How can cutbacks not be mentioned in NYT analysis of Cronkite debacle?

[Simon_Cowbell]

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/02/opinion/02pubed.html

"Even a newspaper like The Times, with layers of editing to ensure accuracy, can go off the rails when communication is poor, individuals do not bear down hard enough, and they make assumptions about what others have done. Five editors read the article at different times, but none subjected it to rigorous fact-checking, even after catching two other errors in it. And three editors combined to cause one of the errors themselves."

Fine, but not mentioning that this is the sort of **** more likely to happen when you lop off half of a work force that, I imagine, wasn't just twiddling its thumbs all those years... is the height of being disingenuous.

 

[clutchcargo]

Hate to say this, but having a full staff and a bunch of different people layering the editing process might actually be detrimental to a story. The more you have checking, the less responsibility each one takes and the more each assumes "someone else" is catching all the factual errors.

Reporters should be proofreading and factchecking their own stuff, then you get a line editor and then a copy editor to look at it. They should be extra careful knowing they are the only lines of defense in terms of accuracy. Any more layers than that, at least in the newspaper business, and the process gets watered down.

 

[Simon_Cowbell]

Hate to say this, but having a full staff and a bunch of different people layering the editing process might actually be detrimental to a story. The more you have checking, the less responsibility each one takes and the more each assumes "someone else" is catching all the factual errors.

Reporters should be proofreading and factchecking their own stuff, then you get a line editor and then a copy editor to look at it. They should be extra careful knowing they are the only lines of defense in terms of accuracy. Any more layers than that, at least in the newspaper business, and the process gets watered down.

Stanley apparently was writing too many pieces to give this one any thought.

 

[pressmurphy]

I think it's easier to make that case if seven different stories contained one glaring factual error apiece on a single day. Presumably they would have gone through multiple editing paths, which would raise the issue of possible systemic shortcomings.

In this particular case, though, the root of the problem was that one "reporter" sucked massively for whatever reason. I'm not saying that the editing shouldn't have been better and that people up and down the line aren't accountable, but a single reporter precipitated this embarrassment.

 

[Simon_Cowbell]

a single reporter precipitated this embarrassment.

A single... something.... always precipitates an embarrassing mistake.

 

[WriteThinking]

As in other instances with corrections of this magnitude, I just don't get it.

I don't see how said reporter could be "much admired by editors for the intellectual heft of her coverage of television" when she apparently doesn't make the effort it takes to get facts right -- the first and most important rule of journalism.

Talent, or a willingness to be hard-hitting, means nothing without that. Doesn't it?

This reporter had a history of frequent, embarrassing errors. How do such people even get to the NYT? Or get to stay there?

 

[JimmyHoward33]

How do such people even get to the NYT? Or get to stay there?

She voted for Obama.

More seriously I agree. With the number of jobs shrinking everyday and the number of good jobs even smaller, things like this just make you shake your head.

 

[BTExpress]

Among her gaffes: Calling the title of the Ray Romano sitcom "All About Raymond"

And this is a bleeping TV critic.

According to CJR she has been responsible for nine corrections so far in 2009. And by another person's count she had 14 corrections in 2008, 12 in 2007, and 15 in 2006, 23 in 2005 and 26 in 2004.

I give up. I can't defend it anymore. This industry deserves to ****ing die.

 

[Michael_ Gee]

Stanley is extremely wired into the Times' hierarchy. Ergo, getting rid of her would reflect poorly on said hierarchy. Further ergo, she sticks around.

 

[BTExpress]

Stanley is extremely wired into the Times' hierarchy. Ergo, getting rid of her would reflect poorly on said hierarchy. Further ergo, she sticks around.

Sounds to me like a tumor that, after years of the patient ignoring symptoms, has wrapped itself inside layers of brain tissue and can't be removed.

 

[Mizzougrad96]

The Times is at its absolute worst when it writes about its ****-ups.

 

[Ben_Hecht]

Stanley is extremely wired into the Times' hierarchy. Ergo, getting rid of her would reflect poorly on said hierarchy. Further ergo, she sticks around.

What's the backstory? More, please.

 

[Songbird]

Wait, five editors are reading one story?

Where do I sign up to work at a place like that?

 

[Mizzougrad96]

Wait, five editors are reading one story?

Where do I sign up to work at a place like that?

I worked at a place where most stories would get three reads. Of course, the same place right now would probably want me to just post it directly to the web.

 

[BTExpress]

According to Wikipedia, "Stanley is close friends with fellow Times employees Jill Abramson and Maureen Dowd. Both are mentioned prominently in the New York Magazine article "The Redhead and the Gray Lady," by Ariel Levy."

And in that article . . . "A common newsroom perception is that Dowd’s clique gets special treatment because its members use their charm instrumentally—an occupational hazard for successful women that runs roughly proportional to their level of physical attractiveness. And then there is their extremely close proximity to Jill Abramson. “When I became managing editor, I gave a short speech: My mother told me when I was going off to summer camp, ‘You just need one friend and you’ll be okay,” says Abramson. “At work, Maureen is that one friend.”

I think we need to rewrite that tired line:

"They have to work half as hard to get twice the credit and never are held accountable for anything."

 

[Bubbler]

The good boy/girl NYC society bull**** is going to be the death of them. That story would be embarrassing for a weekly shopper.

 

[SixToe]

Not just that five editors read her story and missed things, but this was glaring to me:

For all her skills as a critic, Stanley was the cause of so many corrections in 2005 that she was assigned a single copy editor responsible for checking her facts. Her error rate dropped precipitously and stayed down after the editor was promoted and the arrangement was discontinued. Until the Cronkite errors, she was not even in the top 20 among reporters and editors most responsible for corrections this year. Now, she has jumped to No. 4 and will again get special editing attention.


She is such a ****-up with facts the NYT has a special editor assigned to her? That's terrible.

I don't care how good a writer may be with "intellectual heft" of a subject. If you can't get basic facts correct and are one of the most prolific in errors, something needs to be changed.

 

[JayFarrar]

The most telling lines in that article was Cronkite's kid e-mailed the paper, before his dad died, and told them to be careful because CBS had found errors in its own advance work on Cronkite's obit, and that didn't happen at the Times.
The other is that the piece was written nearly a month in advance.

 

[JayFarrar]

http://www.mediabistro.com/tvnewser/cbs/katie_couric_swipes_the_nytimes_alessandra_stanley_122630.asp

Katie Couric weighed in on the Times article as well. Pretty funny.

 

[steveu]

As in other instances with corrections of this magnitude, I just don't get it.

I don't see how said reporter could be "much admired by editors for the intellectual heft of her coverage of television" when she apparently doesn't make the effort it takes to get facts right -- the first and most important rule of journalism.

Talent, or a willingness to be hard-hitting, means nothing without that. Doesn't it?

This reporter had a history of frequent, embarrassing errors. How do such people even get to the NYT? Or get to stay there?

Had Frank Reynolds been alive, he'd have eaten her for lunch.