, which included coverage of Elián González and the 2000 election, a Pulitzer, and being named "Editor of the Year" by Editor & Publisher Magazine, Baron had a short stint at the New York Times. That was a rebound move after a disastrous run as editor of the Orange County Edition of the Los Angeles Times.
Baron joined the Times shortly after his graduation from Lehigh University and a brief stint as a business and state reporter for the Miami Herald. He spent two decades with the Los Angeles paper, during which he absorbed all that editor Shelby Coffey had to teach--especially Coffey's brand of noblesse oblige towards Los Angeles's minority communities, disdain for its middle class and suburbs, and contempt for almost all conservatives. When Baron was promoted to editor of the Orange County edition, he brought with him a generous attitude towards his reporters but an almost perpetual sneer towards the community he was supposed to serve--white, affluent, and Republican Orange County.
In the spring of 1994, a Republican candidate for county treasurer, John Moorlach, brought Baron and his staff a detailed analysis arguing that the Democratic incumbent was dangerously gambling with the county's public funds. The paper dismissed Moorlach's analysis as politics, and went so far as to endorse the incumbent, Robert Citron, for reelection. By year's end, Moorlach's warnings had proven true and Orange County filed the largest municipal bankruptcy in history, having lost $1.6 billion on a hugely leveraged securities portfolio, a staggering loss that would cripple the county with service cuts and crushing debt for years to come. Two years later, Baron departed for New York having seen the appointment of a one-time junior, Bob Magnuson, to a position over his own. Since then Baron's career has skyrocketed. Orange County is still paying the huge interest tab on the loans it was obliged to take out because the media refused to believe a Republican flagging bad news about a Democrat.
Most sins of the media elite are sins related to pride--to the faux detachment that reporters and editors allow to feed a thinly disguised superiority complex. Because the First Amendment so thoroughly protects the newsroom from the maddening and often incoherent burdens of government regulation, captains of the newspaper industry have zero experience with the crushing weight of bureaucracies. Because they are often called to journalism as a result of a crusading passion, the same troops arrive with the biases of an activist of the left and the maturity of a college newspaper crowd. And because the career paths and salary ceilings of journalism are starkly limited, the disappointment that comes with decades in the business can add bitterness to the toxic mix of arrogance and power.
It takes powerful character to survive such an apprenticeship and then be able to correct the tendencies of a newsroom. Baron has the advantage of having been burned by his own blindness--a mistake he's not likely to make again. Proponents of fairness in the media could do a lot worse.
Hugh Hewitt is the host of The Hugh Hewitt Show, a nationally syndicated radio talkshow, and a contributing writer to The Daily Standard. His new book, In, But Not Of, has just been published by Thomas Nelson.
NEWSWEEK'S media reporter Seth Mnookin handicapped the race for the job of New York Times executive editor last week, putting Los Angeles Times managing editor Dean Baquet as the 2-1 favorite, Bill Keller (runner-up to Howell Raines in the last go-round) in the second position at 3-1, and Boston Globe editor Marty Baron as a reasonable 5-1 shot....From http://www.msnbc.com/news/925157.asp:
Marty Baron: 5-1. Baron has taken the helm of two storied but troubled papers (The Boston Globe, where hes currently the top editor, and The Miami Herald) and made them both better. He has experience running a fractured newsroom, and out of the top three candidates, is the only one who has headed his own shop. But his demeanor is somewhat distant, and its likely the Times will need some TLC.
From http://www.drudgereport.com/coulter.jpg:Let's see if I can make the connection between that PICTURE and this THREAD...I guess that there **is** a connection between Ann Coulter and the New York Times, as she BLASTS them on a regular basis...
...and the Weekly Standard **did** just run an EXCELLENT article on the DC Chapter FReeping the Hildabeast...from The Weekly Standard:
That works for me!"...The Wal-Mart parking lot is shaping up to resemble an old-school gang fight. Except instead of knives and chains, the combatants use placards and really weak song parodies...
June 23, 2003
Volume 08, Number 40
Hillary Goes to Wal-Mart
The latest skirmish in the Clinton wars....The Hillaryites' tormentors are the Freepers, a fierce, warlike tribe from the Free Republic organization--a fire-breathing conservative band of Internet brothers who often call each other by their screen names, even in person...
...And they bring fun costumes, like the guy wearing a full devil suit, who communicates, in his own understated way, that Hillary is the Princess of Darkness...
As if we ever need much of a reason to post pictures of Ann Coulter on Free Republic... :o)
In the spring of 1994, a Republican candidate for county treasurer, John Moorlach, brought Baron and his staff a detailed analysis arguing that the Democratic incumbent was dangerously gambling with the county's public funds.See also from http://www.oc.ca.gov/treas/johnbio.htm:The paper dismissed Moorlach's analysis as politics...
.JOHN M. W. MOORLACH, C.P.A., CFP®
ORANGE COUNTY TREASURER-TAX COLLECTOR
John M. W. Moorlach, Certified Public Accountant and Certified Financial Planner®, was appointed to fill the vacancy of Treasurer-Tax Collector on March 17, 1995. The resignation of the former Treasurer, due to the County's $1.64 billion in investment losses, provided this opportunity for John to improve a financial situation that he tried to prevent.
John challenged the six-term incumbent for the Orange County Treasurer-Tax Collector position in the June 1994 primary. He assembled a fine group of supporters, including Congressman Chris Cox as Honorary Campaign Chair , in the first challenge of the incumbent since he was initially elected in 1970. John addressed many issues relating to the County's investment strategies, including encouraging an emphasis on the preservation of capital (safety) and opposition to the aggressive use of leverage (arbitrage), derivatives, and not marking securities to market values. The campaign received national attention, including several articles in The Wall Street Journal, with John garnering nearly forty percent of the votes cast.
Just prior to the June 7, 1994 election, John wrote a letter to the Chairman of the Board of Supervisors detailing the aggressive nature of the County's portfolio. In the conclusion of this May 31st letter John warned that the Board should "prepare for a worst case scenario." The Board chairman did not respond. Standard & Poor's and Moody's were not concerned. The participants in the County's portfolio incorrectly concluded that John's warnings were "political rhetoric." Six months later the portfolio imploded, proving John's warnings and "resulting in large losses of investor dollars."
Accordingly, John has the distinction of having predicted the largest municipal bond portfolio loss and bankruptcy in U. S. history...
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(If you want OFF - or ON - my "Hugh Hewitt PING list" - please let me know)
New York state of mind
The Globe ponders Barons possible departure. Plus, Hersh goes wild, PETA gets censored, and BUR kills a media show.
BY DAN KENNEDY
WILL HE stay or will he go? Boston Globe editor Marty Baron has been named as a possible successor to former New York Times editor Howell Raines, who resigned last week. Is Baron interested in the job? He won't say.
IT WOULD BE a fools game to assess the likelihood that Boston Globe editor Marty Baron will be named to a top editing job at the New York Times. But theres no question that he is one of the few plausible candidates to be the Times next executive editor or managing editor. And that has members of the Globe staff wondering what its going to mean for them if Baron leaves just two summers after succeeding Matt Storin.
"I think it would be kind of a rough period, and maybe it would just reinforce to the staff that were sort of a backwater, a farm team," says a Globe source who asked not to be named, referring to the New York Times Companys ownership of the Globe.
Barons name was entered in the Times sweepstakes on June 4, in an online piece by Newsweek media reporter Seth Mnookin, who also identified Los Angeles Times managing editor Dean Baquet as a strong candidate. At the time, Mnookins speculation seemed premature; he reported that both men had told him they hadnt been contacted about the job.
But Mnookin proved prescient. Two days later, following five weeks of turmoil that had begun with the firing of reporter Jayson Blair, executive editor Howell Raines and managing editor Gerald Boyd resigned. And Baron along with Baquet and several internal New York Times candidates, including columnist (and exmanaging editor) Bill Keller, Washington-bureau chief Jill Abramson, metropolitan editor Jonathan Landman, and editorial-page editor Gail Collins was mentioned as a possible replacement in virtually every account.
Baron himself is saying little. This past Tuesday he told me that he had decided to stop answering questions about whether he had spoken to anyone at the Times, explaining, "It seems to me to serve no purpose just to sit here every day and say Ive heard from no one. Im not going to get into that game."
When asked what impact his possible departure would have on the Globe, he replied, "I dont think theres any purpose served in speculating on that prospect at all. Right now Im here, Im happy, Im focused on what Im doing here, and I dont want to speculate on what might happen."
The possibility that Baron will move on has prompted considerable discussion in the ranks, even if no one wants to go on the record about it. Suffice it to say that Baron gets a lot of credit for leading the charge on the papers Pulitzer-winning coverage of the Catholic Church crisis, for supervising the papers excellent reporting on such global news events as 9/11 and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and for bringing a renewed sense of standards and accountability to the paper...
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I try to ignore television. It cuts into my FReep time. :o)I am certain that Hugh did well, but I can wait for the transcript.
And the Los Angeles Times should have the 38 Billion dollar California deficit hung around their neck!
I think this should be read by those following the Calgov2002 articles!
calgov2002:
calgov2002: for old calgov2002 articles. calgov2002: for new calgov2002 articles. Other Bump Lists at: Free Republic Bump List Register |
There it is, all you need to know.
I agree with Hewitt - - Baron would make the perfect scumbag to take over the New York Times.
He would fit like a glove.
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