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Bill Keller, executive editor of The New York Times, answered questions from readers Feb. 2-6, 2009. He previously answered questions in April 2006.
Before becoming executive editor in July 2003, Mr. Keller had been an Op-Ed columnist and senior writer for The New York Times Magazine as well as other areas of the newspaper since September 2001. He served as managing editor from 1997 to September 2001 after having been the newspaper's foreign editor from June 1995 to 1997. He was the chief of The Times bureau in Johannesburg from April 1992 until May 1995.
From December 1986 to October 1991, Mr. Keller was a Times correspondent in Moscow, serving as bureau chief during his last three years there. In 1989, he won a Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of the Soviet Union. Mr. Keller joined The New York Times in 1984 as a domestic correspondent based in the Washington bureau.
Before coming to The Times, Mr. Keller was a reporter for The Dallas Times Herald, the Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report in Washington and The Portland Oregonian.
Mr. Keller graduated from Pomona College with a B.A. degree in 1970 and is a member of the college's board of trustees.
Other Times staff members have answered questions in this column, including Managing Editor Jill Abramson, Managing Editor John Geddes, Assistant Managing Editor Glenn Kramon, Associate Managing Editor Charles Strum, Obituaries Editor Bill McDonald, Metropolitan Editor Joe Sexton, Living Editor Trish Hall, Investigations Editor Matthew Purdy, National Editor Suzanne Daley, Sports Editor Tom Jolly and Culture Editor Sam Sifton. Their responses and those of other Times staff members are available on the Talk to the Newsroom page.
These discussions will continue in coming weeks with other Times editors and reporters.
The Future of The Times
Q. How much longer can actual newspapers survive? I know the question has been asked over and over (TV was going to kill newspapers; USA Today was going to kill newspapers) but now it seems serious. People under 40 don't seem to have the same relationship with the tactile experience of holding a newspaper in their hands. How will you keep this medium relevant, or failing that, continue to provide a medium that "comforts the afflicted and afflicts the comfortable"?
Mark Hager, Houston
Q. Writers are in general prone to navel-gazing, and it seems that the easiest and most popular form of self-study this year is the so-called "demise" of print. It seems that increased use of the Internet for information access and the current economic climate have created a "perfect storm" (as Tribune Company Chairman Sam Zell termed it) for print media which, if arguments are to be believed, will result in its ultimate demise.
The Times seems to be doing comparatively well, yet between the increasing popularity of its Web site and the flagging circulation of its print edition, it would seem that The New York Times is in a stage of transition. How exactly do you see The Times changing over the next 5-10 years? Will we see less emphasis on a print edition, with more content and advertising on its Web site? Or will we see a renewed effort behind old mediums and an increased push to get users of the (currently free) Web site to subscribe to print or premium features?
James Boyd
Q. The Internet has undermined, to say the least, The Times's business model. Have you considered eliminating the print edition altogether? Can The Times ever have a successful Internet/electronic business model so long as the print edition remains sacrosanct? Speaking as a conservative reader of a certain age, I never imagined I would be able to do without my morning papers or on weekends the Sunday Times. However, early in this century, 2002 I think it was, I discontinued my subscription to The New York Times, then discontinued my print subscriptions to all other publications, and I have not missed any of them one whit. The other day I saw someone in Starbucks reading a print New York Times and I thought, how quaint.
Tom T.
Q. As more and more people are turning to the Internet for news, I worry about the end of print. My parents' generation have not all embraced the Internet with open arms. More of our local news is finding its way to the Internet, thus making the afternoon delivery of our local paper old news. How can a print newspaper sustain, yet fit the needs of both generations?
Jackie Fitzgerald, La Grande, Ore.
Q. I want to be a Times columnist in, let's say, 20 years. Is that job even going to be available for your hand-picked successor to interview me for?
Ricky Kreitner
A. Ah, our existential question. Variations on this theme have outnumbered every other subject in the early e-mails from readers, as they did when my sidekick Jill Abramson, the managing editor for news, occupied this dunk 'em seat a few weeks ago.
Editors, as you know, are responsible for the contents of The Times, not its business model. This is the only business I can think of where the people who make the product have traditionally been kept apart from the people who sell the product, to protect journalists from the undue influence of advertisers. For most of my life, that's been fine with me. Besides, the six weeks I spent long ago at the Wharton School did not, sadly, leave me with the business acumen of Warren Buffett or Steve Jobs, let alone equip me to see the future.
That said, like everyone else who labors in the journalism business, or just loves it, I worry about our future, discuss it constantly with colleagues, and participate in some aspects of charting it. If Mr. Boyd will forgive a bit of navel-gazing, let's start the day with this subject.
I'm an incurable optimist about the future of good journalism, and of The New York Times in particular. I expect people will still be applying for columnist jobs after I've gone. (Although not to my successor. The Op-Ed columnists and editorial writers answer to another editor, who is independent of the newsroom. Which is why I will not be addressing questions about William Kristol.) I've laid out my basic reasons for optimism on many occasions, and they still seem to hold water.
First, there is a diminishing supply of quality journalism, and a growing demand. By quality journalism I mean the kind that involves experienced reporters going places, bearing witness, digging into records, developing sources, checking and double-checking, backed by editors who try to enforce high standards. I mean journalism that, however imperfect, labors hard to be trustworthy, to supply you with the information you need to be an engaged citizen. The supply of this kind of journalism is declining because it is hard, expensive, sometimes dangerous work. The traditional practitioners of this craft mainly newspapers have been downsizing or declaring bankruptcy. The wonderful florescence of communication ignited by the Internet contains countless voices riffing on the journalism of others but not so many that do serious reporting of their own. Hence the dwindling supply. The best evidence of the soaring demand is the phenomenal traffic to the Web sites that do dependable news reporting nearly 20 million unique monthly visitors to the site you are currently reading, and that number excludes the burgeoning international audience. The law of supply and demand suggests that the market will find a way to make the demand pay for the supply.
Second, The Times has some advantages that buy us time to make the transition successfully. Like everyone in the news business, we have been buffeted by forces, some of them cyclical (namely a global economic crisis that is a great story to cover but a depressing experience to live through) and some structural (the migration of audiences and advertising revenue to the Web). But we've fared better than our competitors. Fortunately, we have not gutted our newsgathering operation as so many other papers have, so that we can still deliver the breadth and depth of coverage readers expect, and we still have the human bandwidth to innovate. We moved earlier than others to embrace the Web as integral to our newsgathering operation, so our Web site is generally acknowledged to be among the very best news venues online, which helps explain the traffic numbers I cited above. We have a devoutly loyal print readership (median age, under 50). Circulation revenues have actually grown. We have a respected brand that attracts a premium national advertising clientele. And we're controlled by a family that prizes and defends what we do. We are not by any means immune to either the deep recession or the tumult in the media world, but we are secure enough to develop a thoughtful strategy for the long term.
And, third, I'm optimistic because there are a lot of smart, creative people in the company and some really smart Times devotees outside the company studying the business model for quality journalism and devising ways to change it. I think in the next year or two news organizations will have to make some major decisions about the role of print versus online, the balance of advertising revenue and subscription revenue, the extent to which they will chase a premium audience versus a mass audience, and so on.
Why not just cut the huge cost of newsprint and printing plants and live off our digital revenues? For one thing, a lot of people love the printed paper, and it more than pays its own way. For another, revenues from the Web are not yet sufficient to support a great newsgathering operation. Some of you may have noticed a recent report that The Los Angeles Times now generates enough online revenue to cover the payroll of the newsroom. I'm not privy to the internal numbers of The L.A. Times, but here are a few reasons to hold the celebration:
1. Payroll is, indeed, the biggest cost in a newsroom. But there are other major costs in the newsroom budget, and in other budgets not attributed to the newsroom that do not go away just because print goes away. There is the cost of equipment computers, cameras, telephones, etc. There is the cost of travel. There is the cost of real estate; even a decentralized newsroom has to work somewhere. There is the cost of foreign bureaus, including the cost of security in places like Baghdad and Kabul. Beyond the newsroom itself, there is the cost of an ad sales department, the cost of lawyers who negotiate contracts and help keep reporters out of jail, the cost of the people who manage the money and file the tax returns and oversee compliance with the Securities and Exchange Commission, among other agencies. None of that disappears just because you stop publishing on newsprint.
2. To reach its current payroll, The L.A. Times had to eviscerate its reporting and editing staff. Not that many years ago, The L.A. Times had approximately as many journalists as The New York Times. It had a robust network of foreign bureaus, and a truly competitive Washington bureau, and a free-standing book review. It now has approximately half the journalists of its heyday, has subjected its foreign and Washington bureaus to wrenching cuts, folded its book review, and so on. I've read The Los Angeles Times since I was a college student in Southern California, I admire the editors who are trying to weather a period of ruthless ownership, and I still follow its coverage. But it is not what it once was.
3. Advertising on the Web, after growing strongly well into 2008, flatlined in the fourth quarter. Everyone assumes it will come back in some form when the recession ends, but in the short run at least the Web is not the sturdy lifeboat it seemed to be just six months ago.
There is no end of faith-based polemics on the subject of newspapers' survival. Print is dead! Online readers must pay for content! Online readers will never pay for content! Give newspapers endowments, like universities! We should be a little suspicious of ironclad certainty. The fact is, we don't really know yet how the behavior of readers and advertisers will evolve. We don't really know for sure how to separate the consequences of a calamitous economic crisis from the enduring changes in behavior provoked by new technologies. I think in the next year or two, we must examine all our options with an open mind, test those that are testable, and make some hard choices. My expectation (and I remind you of the disclaimers regarding my business acumen) is that for the foreseeable future our business will continue to be a mix of print and online journalism, with the growth online offsetting the (gradual, we hope) decline of print.
Should The Times Charge for Online News?
Q. I recognize that newspapers are financially distressed these days. I go to NYTimes.com at least a half dozen times per day for breaking news coverage, which I consider the best in the United States. I often download and copy articles for office use. All of this does not generate revenues for The New York Times. How would you justify the online edition?
Yas Tokita, Las Vegas
Q. I love The New York Times, print and electronic, and can't imagine life without it. Have you considered adopting an NPR type business model for the electronic version? Every time I use it, I can't believe it's free. I'd donate money to support such a valuable service.
Susan Mackay, Seattle
A. As most of you know, a few years ago The Times introduced a subscription service called Times Select. We put our columnists and our archives behind a wall and charged admission to anyone who was not a print subscriber. Times Select generated something like $10 million a year, which was real money, but in the end the company calculated that we'd be better off taking down the wall and letting the flood of additional visitors to the Web site attract advertising dollars. The lesson of that experiment, however, was not that readers won't pay for content. A lot of people in the news business, myself included, don't buy as a matter of theology that information "wants to be free." Really good information, often extracted from reluctant sources, truth-tested, organized and explained that stuff wants to be paid for. So far, it gets paid for mainly by advertisers, but a lively, deadly serious discussion continues within The Times about ways to get consumers to pay for what we make. There are many variations on this theme, but here are the three that tend to top most study lists:
A subscription model. Times Select was not the answer, but it's possible we just put the wrong stuff behind the wall. Maybe we should put it all there, or some different slice of it. The Wall Street Journal and Financial Times both have paid tiers in their Web sites. Rupert Murdoch, when he bought The Journal, talked about making the Web site free, but then he decided it made better sense to continue charging. Maybe the Journal/FT model is special, because its audience is disproportionately business executives who charge the cost to their expense accounts rather than ordinary readers spending their own money. The bigger argument against subscriptions is that they limit traffic, which limits ad revenues. Paid content tends not to show up in Web searches, which makes it less appealing to advertisers. They don't open their books, but if they did I'll bet you'd see that The Journal's Web site generates far less revenue than ours. But if Web advertising takes a long dive or if some clever engineer figures out how to decouple a paid Web site from the search function a subscription model might be worth a closer look.
A micro-payment model. The idea is that readers may not pay a subscription fee for a new Web site, but they might pay a few pennies every time they click on a page, if it was simple and frictionless. In the heyday of Napster and other steal-this-music Web sites, a lot of people believed that consumers would simply not pay money to download music. Enter Apple and iTunes.
New reading devices. The Times currently makes a modest amount of money selling a downloadable newspaper for Kindle users and for subscribers to a service called Times Reader. These services allow readers to load the entire paper into a portable device. In the case of Times Reader, the download has been especially designed to include full-color pictures, graphics and so forth. So some people are paying for The Times online. Just not enough of them. So far.
What About the Not-for-Profit Model?
Q. A commentator recently proposed that The Times (and other papers) be converted into foundations (like the G.R. Dodge Foundation, etc.). It seems to this reader of The Times (since before the period was dropped from the front page title) a good idea. What do you think?
George Schindler, Skillman, N.J.
Q. How would a wealthy individual go about donating money to the endowment for The New York Times?
Michael Kearns
A. When you think about it, an awful lot of the best journalism is subsidized in one way or another. BBC gets government support. NPR raises foundation money and reader donations. The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post are struggling with severe revenue declines; neither paper admits to losing money, but if they have gone into the red their losses are offset by other ventures of their parent corporations. (The Journal is propped up by News Corp's TV assets, such as Fox, and The Post is underwritten by the company's profitable Kaplan test prep business.) The Guardian in London belongs to a trust, and The St. Petersburg Times in Florida is owned by a journalism school both arrangements devised by wealthy founders who wanted the publications managed for public good rather than private profit.
A commentary on The Times Op-Ed page last week proposed creation of a New York Times endowment, like a university; that provoked an interesting array of letters. In my view, we should give serious study to anything that holds promise, but there are serious downsides to a not-for-profit model. For one thing, charity, however well intentioned, can come with strings attached. For another, endowments are no insulation against economic hard times. (Just ask universities.) And competition is, mostly, good for journalism. True, the scramble for readers' attention may contribute to tabloid sensationalism and press-pack feeding frenzies. But it also serves as a goad to aggressive reporting and a check on the accuracy of our facts and analysis.
Maybe now we can turn our gaze to other navels for a while?
Was Tom Daschle Story Buried?
Q. You have buried an important story about Tom Daschle's tax evasion and glossed over the fact that he did not report consulting income (which no one would argue is not "income"). Why is that?
Q. The claim that former Senator Tom Daschle's unreported income for a car and driver over three years exceeds $250,000 is ludicrous. Will The Times pursue this story and find out the truth of where this income really originated and why it was not reported to the I.R.S.?
Rev. Allen Liles, Bloomington, Minn.
Q. I am very curious to see how The Times is going to handle the Tom Daschle "tax issues" and unreported compensation from a private equity equity firm, as relates now to his fitness to run Health and Human Services.
I am a Democrat, a Marine veteran of the Iraq war, and I voted for President Obama. My question: Does The Times now plan to take a position against Mr. Daschle's appointment?
I cannot help but say that there appears to clearly be two standards when it comes to misconduct, especially of the tax and income variety, between the political plutocrats and the rest of us. If Mr. Obama and his crew give Tom Daschle a pass on this and follow in lock-step behind his continued appointment, I will have to confess seeing no difference between Obama and Bush-Clinton.
It could then be said, "acting on principle" and with honor appears to only be handy when you are skewering your political opponents, their family and their cronies. "Yes we can!" with an asterik.
Paul Kane, Silver Spring, Md.
Q. Why has The Times electronic home page failed to report the Tom Daschle tax evasion story all day, when it was listed as a major feature story on both The Washington Post's and The Wall Street Journal's electronic sites? It seems like it is a major story and, although The Times has covered it in its print edition on the front page, I'm wondering what the reasoning is among the online editors that has kept it relatively hidden from online readers. I am a high school journalism teacher who requires his class to read The Times every morning. What can I tell them?
Franklin Hedberg, Lawrenceville, N.J.
A. We've "buried" the story for three days running on the front page. See here, here and here. And, yes, we are still pursuing it.
I'm not sure when Mr. Hedberg logged on, but the Daschle story first appeared on the home page shortly after 7 p.m. Friday, as soon as we succeeded in nailing down the details, and only about a half hour after the story was first disclosed by ABC News.com. (As a general rule, we like to be first to the Web with the news, but not if we haven't checked the facts carefully.) The Tom Daschle story has remained on the home page, the digital equivalent of the front page, more or less continuously since Friday, as we have uncovered additional information.
To Mr. Kane's question, The Times meaning the newsroom does not take positions on issues like whether or not Mr. Daschle should be confirmed. The editorial writers, who are independent of the newsroom and answer directly to the publisher, may weigh in on that subject, and it's possible some of our Op-Ed columnists will have their own opinions on the subject. They don't work for me, and I won't see what they have to say on this subject until you do. In the rest of the newspaper, which is my bailiwick, our aim is not to tell you what Congress ought to do, or what you ought to think; it is to supply you with all the information you need to make up your own mind.
An earlier writer referred to a newspaper's mission as to "comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable." We pride ourselves on being equal opportunity afflicters. If the subtext of some of the Daschle e-mails is that we might go easy on him because he's a Democrat, that would come as news to a number of Democrats. It would come as news to Eliot Spitzer, whose patronage of prostitutes we disclosed last year. Or Representative Charles B. Rangel, whose properties and tax issues we have investigated. Or Bill Clinton.
Are Anonymous Sources Really Necessary?
Q. We are daily subscribers, and The New York Times's quality of writing is just outstanding. One element of The Times's reporting does trouble me: the frequent use of "anonymous" sources. Articles that use anonymous sources state that the person speaking was not authorized to talk on the subject. But doesn't anonymity undercut veracity? It would seem that if a speaker remains anonymous then he or she may be untruthful at worst and misleading at best. What does The Times do to ensure that the information disclosed by anonymous sources is reliable?
James Tuthill, Lafayette, Calif.
Q. How do you justify the number of unnamed sources used in The New York Times?
Devin Rooney, Chapel Hill, N.C.
Q. I am an avid reader and scanner of The New York Times and The Washington Post. They are of equal value in my estimation. However, I think both are ill-served by their reliance on anonymous sources. Why is it that an anonymous source drives the news? It appears to me that such reliance helps someone's byline and the reporter's celebrity status without advancing the true status or believability of the underlying story? Could it be that the reason for the decline of the print media is that job one of the reporting staff is to focus on a short-term career boost at the expense of the long-term interest of the reader? Just wondering…
Ralph Kuehn
A. Anonymity is both a vital tool and a serious hazard for journalists. Used carefully, an agreement to withhold a source's name allows us to extract valuable information from people who would otherwise fear reprisals from an employer, legal jeopardy or other consequences. In extreme cases reporting from Zimbabwe comes to mind to name a source may be to mark that person for arrest or death. Much of what the public learns about official malfeasance, about corruption, about threats to our security or civil liberties, or, less dramatically, about how powerful institutions in our society actually work, starts with sources who will not talk without a measure of protection.
At the same time, casual reliance on unnamed sources, as the readers above suggest, corrodes our credibility and, in cases that are rare but not rare enough, may abet journalistic malpractice.
The Times policy, which was significantly tightened after a reporter was caught fabricating stories in 2003, is as follows: First, reporters should press sources to go on the record. The best reporters manage to write some extremely sensitive stories with few or no anonymous sources see, for example, David Barstow's expose of the Pentagon's program to co-opt "military analysts" who appear as impartial commentators on TV, or Chris Chivers's account of alleged torture in Chechnya. Second, an editor should know the identity of any unnamed source, and should push for attribution (or eliminate the material from the story) if anonymity is not justified. Third, where anonymous sources are used editors are expected to assure that reporters reveal as much as we can about the veracity of the source (that is, how do they know what they're telling us?) and any potential bias (does the source have an ax to grind?)
Like any lazy practice, anonymous sourcing tends to proliferate if it is not watched. So thanks for a timely shot across the bow.
Regrets of an Executive Editor?
Q. You've been the face of The Times through the very roughest times for The Times. Anything you regret?
C.D. Monroe, Washington
A. I assume, dear reader, that you are not referring to the nights I got home too late to read to my kids, or the two books I didn't manage to finish writing, or the fact that I dropped piano in third grade. And it's too easy (though not untrue) to say I regret not having enough money to hire more of the terrific journalists who are seeking rescue from other, foundering publications.
Journalists are in the second-guessing business and, whether or not we always admit it, we second-guess ourselves all the time. Is there another phone call I should have made on that story? Should I trust that source? Is that the right lead, the right headline, the right picture? Did that story deserve to be on the front page? Was the competition's version better?
On Page 4 every day we publish some of our regrets in the form of corrections and editor's notes. Every misspelled word, every unchecked fact, every time we failed to give someone a fair shake makes me wince. When we blunder in a bigger way some of the credulous stories The Times published en route to the war in Iraq, for example I ache for our precious credibility. Even worse is when we get it wrong and then insist on sticking to our guns. (I waited a year after getting this job before I wrote a mea culpa about some of our pre-war W.M.D. coverage.) I take some consolation in the fact that we try, as a rule, to own up to our mistakes and even learn from them. There is no worse feeling in this business, however, than the feeling that you have let readers down.
So, yes, regrets, I've had way more than a few. Thankfully they are outweighed by the thrill I get working with some of the most talented, conscientious, honorable people in journalism.
About the Public Editor
Q. It seems fewer and fewer U.S. newspapers employ a public editor (as distinct from a readers' representative or readers' editor, which are nothing more than public relations mouthpieces for the company store).
According to the Organization of News Ombudsmen, there are approximately 17 public editors or ombudsmen, down from 2006, when there were 40.
Are you still a strong advocate of the independence of the public editor since naming Daniel Okrent, The Times's first public editor on Oct. 27, 2003?
Has Clark Hoyt lived up to your expectations, and should readers expect him to stay put, at least for the next couple of years.
Bill Lucey
Q. Why is it that when the public editor reports on issues discussed with you, you almost never seem to agree with him and appear somewhat defensive as well?
P.S. F.Y.I. only once have I had serious disagreement with an opinion of Mr. Hoyt. That was when he concurred with the ridiculous assertion that three pages of index/online piece subjects (and now, front page "index" as well) do not reduce the amount of space available for the news.
M. Winkelmann
A. A number of news organizations have ombudsmen, independent representatives of the readers, who handle complaints and critique journalistic performance, often in the pages of the paper. The Times had long resisted the idea, largely because we thought it was our job as editors to represent the interests of readers. But after the famous Voldemort scandal of 2003, we realized we could use additional safeguards for our credibility. We created the job of "standards editor," to make sure our policies on accuracy and fair play were rigorous and to help enforce them, and a "public editor" to serve as a kind of independent auditor, with freedom to air his judgments on the Web site and in the Sunday paper. (We also tightened our policies on corrections, anonymous sources and other issues important to our credibility.) The publisher and I hire the public editor for a fixed term. We recently announced that we were giving the current public editor a one-time-only one-year extension. I have long felt the two-year term was too short for someone who came to this complicated place from outside; it takes a while to learn your way around, and by the time one public editor has figured out the job I'm scouring the landscape for a successor.
Clark Hoyt is the third journalist to hold this largely thankless job an assignment that makes you few friends in the newsroom, and inevitably leaves some readers dissatisfied. I find him very thorough in his reporting, fair-minded in his analysis, and unafraid of hard subjects. I think he does the job as well as it can be done. Sometimes I agree with his conclusions, even if he is calling us on the carpet. And yes, I sometimes disagree with him. He's not my commanding officer, or the Supreme Court. He's an independent critic, an outsider with a hall pass and a platform. He is entitled to respect, but I don't think he expects conformity.
To answer Mr. Lucey, I hope Mr. Hoyt will stay put until his term expires in June 2010, and I fully support his independence.
Whether we have a fourth and a fifth and a sixth public editor is a question we'll answer when the time comes. The idea of a public editor has never won universal acclamation in the newsroom. There are still some who believe we have enough independent checks in the legion of self-appointed press critics without paying one of our own. There are still some who think a public editor does more to undermine our credibility, by poking small holes in important stories, than to shore it up.
The other day in a meeting of senior editors I asked for an informal show of hands on the question of continuing the role of public editor. The room was about evenly divided. I'm keeping my own hand down until 2010.
Where Are the Stories About Moody's?
Q. Moody's rated all those toxic securitized mortgages as "Triple A" thus duping investors into buying them, here and abroad. Now it's more than clear that Moody's ratings were completely bogus. Yet unlike Arthur Andersen in the Enron scandal Moody's, the enabler in the entire meltdown mess, continues to reign supreme with nary a negative word heard against it. Why doesn't The New York Times do a major piece about Moody's role in the meltdown? If you were concerned that Moody's would retaliate by dropping your rating ... well, oops, too late for that! Go after Moody's and get to the bottom of how such a firm can get away clean after such colossal negligence!
Beth Larson, Washington
A. A number of letters have come in suggesting stories we should pursue. I'm referring good ideas to the responsible editors. But some of the suggestions are for articles we've already published. Ms. Larson, I'm sorry you missed an excellent piece on Moody's and other rating agencies, by the talented Gretchen Morgenson. It ran on the front page, Dec. 7, part of a series, called The Reckoning, exploring in heavily reported detail how the country fell into the economic crisis. Come to think of it, here's the whole series. It's great reading.
Just Another Day in the Salt Mines
Q. I think a lot of young journalists and editors, myself included, are curious about what a day in the shoes of Bill Keller is like. Can you walk us through a normal work day for The Times's executive editor?
Devin Banerjee, Stanford, Calif.
A. Really? You'd be interested in that? Well, I think my life is pretty much what you would imagine it to be.
I wake up most mornings to the telephone, invariably some world leader or international celebrity seeking my counsel. Lately it's been a lot of President Obama again with the damn puppy? but sometimes it's Richard Holbrooke to pick my brain about Afghanistan, or Bruce Springsteen asking if it isn't time for another Arts and Leisure cover story about Bruce Springsteen. The valet brings breakfast with the handful of newspapers that have not gone out of business. In the limo on the way to the office, I help Warren Buffett sort out his portfolio and give trading advice to George Steinbrenner, not that he ever listens.
At the office, Arthur Sulzberger Jr. and I have our morning conference call with Vladimir Putin, Hugo Chavez, Kim Jong-il and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad plus Fidel Castro when he's compos mentis. Dictating the world's agenda entails a lot of conference calls. I've been encouraging the cabal to save some money by using iChat, but first we have to persuade Putin to wear a shirt.
Lunch at the Four Seasons is always a high point. Today it's my weekly tête-à-tête with Bill O'Reilly. He's really not the Neanderthal blowhard he plays on TV. He's totally in on the joke. After a couple of cosmopolitans, he does a wicked impression of Ann Coulter. We usually spend the lunch working up outlandish things he can say about The New York Times and making fun of Fox executives. (Once Rupert Murdoch showed up for a lunch date, and O'Reilly had to hide under the table for half an hour.)
I spend most of the afternoon writing all the stories for the front page. (You knew those were all pseudonyms, right?) I write Tom Friedman's column, too, but, I swear, Bill Kristol wrote all his own stuff.
By then it's time for drinks and dinner. If you're reading this, Julian, I think the duck tonight. I had the foie gras for lunch. And no time for dessert. The Secretary of State is coming by to give me a back rub.
The Whys and Wherefores of the Index Pages
Q. I'm wondering why The Times insists on using three inside pages of the A section for an index to the paper and guide to what's on The Times's Web site instead of adding more reportorial content? The paper doesn't start for me and I'd assume many others until Page 5. I'm looking for more foreign coverage and feel as though I'm being short-changed since the redesign a year or so ago.
John Bell, Farmington, Conn.
Q. I love The Times and have been reading it daily since I was 12 years old. (I'm 59, but don't tell anyone). The paper, of course, has its quirks, but one thing that regularly annoys me is your new index. I understand why The Times adopted the format, but I don't think it really serves the purpose of getting a quick overview of what's inside. It's too cumbersome. In addition, it's sometimes difficult finding the obit page because it may not be indexed that day or and this seems to happen a lot the wrong page is listed. As an old newspaper editor, I can certainly guess why this happens, but someone needs to check this because it is annoying.
David M. Levine
A. Reading over my previous answer, I recognize that it ill behooves the executive editor to attempt satire this early in the week. Friday, maybe Thursday, and only during Happy Hour. So let's get this trolley back on the sober track. What'll it be? The Middle East? Not yet. Liberal bias? Oh, please! The index? Now you're talking!
Tom Bodkin, probably the most brilliant art director in the history of newspapers, and I just spent 10 minutes arguing about our slightly different recollections of how the revised index came to pass. We agree that it grew out of one of our periodic attempts to refresh and improve the A section. My memory is that it started with our desire to create an "International" page, a kind of second front page for foreign news, to match the longstanding "National" page. We wanted our new page to be a kind of gateway to the foreign section, and it had to be an open page so that we could design it and do justice to important news and give ample display to some great photojournalism. Page 5 is the first open page, because pages 2, 3 and 4 have advertising space that has been leased out to a number of luxury advertisers that treasure their position in the front of the A book. Thus, as I recall it, the creation of the "International" page as the start of the foreign report left us with the question of how best to use those three pages. Tom's recollection is that an expanded index was on his to-do list even before the "International" page entered the discussion. In any case, we agree that we got the folks who approve our budget to give us extra space for the new arrangement; we did not cut the foreign report to make way for the index.
The idea was to create, on pages 2 and 3, a kind of summary/index/table of contents. For readers in a hurry, these pages offer a quick roundup of the news, features, columns and other contents of the entire newspaper. At the same time, this would serve as a menu readers enticed by a summary at the front of the paper would turn to the full story. Or it would be a guide to favorites: What page is Clyde Haberman's column on today? Where do I find the Knicks game? Where are the obituaries? Page 4 became the new home of corrections (formerly on Page 2) and a directory of interesting things on our Web site.
Of course, like all changes to The New York Times, this has encountered some resistance. We believe that for harried readers a summary of the day's news and a guide to the paper's contents could be a valuable service. But we don't know how many readers use this feature or if its design could be altered to enhance its usefulness. We are about to conduct a reader survey aimed specifically at pages 2 and 3. We have some thoughts about improving the presentation but want to be guided by broader feedback from Times readers. And if our research shows little interest in a news summary/contents, we will of course consider other uses for this space.
By the way, Mr. Levine, while the index may or may not contain a summary of a significant obituary, you can always find the location of the obituaries by looking at Page 3, bottom righthand corner.
Why So Much Ink for Caroline Kennedy?
Q. I was curious to know why The Times decided to do so many features on Caroline Kennedy while virtually ignoring the other candidates for Senate particularly Kirsten Gillibrand. Ever since December, I had been reading all of the political blogs around New York State, as well as the political blog from NPR. I would estimate that about 60 percent of them predicted that Gillibrand would be chosen as senator. In the beginning of January I noticed that the buzz around Gillibrand was getting louder, and yet the only mention I saw about her in your paper at the time was about how the other candidates were in Kennedy's shadow.
By mid- January, it was clear from the blogs and Paterson's remarks that he was edging towards Gillibrand. Yet the Times chose to to two stories on Kennedy on Jan. 17 and 19 one of which centered on whether she was shy or not.
I wrote to your paper twice, asking for more coverage on the other candidates, like Gillibrand, but never received a reply. In retrospect, do you think your paper should have given your readers a chance to look at the other candidates? And why did your reporters not catch the buzz on Gillibrand sooner, as so many political bloggers did ? The NPR blogger has steadfastly predicted it would be Gillibrand since early December. (You can tell I think your Kennedy coverage was overkill and not fair to the other candidates.)
Victoria Balfour, New York
A. I can't speak for the political blogosphere even a stopped clock is right twice a day but we had good reason to believe, and our reporters and editors still believe, that Caroline Kennedy was the governor's choice up until the day she told him she was having second thoughts. I know who many of the sources were; they were from Gov. David Paterson's inner circle, from the Kennedy camp, and from people in neither camp who had been consulted on the appointment. Nobody, of course, knew with certainty what was in the governor's mind, possibly including the governor, but he gave no one around him reason to think he was inclined toward Kirsten Gillibrand until Ms. Kennedy withdrew. Even then, we believe that Randi Weingarten was in the running until the last minute.
We took note throughout of other possible appointees, and if this had been up for a public vote, of course we would have written more extensively about the rivals from the outset. But in this case the outcome depended on the vote of one sometimes-mysterious man. It was a pretty rich story. Ms. Kennedy was relatively untested in politics. The appointment was one of the first major decisions facing a fairly new governor. Our reporters rightly dug in. (And then, when the situation changed, they dug in on Ms. Gillibrand.) Did Ms. Kennedy get extra attention just because she is a Kennedy? Of course she did from The Times, from the governor, from the political etablishment, and from readers.
To the Tigers of Albert Lea, Minn.
Q. Hi, Bill Keller. I'm Shelby Lageson, and I'm a journalist at Albert Lea High School in Minnesota. You're going to get a lot of questions from my classmates, and I hope that you answer at least one. It'd make our journalism teacher, Mr. Worth, quite ecstatic. But anyway, my question for you...
I've always thought the editor was the most important part of any newspaper. I also think it is the most enjoyable. Why, specifically, did you become an editor? And, also, why The New York Times? It's impressive. Congratulations on doing so well.
Shelby Lageson, Albert Lea, Minn.
Q. I was just wondering what it feels like to work for one of the most renowned newspapers in the world?
Jackson Knudson, Albert Lea, Minn.
Q. We just finished watching the movie "Shattered Glass." What are the most important traits needed to make sure that fabricated stories do not get through?
Marc Kruger, Albert Lea, Minn.
Q. I know that your newspaper is the best in the world and every story I've ever read in your newspaper has never been boring, which leads me to my question.
Have you ever been handed a story, which seemed almost too good, too interesting to be true? Say for instance when Jayson Blair was there. Did you ever once think that the things he was writing about were untrue? How about some of the reporters you have now? Do you ever think that about them?
I know that I said I had one question and that was about four. If you could take some time out of your busy day to answer them that would be greatly appreciated.
Marley Cardona, Albert Lea, Minn.
Q. We were wondering how stressful your job is and what causes this stress?
Aaron Klatt and Chris Stahl, Albert Lea, Minn.
Q. The two of us are aspiring editors and we are wondering how stressful your job as editor is?
Kaila Beckner and Shalin Hoelscher, Albert Lea, Minn.
Q. We were wondering, what do you think is the most important thing to get right in journalism?
Dyllan Engebretson and Josh Piper, Albert Lea, Minn.
Q. We finished learning about Stephen Glass and we were wondering if you were in his editor's (Chuck Lane) shoes, would you have done anything different about the articles he made up?
Allison Stark and Amy Horejsi, Albert Lea, Minn.
Q. What are the different jobs in a newspaper and what are some challenges reporters face?
Bethany Sekora and Brooke Thompson, Albert Lea, Minn.
Q. What are the pros and cons of your line of work? If you could reply, that would be great. Thanks.
Silas Randall and Caleb Gaudian, Albert Lea, Minn.
Q. What was your first inspiration in life to become a journalist?
Zach Wilke and Alyssa Sager, Albert Lea, Minn.
Q. What college(s) did you attend and do you have any suggestions of colleges that would be great for possible future journalists as ourselves?
Holly Ryks and Meghan Stadheim, Albert Lea, Minn.
Q. What are the steps we must go through to publish a solid, factual story and know it is not inaccurate?
Alex Wieland and Tanieka Petty, Albert Lea, Minn.
Q. We have been studying a former journalist named Jayson Blair. I have been wondering if, with our economic situation and money being rather tight, there have been any cuts in the area of fact-checking the stories that are "fit to print." If you could answer that for me, I would be very happy and proud.
Elisha Marin, Albert Lea, Minn.
Q. What is the hardest but most beneficial factor of journalism?
Alik Smed and Callen Pirsig, Albert Lea, Minn.
Q. Hey Bill, my name is Daniel Edwards and I live in Albert Lea, Minn. I am a sophomore journalism student at my high school. I have the opportunity to ask you a question or two about anything I want, as long as it relates to journalism of course!
What did you do, or sacrifice, to get to where you are now?
How did you make you way up the ranks in journalism, from a nobody, to a somebody?
and finally.....
Do you have a car space with your name on it?! With a nice car in it?! = D
Daniel Edwards, Albert Lea, Minn.
Q. I was wondering what you think is the best new catchy design element that would be cool to use in our school paper.
Jessica Sanderson, Albert Lea, Minn.
Q. I am just wondering, did you always know you wanted to be a journalist? Also, what kind of preparations did you make in your life to get where you are now? Thank you for taking time and looking at this and I appreciate it!
Natasha Wiley, Albert Lea, Minn.
Q. I was watching old "Daily Show With Jon Stewart" clips when I came across one that caught my attention. Jon Stewart was doing a piece about newspapers and their plummeting popularity. So, I thought to myself: "Why not ask someone on the inside what the situation is like?"
Opportunity presented itself perfectly. Today, we were assigned to submit a question for "Talk to the Newsroom." My question for you is: What is it like to be on the inside while newspapers are becoming more and more outdated? Do you think they can make a comeback?
Thank you for taking the time to read my e-mail.
Nya Lony, Albert Lea, Minn.
Q. I was wondering if you ever caught any of The New York Times writers who fabricated their stories and if you have what did you do about it? Thanks for your time. I appreciate what you do.
Lynzie Edwin, Albert Lea, Minn.
Q. Our question is, "What do you do when someone on your staff has nothing to write about?"
Alissa Allison and Jasmine Hanson, Albert Lea, Minn.
Q. My question for you is, how do I know if I should give up all my other dreams for something so unstable as writing?
Victoria Wilson, Albert Lea, Minn.
Q. We were wondering what your favorite moment in journalism has been over the years?
Luke Cheever and Jon Koenigs, Albert Lea, Minn.
A. Shelby, I can't pass up the opportunity to make Mr. Worth ecstatic. Anyone who has 35 high school sophomores reading newspapers and thinking about journalism is a hero in my book. So here goes, a lightning round for the Albert Lea High School Tigers.
Many of you (Bethany, Brooke, Sila, Caleb, Zach, Alyssa, Natasha) wonder about journalism as a career mine, or in general. Like you, I first got hooked on journalism in high school. Working for the school paper gave me a chance to stand a little apart from my teachers and fellow students, ask impertinent questions, and occasionally get away with writing something that tweaked the establishment. (Did I mention this was a Catholic boys school in the 1960s?) I took journalism more seriously at my college paper, where I was lucky to encounter a few student editors who understood that the most important thing, Dyllan and Josh, (and the hardest thing, Alik and Callen) is not the writing or the sense of independence. Both of those matter a lot, but the most important thing is the discipline.
Discipline, Alex and Tanieka, is the prerequisite for accuracy and fairness, which add up to integrity. To make sure you've got the story right, you learn to report against your own story. Check your facts, not only with the people who are likely to agree with the premise of your story but also with the people who are likely to disagree. If you're unclear about what someone meant, never be too timid to call back and clarify. To make sure you've got it fair, you learn to set aside your personal opinions, the way a judge does in a courtroom. If you're writing a profile, imagine the person you're writing about is you. Discipline applies to the writing, too. Get to the point. Be as clear as possible. Cut out anything that doesn't serve the piece. Write every day. Rewrite. Then rewrite again if you have time.
People are drawn to journalism for many different reasons. Some simply love to write. Some are curious. Some want to change the world. Some seek adventure. Some like seeing their names in print. Some want to witness history. I plead at least a little guilty to all of those motives, but what has always appealed to me most was puzzling things out taking a complicated situation, investigating and studying it until I thought I understood it, then explaining it as best I could. If I hadn't been a journalist, I'd probably have been a teacher.
It may be true, Shelby, that the editor is the most important part of a newspaper, but when I was your age I sure didn't think so. In fact, I spent 25 years as a reporter, swearing I would never become an editor. Sitting at a desk, watching other people go out and find the story, and then fussing with other people's words I just didn't get the appeal of that. Then as I was finishing up a reporting assignment in South Africa in 1995, my boss at The Times asked if I wanted to be the next foreign editor. It's one thing to say you don't want to be an editor. It's another thing to be offered a chance to lead the most impressive team of foreign correspondents in the world. It turned out that editing was a variation on the figuring-things-out function that most appealed to me about journalism. Except that as an editor I can deploy a staff of reporters and, working with them, try to figure out a whole lot of things at once. These days, besides trying to figure out an assortment of world conflicts, a global economic meltdown and a new administration in Washington, we're trying to figure out the future of our own business. (Nya, you'll find my thought on that subject at the beginning of this Q&A.)
Yes, Aaron, Chris, Shalin and Kaila, the job comes with stress. Some of it is just the hard labor of making sure we've got stories right often on a tight deadline. Some of it comes from competition. Some of it comes from people who don't like what we write. Some of it comes from the pressure of a sour economy. And then there are stresses you can't imagine when you sign up to be a newsman. People who work for you get sick, or their spouses or children or parents get sick. Reporters working in dangerous places get arrested, or kidnapped, or even killed. (I've experienced all three.) The way you get through it without a broken spirit or a hardened heart is by surrounding yourself with good people and leaning on them. Thanks to them, Jackson, most of the time this job feels pretty great.
Luke, Jon, choosing my favorite moment in journalism would be like picking a favorite among my children. I can't pick one favorite. I was lucky enough to cover the end of communism in the Soviet Union and the end of apartheid in South Africa. How's that for starters?
Some of you (Marc, Marley, Allison, Amy and Lynzie) asked about episodes of gross journalistic malpractice: Jayson Blair, who fabricated a number of stories at The Times before he was caught, and Stephen Glass, a serial makeup artist at The New Republic. While newspapers can and must take strong precautions, there is no absolute fail-safe device against a rogue reporter. You can't eavesdrop on every phone conversation, or send babysitters with reporters when they go on assignment. Here are a few things you can do all of which we do with greater rigor at The Times since the embarrassment of the Jayson Blair case: Take the time to carefully vet people you hire. Train and retrain your staff in the techniques of fact-checking. Monitor corrections, and home in on people whose work has to be corrected too often. Assure that when reporters submit work based on anonymous sources an editor knows the identities of the sources. Assign people to monitor the integrity of our journalism (at The Times, we have a standards editor and a public editor, discussed above.) Create a culture in which our credibility is valued above all, and someone who is suspicious of a story feels a responsibility to mention it. Own up to your errors. (The most thorough examination of Jayson Blair's fraud was in The New York Times.)
Maintaining a high level of accuracy and fairness is harder these days. Budget cuts don't help, Elisha, but a more important factor is the growing pressure to get information posted quickly on our Web site. It's one of the biggest challenges we wrestle with how to satisfy the constant appetite of the Web for news right now without sacrificing the careful reporting, fact-checking and reflection that readers expect in a Times story. We have tried hard to inculcate an ethic that prizes being right over being first, and I think we've been pretty successful at being nimble on the Web without being sloppy. But it requires constant vigilance.
Holly and Meghan ask about colleges that create possibilities for future journalists. There are many, many paths to journalism, and they are not by any means limited to studying journalism as an academic subject. The essential skills of journalism gathering and checking information, organizing it in ways that make sense, putting it in context, writing it clearly and fairly are applicable to many fields, many careers. A good, rounded liberal arts education is a fine launching pad into a journalism life. So is concentrated study in any field that excites you: science, history, literature, law, philosophy, computer science. If you think journalism is your passion, it's not necessary to pick a school with a strong classroom program in journalism. You may find it more rewarding to pick a school with a good newspaper. Check the newspaper Web sites of schools that interest you, or have someone send you a few issues of the college paper. When you do a campus visit, drop by the newspaper office.
If you want to pursue advanced or specialized studies in journalism, there is a lot of ferment in the field. Schools as disparate as Columbia, Stanford, the City University of New York and Texas Christian University have been rethinking and replenishing their journalism curricula and those are just a few that have come to my attention. Go forth and report!
Jessica seeks a catchy design element for the school paper. I'll ask the aforementioned Tom Bodkin, art director extraordinaire, to recommend some Web sites that might give you inspiration, and I'll insert them in this Q&A when I get them.
Tom Bodkin said: This posting on Smashing Magazine shows a selection of pages from some of the better designed newspapers around the world.
This is a sometimes interesting blog on the subject of newspaper design.
Jasmine and Alissa want to know what to do when a reporter has nothing to write about. Tell him or her to get the heck out of the office. Walk the halls. Wander the campus and beyond. Call up a member of the school board and ask what's on his or her mind. Keep your eyes open. Ask dumb questions then ask smarter questions. Troll the city Web site. There are 18,000 people in Albert Lea, and every one of them knows a story, if you can just get it out of him or her.
The question that made my heart sink a little was yours, Victoria: "How do I know if I should give up all my other dreams for something as unstable as writing?" I don't know your other dreams, but if journalism is one of them it does not have to exclude the others. Journalism is compatible with many lines of work and many other pursuits. I know journalists who are also lawyers, concert-level pianists, poets, novelists and medical doctors. I know people who have jumped from careers in journalism to careers in teaching, diplomacy and investment banking. (Speaking of unstable career choices!) If you know how to gather information, test it, organize it and interpret it, if you can share it in language that is clear maybe even beautiful at times if you can do that, the world has a place for you even if, God forbid, newspapers all die.
And, finally, no, Daniel, I do not have a parking space. Like most people in New York City, I take the subway to work.
If I overlooked anyone, I apologize. Thanks for your interest.
When Will Web Site Be Redesigned?
Q. When is the next Web site redesign? A lot has changed since 2005 and I've only seen incremental changes to the site (and by site, I really mean the home page and the article pages) over all (on the surface at least) and when it happens will there be a shift from the current restrictive layout?
Michael Reynolds, Brooklyn
Q. Out of curiosity, and under the heading of The New York Times being somehow aware of "customer service" re: your shrinking client base, why is there not a link to The International Herald Tribune on your New York Times Web site, instead of forcing your readers/subscribers to inconveniently go to your I.H.T. Web site separately?
Sidney Friedman
A. Jim Roberts, the associate managing editor who oversees the digital news operation, reminds me that we launched the most recent redesign of the site in April 2006. In newspaper terms, that's still pretty fresh, but on the Web, where things seem to change at the speed of light, three years can seem like an eternity.
Mr. Reynolds is right in pointing out that the changes since then have been incremental. But there have been a lot of them, and taken together, the home page (not to mention the site as a whole ) is quite different from what we were offering at this time in 2006. As I write this, in fact, there's a piece of video embedded at the top of the home page (on the Nazi story), and we've frequently presented live video and animated, interactive graphics on the home page. On inauguration day, we heard from many readers that our live feed of President Obama's swearing-in ceremony was better and more reliable than the major cable TV Web sites. During the campaign season, we often presented maps with constant streams of data being fed into them. By the way, some of the creative minds behind our interactive innovation answered questions in this spot recently. If you want to know why the supposedly gray lady is so much more spry than other news Web sites, check it out. Or read the adoring profile of them in New York Magazine, which hails our Web site as "not a cheap imitation of a print newspaper but a vastly superior version of one. It may be the only happy story in journalism." Well, not the only one. But a happy story.
While I'm kvelling (as the nuns at St. Matthew's didn't teach me to say) let me brag on a few other things. Users can now hit the Times Extra button at the top of the page and be presented with packages of links to articles and blog posts in different publications on subjects related to the main news stories of the day. And deeper into the site, we've redesigned many of our photo slide show presentations and now offer a wide array of interactive multimedia like this view of President Obama's inauguration.
We have spent some time discussing a redesign; we'd be foolish not to take a critical look at what works and what doesn't. But altogether, we feel that the site is hugely successful. Twenty-million unique users is nearly double what we could claim at the time of the redesign. Should we fix something that isn't obviously broken? In addition, a top-to-bottom redesign is a hugely complicated and time-consuming undertaking.
All that said, we are always looking for ways of improving the presentation of our report and we will soon roll out some changes to our article pages, which we hope will allow users to better connect with audio, video and other material related to the stories they read.
As to the question about the International Herald Tribune which we now think of as our global editions, published in Paris and Hong Kong this spring NYTimes.com and IHT.com will be conjoined. You don't want to know (and I don't understand it well enough to tell you) the technological and design challenges this project presented, but the result is this: The Web site will offer all users, here and abroad, the choice of two home pages, the existing one, tailored more for a domestic audience, and the global home page, which focuses more on international news and features and incorporates unique content from the I.H.T. There will also be optional global pages on business, arts, sports, style and opinion. You'll be able to toggle back and forth if you want. Watch for that at the end of March.
Coverage of the Metropolitan Region
Q. I have noticed that The Times has rebranded its metropolitan-area coverage to focus on New York, instead of the "metro," the larger urban-suburban area that makes up a 20 million-plus region (statistic includes Duchess County, N.Y., New Haven County, Conn., and Mercer County, N.J.). Is there a concern that by focusing on mainly affluent Manhattan residents (as well as pockets of liberal-leaning Times readers in Brooklyn and Queens) that you will be alienating loyal readers who have turned to the Metro section for coverage in places like Connecticut, New Jersey, Long Island and the northern New York suburbs? (Keep in mind that The Times distinguished itself for breaking very big New Jersey stories, e.g., alleged abuses among State Police, Robert Torricelli's alleged ethical lapses.)
Greg Shulas
Q. As a reader in New Jersey I'm upset that since last summer The Times has virtually stopped covering New Jersey (as well as other suburban areas of New York) in its news pages. New Jersey and the other New York suburbs are home to a large percentage of Times readers, possibly more than in New York City itself but the Times metro report on most days contains stories only about New York City. Even online there is no suburban equivalent of the City Room blog (why not blogs for New Jersey, Long Island, the northern suburbs and Connecticut?). While I am aware of the financial challenges The Times faces, is it really the best use of the paper's resources to have reporters who until last year might have coverewd important New Jersey issues instead write about weighty issues, like describing various rooms in New York City? In July, Joe Sexton, the metro editor, said in a Talk to the Newsroom session that David Kocieniewski would continue to cover the state but I have only seen a few stories from him in the paper since then. Most of his stories recently have been about Charles Rangel, who does not represent New Jersey. There has even been the unususal spectacle of the editorial page commenting on New Jersey issues that have never been mentioned in the news pages. On Dec. 31 the editorial page even lamented the decline of coverage of New Jersey affairs in the media in general. The Times is just as guilty as anyone else of this. The Times presence in New Jersey is greatly missed and I hope that it returns to the state very soon.
Steven Kimmelman, East Windsor, N.J.
A. The honest answer, of course, is that there is less coverage of the region beyond New York City, and that the hurt for many is real, especially with local papers almost everywhere withering under economic pressure.
The Times retains a strong interest in the wider metropolis and the tri-state area, where many readers (not to mention, a fair number of our journalists) live. Peter Applebome continues, with tenacity and tenderness, to bring the region to life in his columns, whether the subject is controversial gas drilling in upstate New York or the Lautenberg Senate race or the role of football and athletics at Rutgers University. Anne Barnard has done some intrepid, important work on the immigrant killing on Long Island. Patrick McGeehan and David Chen have got at parts of New Jersey's giant economic problems. Winnie Hu, who has been covering education outside the city limits for two years, regularly mines stories of significance and reach in the worlds of public and private schooling. The regional weeklies offer vibrant material, and with each passing week they have a more robust and ambitious Web presence, divided up exactly as Mr. Kimmelman proposes. Tina Kelley is exploring a hyper-local blog in New Jersey. We invite you and other readers to keep at us, with ideas and insistence.
But the fact is, The Times has never pretended to be the local newspaper for every community in the region. We've never had the legions of reporters we would need to watch every city, every township, every police department, every school district, every planning commission, every local sports league, etc., etc. As long as there has been a New York Times, we have concentrated our firepower on the institutions that affect the most people, and covered the rest thematically, or when a big story breaks. Thus we cover intensively New York's city government, including the country's largest school system and the police department; the state government; the Metropolitan Transportation Authority; the Port Authority and so on. Elsewhere we pick our shots, and we can't pick as many of them as we used to, or as we wish.
Beyond that, it has long been the case especially since The Times became a truly national newspaper that our readers were defined more by demographics than geography. It is a more educated, curious, engaged, relatively successful readership that cares about the world, about business and economics, about politics, about the arts, about science and education, that expects more than scores and celebrities in its coverage of popular culture and sports and fashion. There are plenty of those readers in New Jersey and Connecticut, on Long Island and in the Hudson Valley.
Paying for Online News, Continued
Q. I absolutely could not do without the New York Times Web site; it is my news source without exception, and I check it many times a day for breaking news. I also spend hours perusing everything from business briefs, to all the arts coverage, to the your amazing columnists (I miss yours, by the way, but I do love Gail Collins!), and everything in between. I love the specialist blogs Maira Kalman especially, but also Judith Warner and others. I am a devotee, something I'm sorry I couldn't have said about the paper version, before the advent of the Web. My life just doesn't conform to sitting and reading a newspaper I teach high school, getting up at 5:30 and juggling eight million kids, questions, and handouts every day. But there's always a spare corner for the Web site, and I just cherish it. What can a person like me do to help your stellar organization stay afloat? I pay for my crossword subscription, and I paid for the columnist content, when that was required, and I suppose the answer is, subscribe to the paper as a chip-in. But is there anything else you can suggest? I would send a donation, like public radio, if I thought it would help.
Genevieve Hammond, Needham, Mass.
Q. I just read an Op-Ed piece in The Los Angeles Times about newspapers charging fees for online access. I have no problem with that. I "treasure" my access to The New York Times. I do, and will continue to subscribe to the crossword puzzle.
If you charge for access, will you have a tiered subscription rate? I realize it would be difficult and a big hassle to verify income in order to justify subscriptions based on income levels. I was "bereft" when Times Select prevented me from affording my favorite columnists. I exist on Social Security plus occasional freelance articles ($800 last year) and part-time work, when it's available. It isn't now.
For you, it would be a question of whether you could make on quantity at low rates, an equivalent of quality rate subscriptions like Times Select.
In any case, I hope you keep in mind that some intelligent fans of The New York Times have realized lower incomes and have hard choices on discretionary income. Thank you! And good luck in this climate!
Pam Pettee, Telluride, Colo.
Q. Frankly, the Times is an absolutely priceless asset. I'm worried that in today's climate you aren't able to make enough money from ads. Yet I get my priceless asset free every day over the Internet (I do take the weekend hard copy delivered special that is heavily advertised it still is nice to hold a traditional paper once in a while.)
I travel a lot. The Web edition is perfect for me and in some ways even better than the hard copy (interviews, YouTube, etc.), even when I'm home.
So here's the question. The Wall Street Journal charges for its Internet access. In today's climate I'm not looking to spend more ... but I just can't live without the same quality, and independence, that The Times shows day after day, section after section. And this country and the world seriously need a vital, viable, watchdog fourth estate! So if you need to charge, why not get on with it?
Pete Prestegaard
Q. I am and have long been an avid daily reader of the Times. That's not to say I have been a subscriber since news was first available electronically, I have preferred to receive it in that medium, rather than printed on paper. My question to you is, how do you intend to generate a revenue stream from digital news? I would gladly pay a fair subscription rate, say in the neighborhood of $50 per year, to view an electronic version of The Times that has fewer advertisement interruptions. I do not wish to see the demise of The Times and I'm rather ashamed of being a freeloader.
Jeff Posey, Roanoke, Tex.
Q. I enjoy reading The New York Times, but because of my own economic situation, my print subscription is now limited to the Sunday paper. I read The New York Times online several times each day. As my preferred news source, I am interested in the continued viability of The Times.
In what ways might The New York Times benefit from an outreach to current NYTimes.com readers for revenue model ideas and proposals? The Obama-Biden transition tried such an approach through Transition.gov with respect to the incoming president's agenda. The limits of this approach were evident, I think, in that the top issue was legalization of marijuana. Single top issue aside, however, I wonder if mining your current online readers for their ideas might be a useful adjunct to your internal brainstorming efforts and analysis and the use of consultants. In the era of open source, easy access information, a grass-roots market research approach might identify models that have inherent acceptability.
Bruce McCarthy
Q. Take heart. Have courage. I agree with Jill Lepore in the most recent New Yorker that the reports of the death of print journalism, especially the daily newspaper, are wildly premature. As much as I love the New York Times website, I like the print version even more, but at $1.50/copy I now need to be judicious in when I buy it.
The portability of a broad sheet properly folded for ease of reading on crowded commuter trains, buses and subways, should sustain The Times for some time to come. I dare say the print version. The online version functionally replaces TV for people who think they like to think. It too has great add-ons: my favorites Stanley Fish and Errol Morris. What one gains in depth e.g. links to primary sources and related information with the online version, one loses in the depth and serendipity of the print version. (Incidentally, I visit and read your younger sister paper The Boston Globe just as frequently or more so.)
Good luck through these hard times, but I feel certain newspapers will be with us at the "end of days," and live past computers and TVs.
Question: How do you stay sane?
Ted Fletcher
Q. Living in southwestern Virginia, I have to travel 25 miles to purchase The New York Times. So, as others have said to you, I am daily amazed that I can receive this great newspaper online ... and free of charge. I value The Times so greatly that I would certainly be willing to pay to receive it online. By the way, I have a son who lives in Warsaw, Poland, and he reads The Times daily online. Thank you!
James A. Smith Jr.
Q. I am curious as to why you don't impose a modest annual fee for access to your online edition. Just one caveat; no pop-ups! Or perhaps a deluxe online edition for shopaholics in shopping range of Manhattan or ads that would appeal to mail order freaks. You surely have the ability to get the N.S.A. to devise an entry code that would bar free riders.
Art Levine
Q. We met a long time ago, when I was on the road in Russia. John McChesney of NPR introduced us. I read your comments regarding payment online for news with great interest, and want to call your attention to my own proposal. (I write a column now for the CBS affiliate in the San Francisco Bay Area.)
Payment is not simply workable, which it is, but absolutely essential if national and international news reporting is to survive. But it seems to me that it won't fly if The Times tries it alone. That's also part of what's proposed in the CBS piece.
Frank Viviano, CBS World View
A. I'm having a Sally Field moment. It's genuinely heartening to be reminded how much our readers value what we do. Even the criticism we get with some alarming exceptions tends to ride in on the good will of people who regard themselves as family, eager to make us better, rather than antagonists, eager to see us fail. So, thank you, thank you. And the answer to Mr. Fletcher's last question, how do I keep sane, is in messages like these.
The discussion of charging readers for Times content stirred up quite a reaction, mostly from people who agree that what we do is too valuable to be given away, some of it from people convinced they know how a pay model would work. We've gotten more than a few offers from readers who want to pay voluntarily.
On the cover of Time magazine today Walter Isaacson, the magazine's former managing editor, head of the Aspen Institute and Stakhanovite author of best-selling biographies, sees an annoying paradox of our Web site's dependence on advertising alone: The "bulk of the ad dollars has ended up flowing to groups that did not actually create much content but instead piggybacked on it: search engines, portals and some aggregators," he writes. "Another group that benefits from free journalism is Internet service providers. They get to charge customers $20 to $30 a month for access to the Web's trove of free content and services. As a result, it is not in their interest to facilitate easy ways for media creators to charge for their content. Thus we have a world in which phone companies have accustomed kids to paying up to 20¢ when they send a text message but it seems technologically and psychologically impossible to get people to pay 10¢ for a magazine, newspaper or newscast."
Walter, who pioneered the free model when he created Pathfinder in 1994, now argues for a micropayment system -- a news variation on iTunes. I found some things to quarrel with in his essay. He's a little credulous about The Wall Street Journal's online subscription model, which he seems to see as a stroke of modern business acumen. I suspect Rupert Murdoch's decision not to make the Web site free when he bought The Journal had a lot to do with another reality: The Journal's online subscriptions are bundled with print subscriptions, and freeing his online content would have hurt his print circulation, and thus potentially his print advertising revenue. Neither Mr. Murdoch's News Corp. nor The New York Times publishes details of their Web economics, but The Journal lags far behind The Times in Web traffic, and I'd be willing to bet it also lags behind in total revenues.
More important, Walter doesn't really grapple with the main puzzle of a pay model: how to keep it from stifling traffic, especially search-driven traffic, so much that online advertisers go away. I'm not saying that problem is insoluble. Just that, as far as I know, no one has solved it yet.
By the way, I enjoyed Time's cover photograph of a fish wrapped in The New York Times, a reminder of the many eco-friendly reuses of the newspaper that the Web has yet to match. Papier-mâché. Pirate hats. Gift wrap. Have you ever tried to line a bird cage with Google News? Of course, the cover could have depicted a fish wrapped in Time magazine. Time used to charge for its Web sites (after Walter left) but it was a disaster, and they stopped charging. You can read Walter's essay for free at Time.com and save $4.95.
We had a lunch with a group of reporters and editors this week, where conversation ranged across various pay options. In that group, the favorite idea especially among younger and more Web-centic staffers was a voluntary pay model. Imagine a digital version of the NPR membership drive, which allows you to be a reader for free, but invites you to be a member/sponsor for a modest fee. (Sorry you missed the lunch, Ms. Hammond. You'd have felt right at home.)
All of these are welcome contributions to a discussion that, at The Times, is already in high gear. I'll make sure that whatever fresh ideas arrive through this channel get circulated.
In the meantime, for anyone who feels really guilty about getting The Times free, here's a conscience-salving option from my Web site colleague Carla Baranauckas. You can buy a print subscription to be delivered to one of the many schools that use The Times in the classroom. Details here.
More on Anonymous Sources
Q. Many politicians and high government officials feed stories to journalists on condition that their identity is kept secret. On occasion this information proves to be false, and was leaked with the clear intention of misleading the public.
1 If a source for a story provides to have provided false information to a journalist, is the confidentiality of that source still protected?
2 In the case of, say, a politician or their staff, does not the passing of false information in itself represent a story that should be told in full in the public interest, including naming names?
3 If the journalist protects a tainted source, isn't he or she acting unethically?
4 In these circumstances, are not journalists in this position acting as accessories after the fact, misleading the public?
5 When a journalists fails to expose a tainted sources, isn't he or she complicit in nurturing the culture of lies that encourages politicians to leak misinformation and manipulate public opinion?
In practice, I believe that journalists are not willing to expose tainted sources because they fear that their sources for other stories may dry up for fear of exposure.
Adjunct Prof. Harry Blutstein, Deakin University, Collingwood, Australia
Q. When your anonymous sources turn out to be wrong, you should identify them and give them a chance to explain why they were wrong, if they want to.
All anonymous sources should be put on notice that if they turn out to be wrong, the pledge of anonymity will no longer be operative. I believe The Times is regularly used by political operatives feeding misinformation anonymously to advance their partisan goals. You guys seem to fall for it all the time indeed you seem to think that is part of being a newspaper.
Ignorant Reader
Q. I just read your response to the questions about anonymous sources, and I do understand the need to keep some sources anonymous. But what about "experts" and "critics" and "supporters" why can't those people be named, listed, accounted for? I've seen articles where those "experts" are, perhaps, two people with an ax to grind. They may very well be "experts" in some sense, but it's not exactly a consensus. Why can't The Times link to a list of those "experts" and "critics" and "supporters?" I really would like more information in those cases.
Meredith Wright, Los Angeles
A.Good questions, and well worth reopening the subject of anonymous sources.
I would guess that much of the reader wariness of anonymous sources derives from a suspicion that the paper is being used for some undisclosed agenda. When we need to protect a source's identity, we can alleviate this risk to some extent by making every effort to describe a source's credibility (is the information first-hand? second-hand?) and motivation.
On the issue of what Professor Blutstein calls "tainted sources" sources who use the cloak of anonymity to lie or mislead I think most reporters can imagine a situation where they would out a source who fed us bogus information for some malign purpose. A politician knowingly disseminating damaging misinformation about a rival has violated the agreement that protected his identity, and, incidentally, revealed something about his own integrity that voters are probably entitled to know.
But I also think most reporters would want this considered on a case-by-case basis. David Barstow, one of our best and most thoughtful investigative reporters, put it this way when I bounced Professor Blutstein's questions off him:
My problem with this whole line of questions is that it assumes a sort of black and white world of truth and lies where sources are either acting with pure motive or evil intent. Far, far more frequently, reality lies somewhere in the murky middle. Scratch deep enough, and you generally find a combination of motives, some noble and some petty.
Their information tends to come in all kinds of forms documents, rumor-passing, leads to other sources, recollections of events both distant and near. Some of what they say can be true, some false, some more a matter of interpretation. Some false information is offered innocently. Some true information is offered selectively.
Our job, I think, is, first, to hear the information. Get it, then evaluate with care. Accept that people and motives are messy. Expect that some portion of what you get from anonymous sources is going to be wrong, or at least not completely right. Most important, make damn sure that what we publish stands on more than just one anonymous source.
Ideally, as Mr. Barstow has often done, by getting sources on the record.
Here's a real-world case study for you. After Caroline Kennedy withdrew from the competition to fill the vacant New York Senate seat, someone we identified as "a person close to the governor" told reporters that Governor Paterson had already disqualified her, in part because of tax and nanny problems. This was untrue. In this case, The Times and other publications have not identified the source, because it seems likely that the source believed the information to be true. We have, however, traced the information back to the governor's chief communications strategist, a consultant named Judith A. Smith. We also disclosed that shortly before orchestrating the whisper campaign, the consultant met with the governor. Without outing the original source, who may well have been simply a conduit, we have placed responsibility for the lie very close to the governor.
A variation on the theme of being "used" is the case where an official, speaking not for attribution, floats a trial balloon. The story will say something like "the president is considering" or "aides have recommended" a particular course of action. And it is true: the president is considering it, and part of his consideration is to float the idea in the media and see how much opposition it generates. In a case like that, I think the role of the press is harmless or benign, but we must try to let the reader in on the game that is, let the reader know that this is not a great scoop about an impending action, but a possible option being tested through a leak.
On the question of "experts," etc., I think this is shorthand that has risks and benefits. The main practical benefit is that you do not force readers to endure a litany of witnesses saying the same thing, one after another. News stories are plenty long enough as it is, and a conscientious reporter will not generalize about "experts" unless there is a pretty substantial consensus. The risk is that some readers will suspect that the reporter got a skewed sample, or, worse, picked experts who agreed with the reporter.
The idea of identifying experts on the website essentially, online footnotes is clever, but a lot of work for reporters and editors who are already working their hearts out. Short of that, I think it's valuable to be precise (don't say "experts" if you really mean "some experts," or "Freudian experts," or "conservative experts"), to seek out and include dissenting views when there is no consensus, and to note the expertise and possible biases of experts you do quote by name.
Concerns About Middle East Coverage
Q. Why does a once-great institution like The Times continue to infuse its editorial biases into its news coverage?
Why does The Times persist with, for example, what independent studies have demonstrated to be a pronounced anti-Israel bias? (see, e.g., Camera's recent study). Why does The Times limit its readers' exposure to the Israeli perspective on the Mideast conflict, so that the only Israel views that you provide are either far-left Israelis criticizing their county, or far-right Israelis offering objectionable views? The vast majority of Israelis take a much more centrist, reasonable and peace-seeking view. But you decline to present this.
You do your readers an extraordinary disservice by treating Israel (which for 60 years has sought peace with its neighbors) as the moral equivalent of the Palestinian terror groups committed to her destruction and to Jewish genocide.
I have been reading your paper since sixth grade in the late 1960s, once with pride, now with disgust. I am hardly surprised to see the increasingly dire financial position you now occupy. I canceled my subscription years ago.
I hope that someday soon, you will see fit to return The New York Times to its once-valued position as a champion of objective journalism and a broad spectrum of opinions. But I marvel at how you've allowed this great institution to become little more than a shill for its editor's political leanings.
You have allowed your self-interest to destroy something great. Isn't that the sort of thing you constantly condemn in our elected officials, business leaders, etc.?
Ken Kwartler
Q. Why is the paper's coverage of the Middle East so slanted toward Israel? This is a rhetorical question to state a fact.
In 1975 I spent six weeks at Jebaliya Refugee Camp in Gaza reporting on life inside the camp. I was a student at Columbia J-School. I came home with an 80 page manuscript and many photos, describing the very difficult conditions there under Israeli occupation. The Times was interested in the story. I took it there. (Mind you, I was the first American reporter ever seen in Jebaliya. What I wrote had Pulitzer written all over it.) The Times editor who expressed interest led me on (I was 25) for a year. Finally, in frustration, I went back to the paper and asked: "What ARE you doing with that story?" He summarily (literally) threw the copy at me and said The New York Times was not interested.
The United States is in a huge jam right now because our government does not really know or understand the Mideast, and knee-jerk support for Israel is bleeding us in every possible way. Part of the reason is the American press, and especially papers like The New York Times.
Martin Love, Chapel Hill, N.C.
Q. Why has The New York Times refused to label Hamas as a terrorist organization? I don't understand how you can continually refer to them as "militants" or "fighters" rather than what they are, by the nature of their doctrine: terrorists.
Globalsecurity.org defines terrorism as "the unlawful use or threatened use of force or violence against people or property to coerce or intimidate governments or societies, often to achieve political, religious, or ideological objectives."
Princeton University defines terrorism as "the calculated use of violence (or the threat of violence) against civilians in order to attain goals that are political or religious or ideological in nature; this is done through intimidation or coercion or instilling fear."
The United States State Department concluded that "various elements of Hamas have used both political and violent means, including terrorism, to pursue the goal of establishing an Islamic Palestinian state in place of Israel."
There are countless reports of rockets being fired indiscriminantly into Israel, and Hamas has claimed responsibility for these attacks.
Please tell me how Hamas does not meet the criteria for the defintions of "terrorism" above and why you do not refer to Hamas as a terrorist organization, and its members as "terrorists" in your articles. Hamas doctrine has repeatedly stated that "the state of Israel and all her inhabitants must be exterminated."
Bruce, El Paso, Tex.
Q. I greatly appreciate your newspaper. Thank you for your hard work. I have an important question:
In light of the Gaza massacre where more than 1,000 people were killed (including many children and women), three United Nations facilities were bombed, white phosphorus and other new weapons were used, why wasn't your paper more condemning of Israel's overuse of force? I also need to point out the political timing aspect of this; the Israeli elections are near.
If New York City police fired on fleeing suspects in Times Square, would you be outraged at civilian deaths?
I lived in Israel for a year (on a kibbutz) and I respect Israel's right to exist as a country and wish no harm against anyone in Israel.
Your paper, if you had given a stronger condemnation of Israel's cruelty, could have saved more civilians.
Gavin Young
Q. Will The Times ever do a full report on the influence of the Israeli lobby on the United States government? I am not referring to coverage of others who claim that the Israeli lobby in this country has an unhealthy effect on United States overseas policy.
What I would like to see is the full Times investigative treatment, the kind of story or series of stories that digs deep and carries the weight of the country's most influential media outlet.
I believe the Times is a very good choice for such a mission, given that in years past it too often gave the impression of being a part of the Israeli lobby. (Remember Abe Rosenthal?)
Is The Times ready for such a story? The story is there, and it's important. But would The Times ever touch it?
Be a hero. All you'd be risking is your job.
John Hackett
Q. I have long been puzzled about the difference between the way that the major countries of the West the United States and the European Union characterize Hamas, as a terrorist organization and the way The New York Times characterizes Hamas, as a group or some similar neutral language. What are the reasons for the terrorist designation by our State Department and why don't the serious reasons deserve mention when The Times reports about Hamas?
Joe Richards
Q. When Hamas held a news conference with the shades pulled to pretend they were in the dark and staged a protest of the absurd regarding Israel's withholding fuel, why didn't you expose this and their other ruses as propaganda? I guess my question really is why do you take Hamas any more seriously than say, the Nazis, who also had a supremacist philosophy, also wanted to exterminate the Jews, and also performed governmental and social service functions? I don't recall the Nazis getting the same favorable coverage as Hamas.
Nan K.
Q. Would you please explain why The New York Times News doesn't call Palestinian mortar and other attacks against Israeli civilians terrorist attacks, when 9/11 and 7/7 were called terrorism and two ombudsmen and two former Jerusalem bureau chiefs have asked that you call such attacks terrorism?
Q. My question to you is about your coverage of the war in Gaza. A Muslim writer claims (falsely) on islamonline.net that the mainstream media was "blocked" by Israel and only "citizen journalists" could cover the war. Was that the case? Did you feel pressured by "citizens journalists"?
Do you feel The Times did a good job on Gaza? What was your reason for sending in a pair of reporters was one Muslim and one Jewish for balance? Or what was this about?
Cathy Fitzpatrick, New York
Q. What is the reason you prefer to feature pictures of injured Gaza residents rather than scenes of destruction and injury to Israelis?
Ruth Cohen
Q. Why does The Times use the verb "lob" to describe Gazan rocket attacks? Why not write about "firing rockets"? It seems like an inappropriate term, regardless of the rockets' accuracy.
Judah Goldberg, Bergenfield, N.J.
A. This is not a Sally Field moment. What you see above is a sampling of the more civil letters on this subject. Some of the readers represented here are frequent correspondents.
When the author of Proverbs wrote 15:1 ("a gentle answer turneth away wrath") he clearly didn't foresee the passions that would beset his neighborhood a couple of millenia later. Gentle and thoughtful, and agonized, and heartfelt answers have consistently failed to turn away the wrath of those who believe that The Times is a captive of one side or the other, that our reporters in the field march to some partisan tune, that the articles and photographs we publish are part of a campaign to demonize Israel or, alternatively, to do the bidding of some Jewish cabal. My colleague Ethan Bronner, who has covered the Middle East with distinction off and on for more than 25 years, most recently as our current Jerusalem bureau chief, wrote a splendid essay in our Week in Review section the Sunday before last about the furies that encircle a reporter attempting to cover the conflict in Gaza fully and fairly. The essay a gentle answer from a conscientious journalist explains how "the war of language can confound a reporter's attempts to narrate or a new president's attempts to mediate this conflict in a way both sides can accept as fair." I urge you to read it.
Jill Abramson, our managing editor for news, answered many of the same questions in her own online Q&A with readers last month. Our public editor, Clark Hoyt, weighed in on the question of balance in Middle East coverage on Jan. 11, and on the use of the label "terrorist" on Dec. 13. On the question of when we do or do not attach the label "terrorist" to a group or a person or an act, I recommend a note for the files written by James Bennet, now editor of The Atlantic, after he finished a tour as The Times's Jerusalem bureau chief in 2004. Mr. Hoyt quoted from it in his column on the subject, but I've had it put into our archive and you can read the whole thing here.
I can't improve on Ethan's essay, or on James's memo. Even if you don't agree with everything they say, I think you'll be impressed by the intensity of thought and the depth of good will they, and we, pour into this subject. I'll use this space to make a few personal observations about the larger mission of journalism as we attempt to practice it at The New York Times.
First, about language. Words are the main tools of our craft. They can be used to inform and explain. They can also be used to inflame, or to pander. The tabloid press has a vocabulary of headline words HERO, THUG, MADMAN that are aimed not at the minds of readers, or even at their hearts, but at their viscera. Over time, the promiscuous use of such overheated language and adolescent name-calling cheapens both the language and the user. And it is insulting to readers. It tells you what you are supposed to think, implying you are too stupid or insensitive to make your own judgment. I prefer to think that readers of The New York Times do not need to be treated like fools.
Words can also be a litmus test, a password to establish your adherence to a particular point of view. To describe a politician as "liberal" or "conservative" (while almost always inexact) is generally neutral. To describe the same politician as "left-wing" or "right-wing" may say more about you than about your subject. It identifies you.
So, to bring this back to the Middle East: You can write about a Hamas suicide bomber erupting in a restaurant, describe the carnage of innocents in such heartbreaking detail that the stoniest reader will feel a surge of pain and fury and yet, for a certain reader, if you neglect to use the word "terrorist" in the story, it's as if you have whitewashed the evil. Of course a person who sets out to inflict such horror is a terrorist, commiting a terrorist act, and there is nothing inherently wrong with saying so. But using the word does not add anything to our understanding. It does not convey information. If it is included because one set of readers demand it, then it is a watchword, a signal in my view, a patronizing signal that we are on board.
Is aiming rockets at Israeli civilians a terrorist act? Yes, even if Hamas calls it retaliation. The rockets are intended to, and do, terrorize. We have no rule against saying so, and we have said so. We avoid using the word reflexively, automatically, as a moral mantra or a statement of political affiliation. Is Hamas a terrorist organization? Well, that's a little more complicated and complication is not popular in the land of moral clarity. Hamas commits terrorist acts. Hamas is also a political organization. (It stood for, and won, an election in Gaza.) Hamas is also a military organization, in that it wages war by means more conventional than suicide bombs and terrorizing rockets. Hamas is also a charitable organization, which built much of its popular support by tending to the suffering of Palestinians. To describe Hamas as "a terrorist organization" strikes a pose, allies us with a point of view (including the United States government's official point of view) but it is reductionist that is, it reduces Hamas to its vilest component. And it is politically prescriptive, at least by implication, since defining Hamas as a terrorist organization all but says they have no place at any negotiating table. We should not and do not gloss over the appalling things Hamas has done, but it is still sloppy journalism to refer to Hamas flatly as "a terrorist organization."
Second, about balance. Many of the letters we get, and some of the "independent studies" that purport to unearth media bias, depend on superficial and debatable metrics that have little to do with either science or journalism. They count things like the number of "pro-Israel" quotes versus the number of "pro-Palestinian" quotes, whatever that means, or the number, size and placement of photographs, or the column inches devoted to Palestinian funerals versus Israeli funerals, and so on. Clark Hoyt deals with this in his January column. We certainly try to keep an informal sense of proportion, and Mr. Hoyt concludes that we are mostly successful, but these measures do not amount to balance in an any meaningful sense. I believe balance means we attempt in story after story to distinguish verified fact from allegation, to put the events in context, to reflect dissenting views without conferring unwarranted credibility, in short, to give the fullest possible picture without being disarmed by the passions of any side. Balance means that we supply you, the reader, with all you need to know to render an intelligent judgment of your own, not that we insist on making that judgment on your behalf.
Third, about motives. It may be unpleasant to be called on errors or to have our analysis of events challenged, but that is a natural part of our give and take with our audience. What is most disheartening about this discussion is the assumption not on the part of the majority of readers, but by the vocal minorities whose minds are sealed in a bunker of righteousness of bad faith, of bigotry, and even of outright conspiracy. Ethan Bronner's essay sampled a bit of the hate mail that invariably comes with this assignment. He left out some of the most venemous. Covering the Middle East is grueling work, emotionally taxing, intellectually challenging and sometimes physically perilous. The reporters who do it expect to be second-guessed, but they don't deserve to be vilified.
Finally, a last kvell before I conclude my week as blogger-in-chief: I think our coverage of the most recent conflict in Gaza by Mr. Bronner, by former Jerusalem bureau chief Steve Erlanger, by our brave and dogged Gaza stringer, Taghreed el-Khodary, by our Jerusalem reporter Isabel Kershner, by our Istanbul bureau chief, Sabrina Tavernise, and by photographers Tyler Hicks, Moises Saman and Rina Castelnuovo has been stunning. It has been vivid, honest, deep and thoughtful. It was, in the sense I described above, balanced. It was difficult and sometimes dangerous work. Israel prohibited foreign journalists, including ours, from entering Gaza for many days. We were fortunate to have Ms. el-Khodary already in Gaza, who bore witness both to the damage wrought by Israeli firepower and to the fact that Hamas was launching rockets at Israel from civilian neighborhoods. Of her many fine reports, one that has stuck with me for weeks is her very brief, chilling page-one encounter with an injured Palestinian jihadi, swaggering into an overworked hospital, demanding to be treated first, and announcing that civilians should be happy to be martyred for his cause. The coverage included extensive reporting on the carnage in both Gaza and Israel, incisive analysis of the political calculus on both sides fair-minded investigation of allegations (including the charges by some human rights groups that Israel had committed "war crimes.") And when the Israelis and Hamas finally, fitfully ceased fire, our reporters did not. They should be proud of their work. I am.