Times public editor Arthur Brisbane criticized the Business Day section’s investment in DealBook in his column this week, and business editor Larry Ingrassia shot back in an internal memo intercepted by Romenesko.

DealBook, the Andrew Ross Sorkin-founded Times blog which now claims a few pages in the print section, focuses on reporting deals hours before they would have been announced and chronicling the lives of Wall Street players like a gossip column. It serves the investors’ appetites, not the public interest, according to Mr. Brisbane.

It struck the Times ombudsman as a foolishly pre-2008 editorial strategy, now that macroeconomic issues dominate business headlines, and now that Wall Street is a downgraded player in international economics. Read More