Of dogs and moose

Last night I finally had a chance to read Ken Auletta’s nearly-10,000-word New Yorker piece on New York Times Co. chairman Arthur Sulzberger Jr. The subhead asks, “Can Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., save the Times — and himself?” Unfortunately, Auletta is able only to muster a “maybe.” Still, Auletta does his usual dogged, thorough job of reporting every angle, and his graceful writing makes this a surprisingly quick read.

One complaint: Other than a detailed rehash of Jayson Blair/ Howell Raines/ Judith Miller (including the reappearance of the moose), I didn’t come away from the article with any clearer sense than I had before of what kind of business executive or publisher Sulzberger is. Auletta reports that Sulzberger has a reputation for being disengaged from the business side of his job, and well-intentioned but naive when it comes to journalism. But there’s little here in the way of examples that we don’t already know.

I did find myself feeling — well, not exactly sorry for Judith Miller, but nevertheless appalled by Sulzberger’s treatment of her. By Auletta’s account, Sulzberger morphed from her biggest champion into someone who wanted nothing to do with her without ever having the grace to tell her why.

There are also several telling anecdotes, and this is perhaps the most brutal:

On September 12th, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was invited to a publisher’s luncheon at which various Times editors and reporters were present. Such events are common in the life of the Times and other major newspapers, but this one had an odd start. A security dog that had earlier been sniffing for bombs got sick on the carpet of the room where the lunch was to be held. The mess was cleaned up, but the stench was still noticeable when Rice and her party arrived. The air-conditioning was turned up high to diminish the smell, but it was difficult to hear above the noise. Sulzberger greeted Rice and, according to the transcript posted on the State Department’s Web site, began by asking how she thought the United States was “viewed right now by the United Nations,” and whether it mattered. “And before you answer that question, just so everybody knows,” he said, “it’s pretty loud in this room, so my apologies. The bomb-sniffing dog threw up here.” Everyone laughed, but Sulzberger continued to apologize, and, as some of the reporters present cringed, Rice finally said, “Thank you for sharing that.”

More than anything, Auletta’s story is a cautionary tale of what can happen when a family dynasty is determined to keep things in the family. Obviously there is no way someone with Sulzberger’s flaws could have risen to the top of the Times Co. — and the Times — had he not been the son of Arthur “Punch” Sulzberger. The son’s inadequacies are now being exposed for everyone to see.

Yet surely it’s a good thing that the Times Co. hasn’t passed into the hands of a huge, publicly traded corporation. Sulzberger does seem to know that a relentless focus on the bottom line would ultimately be bad for business, since the excellence of the Times’ journalism is the only real product that he’s got to sell. If only there were more newspaper executives who believed that.

Startling and disturbing

The Committee to Protect Journalists reports that the United States is ranked sixth — tied with the military dictatorship of Burma — in the number of journalists it has imprisoned. Coming in ahead of them are China, Cuba, Eritrea, Ethiopia and Uzbekistan.

According to the CPJ, the U.S. is holding a total of five journalists — four in Iraq and one at Guantánamo Bay.

Is it possible that these five are terrorists who were posing as journalists? Of course. But in reading the CPJ’s descriptions of their cases, it becomes immediately clear that American officials have made no good-faith effort to explain themselves or to allow international scrutiny.

All buzz, no substance

Washington Post ombudsman Deborah Howell wrote a column over the weekend in which, among other things, she reported that the print folks are upset about a blog written for washingtonpost.com by Dan Froomkin.

The Post’s national politics editor, John Harris, is among those concerned about having a blogger who is perceived as a liberal Bush-basher writing an online column labeled “White House Briefing,” as though he were a Post political reporter. It strikes me as a legitimate concern, and Howell was right to propose that the column get a new name.

I’m not going to link to everything. Jay Rosen’s got it all, as well as thoughtful Q&As with Harris, washingtonpost.com executive editor Jim Brady and Froomkin himself. It’s well worth reading. Keep in mind that no one, including Harris, is proposing to get rid of Froomkin’s blog.

But I do want to say something about the ubiquitous blogging champion Jeff Jarvis, whose hyperkinetic presence is much sought-after by cable news programmers, and who is thought to be something of an expert on the emerging world of online journalism. If you do your homework and read the material Rosen assembled first, I guarantee you will be startled by this from Jarvis’ blog, Buzz Machine:

Deborah Howell … writes an ombudsman column for the Washington Post that illustrates, in its quotes from editors at the paper, the kind of clueless, destructive, and snobbish territoriality between print and online that is killing newspapers….

What a terrible insult and slap at a colleague who writes a very good, respected, and journalistic column for online. What a slap from a newsroom snot. [That would be the aforementioned John Harris.] But that is what newsrooms are like….

[T]he audience has clearly shown its support for the online Post over the printed one; the only reason online is not as successful is because advertisers are even more behind than newspaper editors. And the audience has clearly shown Froomkin their support. Perhaps the paper should be doing more of what he does. Did you ever think of that, o, vaunted newspaper editors?

This is just self-serving bloviation over what’s really a minor matter: trying to make sure that a highly opinionated blogger who writes for washingtonpost.com isn’t confused with Post reporters who are trying to cover the White House in a fair and neutral manner.

Rosen advances the conversation and adds to our understanding of what’s going on inside the Post newsroom. Jarvis subtracts from it. Then again, Jarvis’ only goal seems to be calling attention to himself.

Arthurian mythology

End-of-semester deadlines prevent me from immediately reading Ken Auletta’s big piece on New York Times Co. chairman (and Times publisher) Arthur Sulzberger Jr. But Mark Jurkowitz has some highlights. Mark’s take on Auletta’s take: “[E]ven in his mid-50’s, Sulzberger is too unseasoned and undisciplined for the role.”

Following the Judith Miller meltdown, speculation was rampant (if unfounded) that Sulzberger might be pressured into giving up one of his jobs — most likely the publisher’s position. The buzz died down. But I wouldn’t be surprised if Auletta’s piece starts it up all over again.

Kaus thinks that despite the missteps of the past several years, the family isn’t quite ready to give up on not-so-young Arthur: “A cool-headed outsider perspective suggests that at least one more anti-Pinch tidbit or scandal will be required for the Class B shareholders to end their family nightmare. Or at least start a new chapter.”

Mother knows best

Brian Ballou has a terrific story in today’s Boston Herald on Snoop Dogg‘s mother, Beverly Broadus Green, who is flying here to speak out against violence at a Dorchester middle school tomorrow.

Green tells Ballou: “Don’t look at me for what he’s done, look at me as Beverly. When you raise your children, they go out and do things. I don’t like it and he knows I don’t like it, but that’s what pays the bills.”

Not pacific about the Atlantic

Today’s Globe has a great column by former Atlantic Monthly editor Robert Manning on the death of the Atlantic — or at least the death of the Atlantic as We Know It, as the venerable monthly prepares to move to Washington.

Manning makes a valuable point, arguing that the Atlantic’s outside-the-Beltway location was one of the things that made it a vital source of unconventional wisdom, as it was during the Vietnam War. He writes:

I realized that Boston was a far better site from which to take the measure of the sectors to which The Atlantic Monthly was devoted — literature, science, art, and politics — than was Washington. That is why I am disturbed that the magazine is leaving the city on the hill for the city on the Potomac.

Now fiction-free and increasingly neocon in outlook, the Atlantic is severing its last ties to the past: Cullen Murphy, the gifted managing editor, will not make the move. The Atlantic may survive and even thrive. But now it’s just another Washington magazine. Don’t be fooled by the nameplate.

Jeff Jacoby and the bishops

The year would not be complete without Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby’s telling us that, yes, he’s still in favor of the death penalty. What makes today’s column special is that he presumes to teach religion to the Catholic bishops. It comes right after the sentence in which he writes, “I wouldn’t presume to teach religion to a bishop.”

Part one of Jacoby’s two-parter is here.

Mary Mapes’ Globe problem

When Jonathan Alter of Newsweek reviewed Mary Mapes’ book for the New York Times Book Review on Nov. 20, he opened with a devastating reminder: that the Boston Globe had exploded the credibility of her chief source, Bill Burkett, months before she relied on him in producing the “60 Minutes” story on George W. Bush’s National Guard service. That story, of course, ended her career.

Today Walter V. Robinson, editor of the Globe’s Spotlight Team and the lead reporter on several stories about Bush’s military service (or lack thereof) dating back to 2000, weighs in with his own review of Mapes’ book, which is titled “Truth and Duty: The Press, the President and the Privilege of Power.” Robinson recalls that Globe reporter Michael Rezendes, in February 2004, cast serious doubt on “Burkett’s bizarre eyewitness account of how embarrassing documents in Bush’s military records were destroyed in 1997.”

The Rezendes account is still online. In it, he reports that George O. Conn, “a key witness to some of the events described by Burkett has told the Globe that the central elements of his story are false.” As Robinson suggests, it is unimaginable that Mapes didn’t take this more seriously before she rushed her unproven, unprovable allegations onto the air.

As we all know, the avalanche that would eventually destroy Mapes’ career was begun with a few pebbles tossed by conservative bloggers, who charged that the memos on which CBS relied — purportedly typed up in the early 1970s — were almost certainly produced on a computer and printer of recent vintage, using Microsoft Word’s default settings. Mapes has some choice words for the bloggers — and Robinson has some choice words for her. Robinson writes:

Mapes’s opinion of the bloggers is venomous: “A digital lynch mob at work,” she calls them. “With political blogging,” she explains, “there is very little gate-keeping, very little vetting of information before it goes out into the ether. For many of the more amateurish sites, the operators don’t seem to want any fact-checking.” And on and on.

How, one has to wonder, can Mapes be so deaf to the irony in her attack? It was her own amateurish, unvetted reporting that gave the bloggers all the ammunition they needed.

By contrast, Robinson is respectful of anchor Dan Rather — too much so, in my view. If Rather had not been so overworked, Robinson writes, he probably would have asked for the clips — and would have seen Rezendes’ report, which would have “likely halted the broadcast.”

Perhaps. But what of Rather’s over-the-top defense of Mapes, and his statement to the outside commission that investigated the story that he regretted having issued an apology? What about the fact that the National Guard story tracks so closely with another phony-documents story in which Rather was involved in the 1970s?

Mapes may deserve most of the blame. But as Christiane Amanpour said when Peter Arnett tried to duck responsibility for CNN’s Tailwind fiasco, even though he had anchored the flawed report and had allowed his byline to be published atop the Time magazine version of the story, “I object to this new image of correspondent as nincompoop.”