Rosenthal Blasts Critics Over Dowd Column
Some media observers are in a tizzy over a recent Maureen Dowd column published with a “Derry, N.H.” dateline even though she filed it from Jerusalem. Also that some of the quotes used in the column were collected by her assistant, without a reporting credit.
Greg Sargent originally called attention to it; the Columbia Journalism Review described it as "easy manipulation,” and Spencer Ackerman said that using the Derry dateline was a lie.
“It’s driving me out of my fucking mind,” Times editorial-page editor Andy Rosenthal told Media Mob this afternoon.
"[Dowd] reported the column in New Hamsphire. The fact of the matter is, paticularly when covering a campaign which is a very high-speed story, it’s incredibly unusual for the reporter to be in the same place as the dateline when the story is filed. What do you do, stay in Des Moines while a candidate travels to New Hampshire? Oh, don’t go to Ramallah with the President because you have a Jerusalem dateline on your story! I mean this is just ridiculous! This is a complete invention, this controversy."
"Datelines are kind of an anachronism," he said. "It’s a little bit of an affectation."
As for the assistant, Mr. Rosenthal said it's common for assistants to collect quotes for columnists without a reporting credit.
"Has Greg Sargent ever heard of leg-work? If somebody wrote a blog post saying that all the reporters from the New York Times are Martians, would we have to respond to that too? This is no less ridiculous. It’s just ridiculous!"
Well, why not credit all the reporters who work on a column?
"What’s the value exactly?" Rosenthal asked. "When you look at an article in the paper with reporting credits, you don’t have any idea what stuff in this story actually came from that person. You just know that somebody else worked on that story. Are you going to list all the editors that worked on that story? Are you going to list all the copy editors on that story?"
"We forget often that everything we do is really about the reader," he continued. "It’s not about media reporters—I’m sorry, I’m not using that pejoratively—it’s not about ourselves, it’s not about the standards editor or the public editor ... . Every quote in that column could tell you where it was said and when it was said. There was no pretense that the quotes from the Hillary victory party were uttered before the vote, right? It was obviously after the vote. There was no confusion there about time sequence. There was no pretense that the person being quoted was in some place other than they were so there was no fraud perpetrated here and there was no misdirection."
"Is it so important that we should cut back on the column and include some italic at the bottom that two unremarkable quotes from this story were provided by somebody else? I’m open to the conversation, but I’m not really sure I know what the reader gets out of it. I’m willing to talk about any reasonable question about reporting in any publication, but this is completely ridiculous."
The basic tenet of journalism is not lying. By stating she was in Derry, N.H., when she was in fact in Jerusalem is an unforgiveable breach of the craft's ethics. If the Times is willing to prevaricate over a dateline, what other facts are they willing to distort?
Dateline issues. An assistant doing legwork and not getting credit. Should someone call Rick Bragg for a comment? Does the NYT have separate rules for national correspondents and op-ed columnists? At least Bragg, to borrow from Slate's Jack Shafer, did a "dateline toe-touch," something Maureen Dowd can’t proclaim to make in this case.
IF the column runs with her byline, readers expect Dowd to have written the column. If a "legman" or "legwoman" collected quotes, the column is not all Dowd's. Rosenthal's defense is disingenuous.
He obviously is not serving the reader by serving something labelled Dowd, but actually Dowd and assistant.
Don't understand Fred's last point - Rosenthal says specifically Dowd WAS in NH, where the column was "reported" if not written. So she at least did a Bragg (and where is he, anyway?).
As to the use of the assistant-gathered quotes - I cannot get too worked up about that. If Dowd's assistant looked up an historical fact or proper company name, does the assistant deserve credit? It's up to the newspaper to decide where to draw the line. I once saw a three-paragraph story with no less than five reporters credited. That's just silly.
Ultimately, the Times and Dowd must be take responsibilty for the quotes, since their names are on the piece. If they're good with it, so am I.
That Dowd reported the story in N.H. (albeit with the help of a stringer) seems to be unquestioned. Who in the world cares where she wrote it? Everything else is nit-picking.
Let's see. Andy Rosenthal, who works at The New York Times and therefore is in a position to know, says that Dowd reported the column in New Hampshire. Fred Not Verified and Edward Not Verified (are they related, I wonder?) are sticking to their assertion that Dowd wasn't in New Hampshire at all, despite what Rosenthal says. Gawsh, whom to believe? Mr. Rosenthal or Mr and Mr. Not Verified? I think I'll go with Mr. Rosenthal.
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the bigger problem w/ the piece, and for rosenthal, was that modo's column reeked of misogyny. that, and the fact modo and bill kristol this week turned the nyt oped page into a laughing stock.
I was an intern for one of the city's daily papers. I spent about 9 hours staking out a story, gathering quotes and color. I phoned in my notes to one of the paper's columnists who reported everything -- in a pretty well-written story -- as if he was there. Not giving me credit was fine. But he should of clearly stated that he didn't do the reporting. Dowd should of done the same thing.
Mr. Rosenthal's logic would also apply to news bylines, so we should get rid of them too. They are "kind of an anachronism," and "a little bit of an affectation." After all, a news story is "really about the reader" and "not about ourselves."
When I see someone's byline on a story, I assume the person did the reporting and the writing. I thought that was the purpose of a byline. If that's not true, a byline has no purpose. I don't assume a column with someone's byline on it was written or reported by someone else. And if the quotes gathered by the flunky were "unremarkable," why put them in the story?
But to Mr. Rosenthal, a byline is just a marketing gimmick. For all I know, Maureen Dowd's columns are written by Martians.
It's pretty common for journalists to contribute to stories and not get credit for them. If I provide a paragraph of background to a colleague, I don't necessarily expect a byline or a tagline.
This is doubly true on the op/ed side, where the opinions are Dowd's and Dowd's alone. It would be misleading to attribute them partially to a legman who phoned in a couple of quotes.
I dig what kc and Bill M are saying. However, for the sake of clarity (or to nitpick), my contention is that it was wrong for Dowd to write the column as if she were there that night in Derry, N.H., gathering facts and taking in the details. It’s why the dateline is bogus. Traveling around New Hampshire (and it is reasonable to assume that she spent some time in Derry) a few days before primary night is fine, but, again, the column was written to appear as though she was there in Derry the night of the primary. It looks as though the need for transparency between the writer and readers was outweighed by the need to offer a not-so-first-hand account to a column that didn’t require that kind of detail.
I know there are folks all over the land who’ve gone all schadenfreude over this. I’m not one of them, but there’s plenty to be upset about with how this column was presented to the pubic. The NYT bills itself as the world's greatest newspaper, where journalism’s best practices—from reporting to information design to ethics—are adhered to by its staff. Regardless of what right-wingers claim, the Times lives up to its billing. However, what Dowd was allowed to do feeds into the cynicism around journalism. It’s a profession that continues to be pilloried by critics and the public for not being honest about biases or, at least in this case, transparent in its methods. Truthiness isn’t a suitable substitute for the truth.
Here is a broader question more than comment:
If someone goes out into the field to report a story in another community, then goes back to his or her office to actually write the story, should it have a dateline?
(It can be argued the same principle applies here.)
To follow, should the dateline strictly deal with where the report is filed from, or (if different) from where the primary newsgathering took place? (This gets problematic with bureau reporting, obviously.)
In my shop, if you go to the field and come back and file, or file from the field, dateline. If not, no dateline.
Rick Bragg is teaching journalism and writing books in Alabama. If he cared about the New York Times any more, he might feel hurt that the Old Lady (gray intentionally dropped) gave the Old Red Haired Lady a pass. But continued success is the best revenge. I doubt Mr. Bragg gives a flip.
all we want is the truth. you are the paper of record,make note that maureen was not in des moines covering things and move on rather than dismissing your mistake.
Who cares?
It is, after all, The New York Times and MODO....nobody believes them anymore these days anyway.
Methinks the Clintons, and their friends in media circles, didn't much like what MoDo had to say in that column. Watch your back, Ms. Dowd.
I have been a fan of Maureen for some time but am recently diappointed at her inability to hold all of the presidatial canidates to the same standard. Cliton vs Obama specifcally.
Why was it so important to include the two unremarkable quotes, considering how unremarkable they are in hindsight to the person rationalizing the lack of attribution?
Seems everyone is missing the real point.... Ms Dowd wrote a real hit piece about Hilliary Clinton...and for that she now needs an introduction to the world of the " politics of personal destruction "....
This guy isn't so much as a wart from his Father's A**!
why get so bent out of shape on this particular article?
Mz Dowd has been shuckin and jivin her readers from day one.
The Times has become the National Enquirer In A Tux.
From a strictly journalistic point Rosenthal has a valid point or two, but in my opinion it is the writer's history that matters. You can't make a silk purse out of a sows ear.
This is the most ridiculous debate I have ever seen on this site. Common practice in the newspaper business is to use as a dateline the place where the story is reported, not the place where it is written. This is done for several reasons, among them to help readers know where the reporter gathered facts. It probably happens hundreds of times each day that reporters write stories on planes, in newsrooms or in other places that do not match the dateline.
I guess it depends on what the meaning of "dateline" is.
When I see "Derry, N.H.", I expect to see a story about an event that occurred in Derry, N.H. If Ms. Dowd (or any other reporter) took her notes on a train, and completed the final version of the story on the train, then submitted it from her office in Manhattan, should the article then read "New York, N.Y."? I don't think that would make much sense.
As far as the Jimmy Olsen-types ("cub reporters" doing legwork and gathering information / quotes but not being credited): Great Caesar's Ghost, hasn't that been going on since the beginning of newspapers? Did Lois Lane always put an attribution to Jimmy on her articles? I don't think so!
I don't particularly care for Ms. Dowd (my opinion of her is that she has been resting on the laurels of her Pullitzer Prize from umpteen years ago, and really hasn't been pulling her weight since then), but I don't really see that she did anything improper here. Rosenthal's defense of her actions leaves much to be desired (and his use of the vocabulary is not exactly eloquent), but I can't see any reason to punish her because he is a jerk.
Okay. Rosenthal and Dowd have now established the rules. Let's see if they are content with these rules when a conservative journalist does exactly the same thing as Dowd. I think we can all guess the answer.
Okay. Rosenthal and Dowd have now established the rules. Let's see if they are content with these rules when a conservative journalist does exactly the same thing as Dowd. I think we can all guess the answer.
Maureen Dowd is an op-ed columnist, not a news reporter. Therefore, Dowd's physical location at any specific time is not integral to her column. On the other hand, a news reporter's presence on the scene of the story, and dateline, is central to the filing of a news story. This is Journalism 101.
By trying to muster controversy about Dowd's columns, her critics are simply trying to derail the point of Dowd's insightful column...The Clinton's have hit an all-time new low by very subtly using the race card to get the Clinton message across that Obama's inspirational messages hardly rise to the level of MLK.
Personally, I feel that the Clintons are so incensed that Obama has been a spoiler for what they thought would be Hillary's shoo-in party nomination, that they have resorted to the dirty Clinton campaign tricks that worked for them in the past, making the Clintons' contention that Hillary is a vehicle of change almost laughable, if it wasn't for the fact that this is one of the most important elections in modern U.S. history.
Jeez -- what a bunch of hall monitors!
Jeez -- what a bunch of hall monitors!
Anonymous reporter and others are missing the point. Hillary's tearful moment, Bill's intervention, and in fact the whole New Hampshire balloting and Tuesday night results all happened when Dowd wasn't anywhere close to Derry. The bill of lading shows she was loaded on the plane to Israel and the events all happened after the plane left. So how did she know of any of these events she reported on? She lifted it from other stories and a fill from an associate, slapped a Derry dateline on it, and passed it off as her own. In any newspaper in this country, such reporting is not only unethical but grounds for firing. Rule No. 1 of reporting is you have to verify as best you can what you write about. She passed herself off as an observer of these New Hamsphire events when in fact she was not. How disgraceful is that.