Jay Garrity, the Mitt Romney aide who New York Times reporter Mark Leibovich says pulled him over and claimed to have run his license plate, is now under investigation in both Massachusetts (for allegedly impersonating a state trooper) and New Hampshire (for the Leibovich incident). Nice people you have working for you, Mitt.
Tag: New York Times
Megadittos on Leibovich
Just a brief note on Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s denial that one of his goons — uh, aides — tried to intimidate New York Times reporter Mark Leibovich as Leibovich trailed the Mittmobile in his car.
Like Jon Keller, who provides the relevant links, I worked with Leibovich at the Boston Phoenix in the early 1990s. And I endorse this Keller observation: “If Mark Leibovich says it happened that way, it happened exactly that way.”
This isn’t a big deal. Why can’t Romney tell the truth?
Stop the presses
Check out this great slideshow of the just-closed New York Times building. Narrator David Dunlap gets a bit carried away with the sound effects, but there are some wonderful old pictures of the newsroom and the presses.
Correction of the day
An article last Wednesday about a decision by the Brooklyn borough president, Marty Markowitz, to remove at least five members of Community Board 6 who oppose the Atlantic Yards development project — which Mr. Markowitz supports — misstated the reason for the absence of a response by Mr. Markowitz. At the time the article was being reported, Mr. Markowitz could not be reached by his aides because he was on a ship at sea, had no telephone access and was not regularly checking his e-mail messages. He did not “refuse” to comment.
Spotlight on Newton North
It’s just one high school, so what were the odds that both the New York Times and the Boston Globe would publish two entirely different big stories on Newton North High School today? (Yeah, yeah, I know, both papers are owned by the New York Times Co. But I can’t see this as anything but a coincidence.)
The Times gives front-page, above-the-fold display to Sara Rimer’s feature on “Amazing Girls,” high-achieving young women competing for slots at the nation’s leading colleges and universities. It’s a terrific read, and I think my friend Adam Reilly misses the point — it’s less a paean to these kids’ amazingness than it is a look at the insane pressure they’re under.
I can’t believe folks at the Globe were happy to see the Times steal their lunch money with Rimer’s story. (Although Tracy Jan’s front-page piece on Sylvester Cooper, in danger of dropping out of the Boston schools with an eighth-grade education, certainly fills the paper’s daily quota of socially significant education stories.) Still, the Globe has its own Newton North piece, leading the City & Region section with an interesting look — reported by Ralph Ranalli — at how the new Newton North has managed to run up a price tag of $154.6 million.
Be sure to check out the accompanying graphic, which may be emblematic of how editors at the newly downsized Globe plan to move forward. This is the epitome of local coverage — a long story on cost overruns at one high school, along with a floor-by-floor, interactive chart. No doubt we’re going to see a lot more of this, as major metros like the Globe become more and more local in their focus. Indeed, the Globe even leads the paper today with a story on Proposition 2 1/2 overrides in the suburbs.
Nostalgia note: Nice Globe story by Geoff Edgers on the refurbished Children’s Museum. I was glad to see, in yet another interactive graphic, that the Japanese house survived. The Media Nation family spent many happy afternoons there when the kids were little.
Mapping the vote
Check out NYTimes.com’s interactive map of yesterday’s congressional vote on the Iraq war. You can do breakouts by urban, suburban and rural districts; affluent and poor districts; mostly white and mostly minority districts; and Kerry and Bush districts. Roll your cursor over a square and you get thumbnail information on each House member and how he or she voted.
Washingtonpost.com does something similar with its Votes Database. It’s not as graphically interesting, but it does let you break out the vote by, among other things, a House member’s astrological sign and by whether or not she or he is a Baby Boomer.
A heartbreaking story
If you read nothing else today, you must read this New York Times story on the parents of infants with fatal conditions. It is riveting and heartbreaking. If you can get through it without tearing up, you’re not paying attention. Watch the video, too.
Obama and Selma revisited
Several Media Nation readers (see this, this and this) believe I misread the New York Times account of Barack Obama’s speech in Selma, Ala. In my original item, I somehow got it in my head that the Times had reported Obama was claiming his parents had actually met at the famed Selma civil-rights protest in 1965 — something he quite clearly did not do.
But after rereading the story, I now see that’s not what the Times was reporting, and I’m not sure how to explain my muddleheadedness other than to cite misfiring synapses and the phases of the moon.
In fact, Obama was born in 1961. So when he suggested that Selma inspired his mother, a white woman from Kansas, and his father, a black man from Kenya, to marry, he was asserting an impossibility.
I stand by what I said about the Times’ coverage of Hillary Clinton’s speech.
Liar, liar?
Yesterday’s New York Times coverage of Hillary Clinton’s and Barack Obama’s joint appearance in Selma, Ala., includes a couple of snarky references suggesting that each of them lied in appealing to African-American voters. Those references are, unfortunately for the Times (and for the candidates), based on not one whiff of evidence. In fact, the evidence cuts the other way.
First Obama. Times reporters Patrick Healy and Jeff Zeleny write:
Mr. Obama relayed a story of how his Kenyan father and his Kansan mother fell in love because of the tumult of Selma, but he was born in 1961, four years before the confrontation at Selma took place. When asked later, Mr. Obama clarified himself, saying: “I meant the whole civil rights movement.”
Did Obama try to suggest that his parents met during the famed civil-rights protest in Selma? I can’t find the exact text of Obama’s speech, but Healy and Zeleny’s use of “because of” (as opposed to, for example, “at”) indicates that Obama was saying no such thing. And in the Washington Post, Anne E. Kornblut and Peter Whoriskey report Obama’s words thusly:
Referring to his heritage, Obama said that although his ancestors were not slaves, the civil rights movement inspired his African father to move from Kenya to seek an American education and eventually marry his white mother — “whose great-great-great-grandfather had owned slaves.” “But she had a different idea,” Obama said.
“Something stirred across the country because of what happened in Selma, Alabama, because some folks were willing to march across a bridge,” Obama said, explaining that, as a result, his parents “got together and Barack Obama Jr. was born.” Earlier in the day at a prayer breakfast, the Illinois Democrat said: “If it hadn’t been for Selma, I wouldn’t be here.”
That doesn’t even remotely sound as though Obama was trying to claim that his parents met in Selma. So why did the Times report that Obama “clarified himself,” as though he were backing down from an extraordinary inference? Sorry, but that kind of interpretative snark just isn’t fair.
As for Clinton, the Times’ Healy and Zeleny offer us this:
Mrs. Clinton, meanwhile, recalled going with her church youth minister as a teenager in 1963 to hear the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. speak in Chicago. Yet, in her autobiography and elsewhere, Mrs. Clinton has described growing up Republican and being a “Goldwater Girl” in 1964 — in other words, a supporter of the presidential candidacy of Senator Barry M. Goldwater, who opposed the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
Got that? The young Hillary Rodham was a Goldwater supporter. Therefore she must have opposed civil rights for African-Americans. Therefore, she must be lying when she claims that she saw King speak.
Did Clinton hear King speak in Chicago in 1963? As Bob Somerby would say (today being a day for extra-careful attribution), we have no idea. But the fact that she was a Goldwater supporter in 1964 sheds no light whatsoever on the question. And there’s circumstantial evidence to suggest that she’s telling the truth. Take, for instance, this, from an online review of Clinton’s autobiography, “Living History”:
In the interlude, she tells of hearing Martin Luther King speak in Chicago, of being in the middle (as an observer) of the Chicago riots at the Democratic Convention in 1968, and her beginnings of questioning the system of limited women’s opportunities in America. Rodham was determined to achieve, and she made her move while in high school, serving in student government and becoming a political activist.
And here’s something from a 2003 BusinessWeek review of “Living History” and Sidney Blumenthal’s “The Clinton Wars”: “Dozens of stories provide bits of insights into Hillary Clinton’s complex psyche…. You see how a lecture by the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. opened her eyes to civil rights …”
In other words, Clinton’s claim that she heard Martin Luther King speak in Chicago isn’t something she made up to feed the poor saps in Selma on Sunday — rather, it’s something she’s been saying for years. But you wouldn’t know that if you read only the Times.
Update: I was wrong about the Times and Obama. Read this.
Identical triplets
Until this moment, Media Nation has resisted the conspiracy theorists who’ve been wondering about those nearly identical stories that appear in the New York Times and the Boston Globe on the same day.
But now there are three separate incidents, and as every journalist knows, when you’ve got three, you’ve got a trend. So let’s review, shall we?
We begin with “Animal House,” the Democratic congressional crash pad occupied by Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York and our own Rep. Bill Delahunt of Massachusetts. A worthy feature? Absolutely. Alex Beam certainly thought so, and his piece appeared in the Globe on Jan. 18. So did my former Boston Phoenix colleague Mark Leibovich, whose Times article (sub. req.) also appeared on Jan. 18.
Next up: Sen. Barack Obama’s days as a student at Harvard Law School, the subject of lengthy, front-page articles last Sunday in both the Times (by Jodi Kantor) and the Globe (by Michael Levenson and Jonathan Saltzman).
Finally — and shame on me for not reading the Times first thing this morning — it turns out that Jackie MacMullan’s Globe story on Ted Johnson’s debilitating series of concussions is competing with this front-pager in the Times by Alan Schwarz on — yes — Ted Johnson’s debilitating series of concussions.
So what is going on here? My guess is that it’s not a conspiracy, but it’s not a complete coincidence, either.
Obviously if the New York Times Co., which owns both the Times and the Globe, were looking to save money, it would simply run the same story in both papers. And if the Times Co. were coordinating coverage in some way so that the Globe could neither beat nor be beaten by the Times on local stories, I’m reasonably confident that the Globe newsroom would be leaking like Scooter Libby.
But pure coincidence? That seems pretty unlikely.
Which leaves us, then, with the usual journalistic sausage-making.
Let’s take the “Animal House” story, which is probably the most transparent. The Times is working on a story, and Delahunt figures his hometown paper, the Globe, will get pissed if he doesn’t say anything. So he makes sure someone at the Globe knows about it, as well as when the Times story is slated to run. (You could work this in reverse, too, with Schumer as the tipster. But what about Durbin and the Chicago Tribune? Pathetic. The Tribune picked up the Times piece off the wires 10 days later.)
With Obama, Harvard Law professor Charles Ogletree, to name just one possible suspect, is quoted in both stories. I’m not saying he tipped anyone off, but these things can come out in conversation through the proverbial friend of a friend of a friend.
Which brings us to MacMullan’s story. It didn’t register this morning, but now this passage makes a certain amount of sense:
Johnson toyed with going public with his story before. He shared his struggles with the Globe last summer, but later requested his comments be put on hold. The recent suicide of former NFL defensive back Andre Waters, who had multiple concussions and suffered from depression, finally prompted Johnson to come forward.
One interpretation is that MacMullan got word that the Times story was coming out, and that she wanted everyone to know she had it first — or, at least, she would have if Johnson had been willing to let her tell his story last summer.
The Times Co.’s ownership of the Globe is such a radioactive topic in these days of downsizing that many observers don’t want to hear any interpretation except the most nefarious. From what I can see, though, these three stories merely add up to One of Those Things.