New Public Editor at the NY Times

Okay, new to me. But I'm glad to hear about it. Here's the lede from the NYT's own announcement, dated 4 May 2007:

The New York Times today named its next public editor, Clark Hoyt, a former Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and editor who oversaw the Knight Ridder newspaper chain's coverage that questioned the Bush administration's case for the Iraq war.

Not quite the outsider that many were hoping for, as I noted this past March, but evidently, at least some cred as a pro journalist. You can find links to all of his columns so far by visiting the public editor's home page.

Hoyt's first piece ran on 10 June 2007. (This is the only one you have to pay to see, since it ran as an opinion piece before his official start date, and has since become part of the NYT Archives.) He examined placement of a story about a foiled terrorist plot to blow up fuel tanks at JFK. The NYT had decided against page 1 placement, since the editors felt the "plot" was more wishful thinking than something truly nipped in the bud. Hoyt thought there was a case to be made for putting it on page 1 to emphasize that it wasn't a big dramatic story, which was how it was being hyped by most TV reporting. In other words, the real story, as Hoyt saw it, was as another example of the Bush Administration maybe, just maybe, playing the fear card. It's not a dramatic exposé, of course, but he raises some interesting, if subtle points.

Inside baseball in any arena is always a matter of taste; I'll be the first to acknowledge a genetic predisposition to fascination with newsroom goings-on, and also to acknowledge that this interest is not widely shared.

If you're still with me …

Hoyt also (gasp) has a blog on the NYT site. His first post, dated 26 June, talks about the NYT's policies concerning their employees and outside compensations. The NYT clearly bans just about all gifts and cash, which would seem to reassure, but I thought he missed touching on one obvious issue: Given the constant demand for bodies in the 24/7 news world, people who write for the NYT have many opportunities to appear as talking heads. Even though they can't take appearance fees, it's obvious that such appearances contribute to building their "brand identities," as the current jargon would have it. Lots of these people also write books (which the NYT policy permits), so the appearances act as advertising for the authors and their new books, and so there is an indirect financial gain being realized. Also, every appearance by a reporter or columnist constitutes a de facto product placement for the Times itself.

I'm not advocating a ban on outside appearances, or writing books, for that matter. I like hearing what reporters and columnists have to say outside of their usual space in the paper. I just think Hoyt should have touched on this.

P.S. Hoyt deserves props for charging the NYT with tamely accepting George W. Bush's ongoing Al Qaeda mantra and his conflation of the 9/11 hijackers to the group in Iraq that has adopted the name. This piece is, in fact, what brought the new PE to my attention -- thanks to GreaterBoston.tv's "Beat the Press" podcast.