Tag: New York Times

Dowd was just talking with a friend

I don’t think New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd committed a hanging offense. But I continue to be troubled by her explanation of how she came to lift a paragraph from Josh Marshall’s megablog, Talking Points Memo.

OK, so Dowd was “talking” in a “spontaneous” manner with a friend, as she put it to the Huffington Post. Fine. I had decided to assume for the purpose of moving on that by “talking” she meant “e-mailing.” It would be completely believable if she had copied and pasted from a friend’s e-mail who had volunteered to help her write her column. Lame, but believable.

And yet here is what she told a blog called the Nytpicker, via e-mail:

no, we were going back and forth discussing the topic of the column and he made this point and i thought it was a good one and wanted to weave it in;
i just didn’t realize it was josh marshall’s point, and we’ve now given him credit
my friend didn’t want to be quoted; but of course i would have been happy to give credit to another writer, as i often do

I don’t see how you can possibly construe this as an e-mail exchange, especially when, as you will see, the Nytpicker had contacted her a second time trying to clarify exactly how Dowd had managed to reproduce Marshall’s rather lengthy graf almost word for word. Hey, she was just talking with a friend. Right.

(Via an e-mail to Media Nation citing National Review’s Media Blog, which in turn got it from DailyKos.)

Dowd’s modified limited hangout

Jack Shafer points out in Slate that New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd deserves credit for not going into hiding, not whining and not claiming that what she did wasn’t plagiarism. I’ll give her that.

In an e-mail to Media Nation, Shafer also fingered an attribution I’d messed up in my Guardian column, which has now been corrected. I’d misattributed a Dowd e-mail to the wrong source. Thank you, Jack.

The blogosphere versus Maureen Dowd

Simon Owens has the latest on the Maureen Dowd plagiarism story, with quotes from Dowd and a no-comment from Josh Marshall.

The New York Times has already updated Dowd’s column to credit Marshall, but there’s no acknowledgment that there was a problem in the first place.

OK, this is premature, but here is Dowd friend Howell Raines’ 1998 takedown of the Boston Globe, which he chastises for failing to fire star columnist Mike Barnicle after he’d been caught plagiarizing one-liners from a book by George Carlin.

I would imagine Times editors are going to have to do something even if Dowd’s explanation pans out. I’d also guess that the next 24 hours will be key. Right now, we can assume that dozens (hundreds?) of bloggers are scouring every column she’s ever written.

If she can survive that, then she’ll get through this. If not, then all bets are off.

Is Geffen a source close to Geffen?

Yesterday the New York Post ran a pretty emphatic item reporting that entertainment mogul David Geffen is not interested in buying the New York Times or a share thereof. The Post’s Peter Lauria called the Geffen bubble a “myth,” citing “three sources with direct knowledge of the situation.”

Today the Times itself comes back with a story claiming that Geffen is “seriously interested” in buying the Times, either in whole or in part. Reporters Richard Pérez-Peña and Michael Cieply one-up the Post, attributing their reporting to “people who are very familiar with his [Geffen’s] thinking.”

Far from being a throwaway, it’s likely that the word “very” was the subject of extensive negotiations between the Times and, uh, one of its sources. Very interesting, I’d say.

More on Geffen and the Times

Newsweek’s Johnnie L. Roberts reports that David Geffen would turn the New York Times into a non-profit institution if he should succeed in buying the paper. But someone — Roberts, Geffen, the unnamed Geffen “confidante” who’s quoted or perhaps all three — doesn’t really understand the model.

The example that’s cited is the St. Petersburg Times, which is owned by the non-profit Poynter Institute. But the Times itself is a for-profit organization. If that’s what Geffen’s really got in mind, then that might be the ideal ownership situation — unlike a true non-profit, the St. Pete Times is free to endorse political candidates, for instance.

But though the hybrid model eliminates the pressure of quarterly reports and shareholder discontent, a paper such as the St. Pete Times (the New Hampshire Union Leader has a similar ownership arrangement) still needs to break even. In the current economic climate, that’s a challenge.

Quality control (or not)

If you click here, you’ll see that New York Times columnist Ross Douthat is in the paper today.* But he doesn’t show up if you choose the “Today’s Paper” feature. Nor will you find him if you read the paper using Times Reader — which, after all, is a paid product.

Even before the new version of Times Reader came out, I noticed that David Pogue’s Thursday technology column, “State of the Art,” was generally missing.

If the Times is serious about charging people for certain types of enhanced online access, it’s going to have to do better.

*Correction: Well, this is really stupid of me. Several readers have written in to point out at Douthat simply wasn’t in the print edition today. D’oh! Looks like Media Nation is experiencing some quality-control problems.