A good opinion section builds community. It’s an argument that my “What Works in Community News” partner, Ellen Clegg, makes over and over. As editorial page editor of The Boston Globe, she eliminated the last vestiges of nationally syndicated columnists and pushed the pages toward mostly local content. That has continued under her successors at the Globe, including the current opinion editor, James Dao.
Now Gretchen A. Peck of Editor & Publisher has checked in with three top journalists who are working for their papers’ opinion sections — Julieta Chiquillo, deputy editorial page editor at The Dallas Morning News; Peter St. Onge, editorial page editor at three North Carolina papers, The Charlotte Observer, The News & Observer of Raleigh and The Herald-Sun of Durham, as well as opinion editor at McClatchy; and Lorraine Forte, opinion editor at the Chicago Sun-Times.
They all make similar points: local opinion journalism based on rigorous reporting is a crucial part of a local or regional newspaper’s mission. “I think it’s part of what gives the newspaper a personality and creates a sense of community,” Forte told Peck. “Otherwise, you’re just a collection of news stories.”
Indeed, the Sun-Times restored political endorsements about 10 years ago after briefly abolishing them. Many chain-owned dailies have gotten rid of endorsements because they’re a lot of work and because the owners don’t want to alienate any of their readers. There’s an additional problem as well: the new generation of nonprofit local news outlets can’t endorse without losing their tax-exempt status. Yet in many cases readers are looking for guidance — perhaps not on the big races, but certainly on more obscure offices like city council, school committee or select board.
Several years ago, Joshua Darr and his colleagues studied what happened when a Gannett daily, the Desert Sun in Palm Springs, California, eliminated national opinion content and replace it with local opinion for one month. Darr, who’s now at Syracuse University, and his colleagues found a small but measurable decline in partisan polarization after that month, as Ellen wrote at the time. Darr later talked about his findings on our podcast.
As someone who worked full-time in opinion journalism for many years at The Boston Phoenix, The Guardian and GBH News, I strongly believe that fair-minded point-of-view writing needs to be part of any news organization’s mission — and that it’s at least as important at the local level as it is on national issues.
For those of us who care about the byzantine internal politics of The New York Times, there is a tantalizing aside in Adam Rubenstein’s essay in The Atlantic about his stint as an editor in the opinion section. Rubenstein was involved in editing the infamous June 2020 op-ed by Republican Sen. Tom Cotton (free link) calling for the use of the Insurrection Act to suppress violent demonstrators at Black Lives Matter protests. The op-ed led to an internal revolt at the Times and, ultimately, the firing of editorial-page editor James Bennet.
One of the principal charges against Bennet was that he admitted he hadn’t read Cotton’s screed before publishing it. Yet Rubenstein’s Atlantic essay, which is sympathetic to Bennet, includes this:
In addition to my own edits, I incorporated edits conveyed by Bennet, Dao, and the deputy op-ed editor, Clay Risen; then a copy editor went over the essay.
(Dao, by the way, is James Dao, now editorial-page editor at The Boston Globe.)
“Edits conveyed by Bennet”? What, precisely, is that supposed to mean? Did Bennet have a hand in editing the piece or didn’t he? It sure sounds like Rubenstein is telling us that Bennet read the op-ed before it was published — but that contradicts what’s on the public record. For instance, here’s an excerpt from the story (free link) that the Times itself wrote about the controversy just before Bennet was fired:
James Bennet, the editor in charge of the opinion section, said in a meeting with staff members late in the day that he had not read the essay before it was published. Shortly afterward, The Times issued a statement saying the essay fell short of the newspaper’s standards.
Last December, in a massively long essay revisiting the entire affair, Bennet himself reiterated in The Economist’s 1843 Magazine, where he is a columnist, that he had not read the op-ed. He recounts an internal meeting at which he tried to defend himself and the decision to publish Cotton’s piece:
[A] pop-culture reporter asked if I had read the op-ed before it was published. I said I had not. He immediately put his head down and started typing, and I should have paid attention rather than moving on to the next question. He was evidently sharing the news with the company over Slack. If he had followed up, or I had, I might have explained that this was standard practice. Dao’s name was on the masthead of the New York Times because he was in charge of the op-ed section. If I insisted on reviewing every piece, I would have been doing his job for him – and been betraying a crippling lack of trust in one of the papers’ finest editors.
There is one other tidbit in Bennet’s piece that perhaps Rubenstein is referring to: “Rubenstein also told me that in one draft Cotton had linked disapprovingly to a tweet from a Times reporter that could be read as expressing support for the rioters. I told Rubenstein to make sure that this link was removed. I had prohibited criticising any work, including any social-media activity, from the newsroom, unless I ran the idea by a senior newsroom editor first.”
Is that the edit “conveyed by Bennet” that Rubenstein refers to in The Atlantic? If so, it’s a pretty thin reed. Rubenstein and his editors at The Atlantic should have realized that he was directly contradicting what Bennet had said about his involvement in Cotton’s op-ed and clarified that Bennet was merely responding to a routine question Rubenstein had asked him. And if Rubenstein is suggesting that Bennet was more involved than he has claimed, then that should have been highlighted, not buried in an aside.
***
Aside from the ambiguities about the degree to which Bennet was involved in editing Cotton’s op-ed, there is at least one other significant failure by Rubenstein and his editors. In attempting to prove that the Times newsroom is hermetically sealed in a left-wing bubble, he takes a shot at Times reporter Edward Wong, writing:
A diplomatic correspondent, Edward Wong, wrote in an email to colleagues that he typically chose not to quote Cotton in his own stories because his comments “often represent neither a widely held majority opinion nor a well-thought-out minority opinion.” This message was revealing. A Times reporter saying that he avoids quoting a U.S. senator? What if the senator is saying something important? What sorts of minority opinions met this correspondent’s standards for being well thought-out?
This passage in @TheAtlantic essay by Adam Rubenstein is wrong. The quote is from a paragraph in which I discussed only China policy. I named a GOP senator whom I think speaks with more substance on China than Cotton. Readers know I quote a wide range of knowledgeable analysis.
I respect @TheAtlantic. It should issue a correction. No one asked me for comment, or I would’ve pointed out the false context. The irony is that Rubenstein twisted a line to fit his ideological point — the very act he criticizes. And all serious journalists scrutinize opinions.
In other words, Rubenstein inflates Wong’s well-founded skepticism of Cotton’s expertise (or lack thereof) on one topic into what amounts to an ideologically based boycott of anything Cotton might tell him. This is sleazy and wrong, and The Atlantic needs to respect Wong’s request for a correction.
***
The Atlantic appears to be in the clear on one other controversy. Rubenstein opens with an anecdote aimed at making the Times look like a caricature of what the right might imagine to be wokeism gone wild:
On one of my first days at The New York Times, I went to an orientation with more than a dozen other new hires. We had to do an icebreaker: Pick a Starburst out of a jar and then answer a question. My Starburst was pink, I believe, and so I had to answer the pink prompt, which had me respond with my favorite sandwich. Russ & Daughters’ Super Heebster came to mind, but I figured mentioning a $19 sandwich wasn’t a great way to win new friends. So I blurted out, “The spicy chicken sandwich from Chick-fil-A,” and considered the ice broken.
The HR representative leading the orientation chided me: “We don’t do that here. They hate gay people.” People started snapping their fingers in acclamation. I hadn’t been thinking about the fact that Chick-fil-A was transgressive in liberal circles for its chairman’s opposition to gay marriage. “Not the politics, the chicken,” I quickly said, but it was too late. I sat down, ashamed.
Columbia Journalism School professor Bill Grueskin, who is not one to swing from the hips, wrote on Twitter that perhaps Rubenstein’s tale is just a little too good to be true: “I will swear on a stack of AP stylebooks that it is perfectly acceptable for editors, even at @TheAtlantic, to both fact-check first-person anecdotes and tell your readers you did that.” Times Magazine writer and Howard University professor Nikole Hannah-Jones went further, asserting, “Never happened.”
But evidence has emerged that the session Rubenstein describes actually did happen. Conservative commentator Jesse Singal wrote that he obtained a statement from The Atlantic confirming its accuracy, and former Times opinion writer Bari Weiss said that Rubenstein “told me and others that story when it happened.”
***
One final observation. “As painful as it was in my mid-20s to think that my journalistic career would end as a result of this episode,” Rubenstein writes of his decision to leave the Times, “it’s even more painful to think that newsrooms haven’t learned the right lessons from it.”
In his mid-20s? When you’re in your mid-20s, you should be covering city council meetings or, if you’re adventurous, a war. If Rubenstein really wants to explore what’s wrong with the culture of the Times newsroom, he might begin with an examination of how someone as young and inexperienced as he found himself holding an important editing job at our most influential news organization without having any relevant journalism experience beyond working at The Weekly Standard and interning at The Wall Street Journal.
The day after The Boston Globe was named a Pulitzer finalist in editorial writing, the paper has announced that it’s hired a new editorial page editor — James Dao, a senior editor at The New York Times. The announcement, reported in the Globe this afternoon, was made by chief executive Linda Henry.
Dao replaces Bina Venkataraman, who stepped down several months ago and is now a Globe editor at large. Venkataraman was involved in the launch of The Emancipator, the racial-justice website the Globe publishes jointly with Boston University.
I don’t know much about Dao except that, according to the Globe, he had a role in the Times’ decision to publish an op-ed piece by Sen. Tom Cotton in 2020 arguing that military force should be used against violent Black Lives Matter protesters. The episode led to the departure of editorial page editor James Bennet after it was revealed he had not read the Cotton op-ed before it was published. Dao stepped down as deputy opinion editor and took a high-ranking editing job in the newsroom.
Also of significance is that Dao is 64. I’m not saying that’s old (hey, he’s younger than I am), but he’s at an age where he probably wouldn’t be seeking to settle in for a lengthy stint. Perhaps Henry is hoping that he’ll identify and mentor a possible replacement. Henry’s full statement, forwarded to me by a trusted source, follows.
Hi team,
I am thrilled to announce that James Dao will be the Globe’s next editorial page editor, effective on July 5.
Jim brings great perspective to the Globe from his vast leadership experience across three decades and multiple news desks at The New York Times. Most recently, as the Metro editor, he oversaw coverage of one of the most consequential mayoral races in New York City’s history while leading a team of over 60 journalists in covering the ongoing challenges of the pandemic on the nation’s largest city. Previously, he oversaw the paper’s Op-Ed section and has served roles in leadership and in the trenches as an editor on the National desk, as the Times’s Albany bureau chief, a Washington correspondent, national correspondent and military affairs writer.
He is an award-winning journalist and has a passion for pushing the envelope on multimedia storytelling, an area in which we too, are deeply investing in as we aim to reach new audiences and amplify our powerful journalism in new media. Jim’s 2011 multimedia series, “A Year at War,” about the yearlong deployment of an Army battalion in Afghanistan, won numerous awards — including an Emmy — and he also was executive producer on the Netflix documentary, “Father Solider [sic] Son,” which was based on the life of an Amy sergeant first profiled in his series.
I’ve had the great honor of diving deep into conversation with Jim, and in that time, he has shared that his priorities in this role are bringing new approaches — from newsletters to podcasts — to an already outstanding opinion report. He plans for our editorial page to be at the forefront of sharing the groundbreaking ideas and innovation unfolding in our region, while continuing to hold our leaders accountable to the high standards that we expect.
As a proud Editorial Board member, I see first-hand the thoughtful dedication and passion our board has for the work that it does each day and the impact it has all across our region. In the last two years alone, Globe Opinion writers Alan Wirzbicki & Shelly Cohen and Abdallah Fayyad have been recognized as Pulitzer Prize finalists in Editorial Writing – truly remarkable accomplishments, and a testament to the talent and incredible contributions at all levels on this team.
I am grateful to Bina Venkataraman for her bold approach and leadership in this role over the last two years. Globe Opinion has grown and strengthened the editorial board, launched The Emancipator with BU, and has drawn national attention to further the impact of our content and voices. Thank you to the entire team for their commitment and patience while we conducted this thoughtful process to find the next leader who will steer Globe Opinion forward in new and exciting ways. Everyone stepped up, but I would like to particularly thank Marjorie Pritchard and Alan Wirzbicki for their leadership and extra effort to keep Opinion sharp and relevant.
Jim will now lead the charge in this exciting new chapter for the board, and we are so excited to have him get started in early July. He is copied on this note, so please join me in welcoming him to the Globe; he would welcome local bike route suggestions.
