Hoping to diminish concern about its
impartiality during Michael Bloomberg’s tenure as Mayor, Bloomberg News has hired
Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism dean Tom Goldstein to oversee
the company’s coverage.
In fact, Mr. Goldstein-a former New York Times and Wall
Street Journal reporter who later served as press secretary for former
Mayor Ed Koch-has been on the job since mid-December, monitoring Bloomberg
News’ newsroom and advising Matthew Winkler, Bloomberg News’ editor in chief,
on potential conflicts. Mr. Winkler said that Mr. Goldstein is “free to go
anywhere and look at whatever he chooses.
“For the foreseeable future,” Mr. Winkler continued, “he’s going
to examine everything we do and make recommendations that will help us get
better, while reporting directly to me.”
But Mr. Goldstein’s hiring by Bloomberg News presents a thorny
scenario that some critic’s worry may be a conflict in itself. While it’s not
uncommon for academic officials to hold jobs in the private sector, having the
head of the country’s most prestigious journalism school-one that’s part of a
university that regularly has business before the city-in a business
relationship with an organization owned by the Mayor is an arrangement that has
given some journalism educators pause.
“I wish I had heard of this
earlier so we could have met and discussed this, because there’s conflict of
interests involved here,” said Columbia journalism professor James Carey.
Mark Crispin Miller, a journalism professor at New York
University, called the relationship “troublesome.”
“It’s worth raising questions
about Bloomberg hiring a prominent person from Columbia University,” Mr. Miller
said. He noted that Mr. Bloomberg has already endowed a professorship at the
school and added: “It’s an institution, through its holdings, with a great
stake in how the Mayor’s office governs.”
Efforts to speak to Mr.
Goldstein, who was traveling back from a journalism conference in London on
Jan. 8, were unsuccessful; The Observer
traded phone messages with the dean on Jan. 7 and 8. But a spokesperson for
Columbia University rejected the idea that there was any potential conflict
posed by Mr. Goldstein working for Bloomberg News.
“We have deans who serve as
consultants all the time,” the Columbia spokesperson said. “We have faculty
from our business school serving on the boards of corporations. Yes, we have a
mechanism for examining conflicts of interest. But the fact that someone is a
consultant to someplace is not a conflict of interest.”
Other faculty members also rose to the dean’s defense. “I don’t
think it puts Columbia in a weird spot at all,” said Columbia journalism
professor Samuel Freedman. “I think what’s weird is the reason it’s being
probably being done-the fact that we have a media mogul as Mayor.” Marvin Kalb,
the journalist turned media critic and a lecturer at Harvard University’s
Kennedy School of Government (as well as a friend of Mr. Goldstein’s), said: “I
have the highest regard for Tom Goldstein, and if anyone can do an impossible
job, he can.”
Not surprisingly, Mr. Winkler also didn’t see any problem with
Mr. Goldstein’s part-time job. “I don’t see where the conflict comes in,” he
said. “What do we get out of this other than what we bargained for: advice and
scrutiny? Tom’s been around this long enough; he’s not going to jeopardize his
own integrity. Why should he?”
What’s certain is that Mr. Goldstein finds himself in an
unprecedented position. Though Mr. Winkler initially said he might hire an
ombudsman to address the Mayoral coverage issue, Mr. Goldstein is not an
ombudsman; rather, he serves as a paid consultant to the media company. (Mr.
Winkler declined to say how much Mr. Goldstein is paid.) Mr. Goldstein’s
findings and recommendations are given internally and are not reported to the
public at large.
To date, Mr. Winkler said,
Mr. Goldstein has devoted the vast majority of his comments to Bloomberg News
style and has complained that “some of the stories were too long.” On the
subject of the Mayor, Mr. Winker said that in December, Mr. Goldstein raised
“some questions why we didn’t write about an event having to do with Mike. He
thought it was odd that we just summarized it.” Said Mr. Winkler: “We told him
that we’d made a decision not to do our own enterprise reporting until Jan. 1,
when he actually was Mayor.”
And while Mr. Goldstein is expected to stay with Bloomberg News
for the foreseeable future, his future at Columbia’s journalism school is less
clear. There has been speculation that Mr. Goldstein this spring will step down
as dean when his term ends-and that speculation predated his hiring at
Bloomberg. One faculty member, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said
that the department expects to hear a decision from Mr. Goldstein when the
journalism school has a faculty retreat on Jan. 22. Speaking at the retreat
will be Tom Rosenstiel, a former Los
Angeles Times media critic who currently runs the Washington-based Project
for Excellence in Journalism and is rumored to be Mr. Goldstein’s favorite to
succeed him as dean. (Mr. Rosenstiel declined comment.)
Another faculty member, also speaking on the condition of
anonymity, said that the news about Mr. Goldstein’s relationship with Bloomberg
may be a clear signal that the dean is ready to depart. “Already there’s been
grumbling amongst the faculty about how much he’s away from the office,” the
faculty member said.
But no matter how much time Mr. Goldstein spends looking at
Bloomberg News, some wonder how much he’ll be able to do to assuage conflict
concerns at the company. Even the dean’s admirers were skeptical that the
arrangement would solve the original problem of Bloomberg the news service
covering Bloomberg the Mayor.
“What can Tom do? Say ‘ Tsk,
tsk, you made a mistake’?” said Mr. Kalb. “That’s not going to accomplish
much.”
Mr. Miller was more doubtful.
“He’ll certainly be able to halt some of the more egregious cases of conflict
of interest, but I extremely doubt any one employee will have the power to keep
the situation legitimate,” the N.Y.U. professor said. “It sounds like a P.R.
gesture.”
Mr. Miller pointed to the recent media walk-through of Mr.
Bloomberg’s renovated City Hall, which landed photographs of donated Bloomberg
L.P. terminals on the front page of every paper in town.
“Already the Mayor has used a photo-op for a product placement
for the Bloomberg computers. It may seem petty to [Mr. Bloomberg], but it is
improper. And if [Mr. Goldstein] took issue with this, it may lead to him
leaving his employ.”
Mr. Kalb said that the only
real solution was for Mr. Bloomberg to completely extract himself from his
media empire. Prior to running for Mayor, Mr. Bloomberg removed himself from
the day-to-day management of the company, but a ruling is pending from the
city’s Conflicts of Interest Board as to how the Mayor should handle his
majority stake in Bloomberg L.P. Said Mr. Kalb of the Mayor’s stake: “It’d be
better for everyone involved to do something that totally removes him from any
activity of the news operation.”
Dan Altman’s time on The
New York Times ‘ editorial board didn’t last long. The 26-year-old had been
hired away from The Economist last
summer to write editorials on business and economics, but about six months
later-a couple of weeks before Christmas-Mr. Altman started showing up in the
business section of the paper, as a reporter.
It isn’t clear what led to the departure of one of the youngest
members of the editorial board in the history of The Times. Reached by Off the Record, Mr. Altman confirmed that he
had transferred to the business desk, but wouldn’t say what had happened. “It’s
probably not something I should discuss with you, but it was amiable,” he said.
Gail Collins, the editorial-page editor, wouldn’t discuss why things didn’t
work out, either, and referred us back to Mr. Altman.
But a source at The Times
said the move was made rather quietly, and chalked it up to Ms. Collins
fashioning her own editorial board.
Mr. Altman had been interviewed and hired by Howell Raines, who had been
editorial-page editor before his promotion to executive editor, and Mr. Altman
didn’t click with Ms. Collins at the helm, the source said.
Replacing Mr. Altman on the board is Adam Cohen, a senior writer
at Time magazine who has most
recently covered business and technology. Little, Brown will be publishing Mr.
Cohen’s book about eBay, titled The
Perfect Store , in June. Mr. Cohen declined comment.
Clearly, Ms. Collins is
making some changes to the editorial board’s management. She said that rather
than handing out “beats” on the editorial board, where each member writes
primarily within his or her specialty, she is trying to broaden the scope of
each board member Mr. Cohen will also be writing editorials on law and
technology as well as economics. He starts the week of Jan. 21.
Also joining the editorial board is Ethan Bronner, The Times ‘ education editor. Mr.
Bronner, who started Jan. 8, has covered the Supreme Court and the Middle East.
He’ll write on those topics, but in March, according to Ms. Collins, the plan
is for him to also replace Phil Taubman as assistant editorial-page editor. Mr.
Taubman, in turn, will replace Phil Boffey, the deputy editorial-page editor.
Mr. Boffey, a veteran on the editorial board, is retiring from full-time duty,
but will continue to pitch in with editorials on science matters.
-Gabriel Snyder
The competition between former Inside.com staffers Lorne
Manly and David Carr for the media reporter’s position at The New York Times is over, and the winner is: both of them!
The two will reunite inside the Business Day’s media department
under media editor Dave Smith. Mr. Manly will become deputy media editor, while
Mr. Carr will join as a reporter. “Lorne will join me as player-coach for a
while, writing and editing and learning his way around the building,” Mr. Smith
wrote in an e-mail announcing the hires. The two will start in February.
The position of deputy media
editor is a new one at The Times ,
leading one business staffer to note that things are getting crowded on the
section’s media beat. In addition to Mr. Smith and eventually Mr. Manly, there
are already several editors who deal with media, including Tim Race, the Monday
business editor, Rich Meislin, who edits technology-a beat that has more and
more dealt with media topics-and his deputy, John Haskins.
Mr. Smith told Off the Record, “We’re trying to boost our media
coverage and get it to the next level.”
-G.S.
When it begins
publishing sometime this year, Ira Stoll will be doing a lot of the heavy
editorial lifting for The New York Sun .
But for the last year and half, he’s been running Smarter times.com, which aims
to take the piss out of The New York
Times each day.
In their Jan. 14 issue, New
York magazine asked Mr. Stoll how he’d feel if someone targeted him each
day with Smartersun.com. “I’d be thrilled,” Mr. Stoll said.
We’re not sure how thrilled
he’d really be, especially since, way back in August 2000-more than a year
before Seth Lipsky registered Nysun.com-Mr. Stoll claimed the Internet domain
Smartersun.com for himself. However, Smartestsun.com is still available.
– G.S.
In the past few months, the New York Yankees lost a lot of the
men who helped define the team’s four-consecutive-pennant,
three-consecutive–World Series run. Paul O’Neill and Scott Brosius retired.
David Justice will begin his season in Oakland, Tino Martinez will man first
base for the Cardinals and Chuck Knoblauch will be in Kansas City.
Now comes word that the team’s losing its most prolific beat
writer as well. According to sources at The
New York Times , Buster Olney is leaving his perch at Yankee Stadium for the
New Jersey Meadowlands, where he’ll cover the Giants.
In Mr. Olney’s place will come 26-year-old Tyler Kepner, who came
to the paper in 2000 from the Seattle
Post-Intelligencer and has covered the Mets for the past two seasons.
Giants writer Bill Pennington will move to boxing and general interest, while
Rafael Hermoso, who split time between the Yankees and the Mets last year, will
become the paper’s main man at Shea.
Mr. Olney, Mr. Hermoso and Mr. Kepner declined to comment, and
Mr. Pennington didn’t return a call at deadline. The section’s editor, Neil
Amdur, referred Off the Record’s interview request to a Times spokesperson, who didn’t return a call for comment.
But Times sources
indicate that the moves were instigated as a result of Mr. Olney’s desire to
simply do something else, having followed the Yankees through 162
regular-season games and multiple rounds of playoffs since he came to the paper
in 1997.
“It’s a natural progression for a lot of people,” one Times source said. “You can only go so
long doing the same beat.”
Another Times source
said: “He [Mr. Olney] has a child. If he could cover the Yankees from home, he
would. It’s more of a lifestyle change than him not wanting to cover the
Yankees anymore.”
One New York baseball writer described the travails this way:
“The baseball beat’s a real grind. It’s the biggest sport and you’re always on
call. The travel is hell, and it’s only going to get harder. Look at how many
people stay on the baseball beat for a long time. Not many guys do this for 10
to 20 years.”
-Sridhar Pappu
Since Sept. 11, Michelangelo Signorile has appointed himself the
watchdog for homophobia in the war on terrorism. He started out back in
November, when he wrote a piece for Newsweek
condemning a rumor “wafting through media circles” that Mohammed Atta, one of
the hijackers in the World Trade Center attack, was gay. (Incidentally, we’re
not sure where that speculation has appeared, aside from the National Enquirer and Salon .)
Anyway, Mr. Signorile’s point was that it’s not O.K. to suggest that Atta might
have been gay, and it’s certainly not O.K. to suggest that being gay and having
a homophobic father might have had something to do with a middle-class Egyptian
boy becoming a terrorist.
“As outlandish as the Atta speculations may sound, it’s the kind
of narrative we’ve seen all too often in America … the notion of a dangerous
homosexual conspiracy has reared its ugly head over and over again,” he wrote.
But now, in his Jan. 2 column for the New York Press , Mr. Signorile is arguing that it’s perfectly O.K.
for the media to report that John Walker’s father, Frank Lindh, is gay. And
it’s even O.K. to say that a gay father might have had something to do with a
middle-class Marin County boy becoming an Al Qaeda fighter.
“If Lindh had left his wife for another woman and his son were
traumatized, it would certainly be discussed in the media. So if Lindh did
leave his wife for a man and it affected Walker, it should similarly be
reported on. That would be treating homosexuality and heterosexuality equally,
rather than relegating one to the level of a dirty little secret.”
Huh? Is there any standard here, other than that if there’s a gay
angle on the terrorism story, editors need to assign Michelangelo Signorile a
piece to sort out what’s homophobic and what isn’t?
We sought clarification from the pundit. “It seems like a
contradiction,” he replied, “but I explain it all in a longer piece in the
March issue of Talk .” We can’t wait.
-G.S.
The competition between former Inside.com staffers Lorne Manly
and David Carr for the media reporter’s position at The New York Times is over, and the winner is: both of them!
The two will reunite inside the Business Day’s media department
under media editor Dave Smith. Mr. Manly will become deputy media editor, while
Mr. Carr will join as a reporter. “Lorne will join me as player-coach for a
while, writing and editing and learning his way around the building,” Mr. Smith
wrote in an e-mail announcing the hires.
Mr. Smith noted in his memo that the two will start in February
and “will sit with us in Bizday.” (That’s short for Business Day, i.e. the
business section.) The position of deputy media editor is a new one at The Times , leading one business staffer
to note that things are getting crowded in the section, especially on the media
beat. In addition to Mr. Smith and eventually Mr. Manly, there are already
several editors who deal with media, including Tim Race, the Monday business
editor, Rich Meislin, the technology editor-a beat that has more and more dealt
with media topics-and his deputy, John Haskins.
Mr. Smith told Off the Record, “We’re trying to boost our media
coverage and get it to the next level, and having these two talents will be
great.”
-G.S.
Editors at New York
magazine were surprised to open the New
York Post and the Daily News on
Jan. 2 and read about a Talk magazine
story on Robert Durst, the New York real-estate family scion charged with
dismembering a man in Galveston, Tex., and also under investigation for the
1982 disappearance of his wife, Kathie, and the Christmas Eve 2000 murder of
Susan Berman, a close friend.
Why the surprise at New
York ? Both newspaper stories were very similar, reporting that Talk had dug up new information
suggesting that Berman had told her friends that Mr. Durst had confessed to her
that he killed his wife. The lead to the News
story was, “A former close friend of millionaire murder suspect Robert
Durst said she was prepared to ‘blow the top off things’ just days before she
was found shot to death, according to a newly published report.” The paper then
cited a conversation between Berman and actress Kim Lankford. The Post cited the conversation as a “new
report.”
But the report wasn’t new to New
York . Lisa DePaulo, who wrote the Durst article for Talk , had previously written a story on Berman’s death for New York ‘s March 12, 2001 issue-and in
her opening anecdote, she described the very same conversation between Berman
and Ms. Lankford.
Was Talk touting Ms.
DePaulo’s warmed-over reporting as a scoop? “I was a bit taken aback to see
that both papers lead with something we reported a year ago,” New York editor Caroline Miller told Off
the Record. “I don’t know if it was pitched as new, or if there was some
misunderstanding with the newspapers that this was new when it wasn’t.”
Ms. Miller did praise Ms. DePaulo’s piece, saying it had broken
“new ground” in the Durst saga. And the exchange between Berman and Ms.
Lankford appeared deep in the Talk article,
which had also dug up new anonymous quotes from Berman’s friends saying that
Mr. Durst had confessed to the murder of his wife.
Reached for comment, Ms. DePaulo said of
the Lankford quotes, “It was newsworthy then and it’s newsworthy now. The fact
that it wasn’t picked up in March was a bummer, but P.R. isn’t my territory.”
She added, “It would have been remiss to leave it out.”
Of course, relations between Talk
and New York remain touchy since Maer
Roshan left New York last year to be Talk ‘s editorial director, taking
several of his writers with him.
Mr. Roshan said that the article was simply provided to
newspapers in full-apparently, both the Post
and the News carefully screened it
and came up with the same lead piece of information-and that Talk didn’t have control over what they
picked up. “Lisa DePaulo’s meticulously researched article is packed with new
information and insights that she spent months reporting for us,” he said. “Her
article for Talk is the most
comprehensive study of the Durst case to date, and it speaks for itself.”
-G.S.
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