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April 06, 2005

Okrent: Bloggers Have Influence at Times, Anonymous Sources Suck; TImes Names Next Public Editor

The New York Times' first public editor (and founder of rotisserie baseball), Daniel Okrent, spoke in conversation last night with David Rubin, dean of the Newhouse School for Public Communications at SU.

The background: Okrent was named public editor for an 18-month stint, which ends in May. He will br replaced by former Wall Street Journal reporter and assistant managing editor Byron Calame. Okrent's job is to criticize the newspaper for its failings in serving readers, and most of the time, he gets his biweekly column ideas from readers. As you might imagine, his job was met with skepticism and some general hatred by the editorial staff of the Times, and many are unsupportive of what he does. To his credit, Okrent's not crying about it. He knew coming in what the job would be like -- before he started, his doctor prescribed a martini a night, and Okrent listened (though he generally does keep it to just that one, he said).

Okrent doesn't think his job is a result of only Jayson Blair playing the Times for so long, but more a result of the overall newsroom culture at the time. After Blair was exposed, a commission was formed to make recommendations for avoiding such episodes in the future, and the first recommendation was to hire a public editor.

It was more a night of friendly conversation than of hardball questioning -- until the audience Q & A. Before we get to that, there are a few things that were at least interesting.

Anonymous sources. Okrent thinks the Times uses too many anonymous sources, and doesn't give them harsh enough treatment. He acknowledged that in the cases of national security, international diplomacy and criminal justice, anonymous sources are generally the only way to get information. But, for example, in the case of "background briefings," when there are 60 news organizations in a room with people who have been told to give this information by their superiors, everyone knows who is passing along the information, that they have permission (even orders) to pass along the information, Okrent would like to see news organizations start either naming names or walking out.

Okrent praised The Times for giving more information -- for example, noting that someone asked for anonymity for fear of reprisals. What he'd really like to see, though, is someone telling the truth: This person's speaking on condition of anonymity because the White House doesn't let people give their real names; or because the boss told us we couldn't talk to the press.

Okrent also named Jack Shafer, Slate's press critic, as one who hates anonymous sources. Here's a list of his columns about anonymous sources, and just for laughs, here's mine. Okrent, of course, failed to mention me, but who can blame him, really?

Producing change. This is interesting: Okrent thinks he really hasn't effected change, but said that he's "raised consciousness" of some issues. Since he's taken over, he said, The Times has changed its corrections policy, and will change the way opinion pieces and commentary are labeled.

Diversity on the editorial page. Okrent's not as worried about the percentage of columnists who are white men as many others (like Katha Pollitt, for example). He's more concerned with the lack of intellectual diversity at The Times. Most of the columnists, he notes, are liberals, and the conservatives among the group are all moderates.

Bloggers. Bloggers, said Okrent, are having a "huge" influence on The Times -- both for good and for bad. On the one hand, bloggers are holding the paper accountable for factual errors and for not covering some things. On the other hand, some bloggers make up stories that just aren't true. Okrent does read blogs, particularly high-traffic blogs, which sometimes provide their readers with links to e-mail Okrent about certain stories.

Audience Q & A. Two audience members took Okrent to task for a couple of different things. One woman asked why The Times ran last year, on its front page above the fold, a photo of the charred bodies of soldiers hanging from a bridge in a Fallujah. Okrent said that often newspapers, The Times included, are guilty of "thrusting" -- that is, putting graphic imagery and other content that might not be suitable for everyone in prominent places. Some papers, he noted, place warnings that on interior pages, there are graphic images that perhaps readers may want to bypass.

Another questioner really left Okrent speechless -- he asked about things like The Times' lack of coverage of the possibility that Pope John Paul (I) was murdered. J. said that rather than another white man, The Times should name someone like this questioner as the next public editor. (Of course the paper announced otherwise today.)

Hooray for The Times' acknowledgement that the public editor/ombudsperson is an important position. Now, maybe they'll start listening to him.

Posted by josh at April 6, 2005 07:42 AM

Comments

Thanks for that write-up, Josh.
I just knew there was something I had forgotten last night - I had wanted to see Okrent.
Rats.

Posted by: Iddybud at April 7, 2005 05:30 PM

Thanks for the post, Josh. I'm new to your site. I'm a college journalism professor and I've blogged this post to my online journalism students.

Posted by: Roger Karraker at April 8, 2005 01:39 PM

Roger,

Thanks for pointing students here, and for stopping by yourself!

Jude,

It started half an hour late and was less than amazing to sit through. But some of the content was good, and I hope I captured some of that in the post.

Posted by: Josh at April 9, 2005 10:53 AM

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