Seth Mnookin - Hard News: Twenty-one Brutal Months at The New York Times and How They Changed the American Media

HARD NEWS

The Scandals at
The New York Times
and Their Meaning for
American Media

SETH MNOOKIN

RANDOM HOUSE NEW YORK

Contents

For my parents

Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.

Thomas Jefferson,
Letter to Colonel Edward Carrington, 1787

This was not exactly the truth, but then, what is, exactly?

Howell Raines,
Whiskey Man, 1977

INTRODUCTION

The first newspaper printed in America lasted only one issue. Publick Occurences, Both Foreign and Domestick, was printed in Boston on September 25, 1690, but it wasnt until a century later that newspapering in this country truly got going. By 1783, at the end of the American Revolution, there were 43 papers, and by 1787 the young American government had formally recognized how important a healthy press was to a healthy democracy: The First Amendment to the republics new Constitution famously promised that Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press. Encouraged, the press mushroomed. By 1814, there were 346 domestic newspapers; by 1880, there were 11,314.

While America has always enjoyed a more or less free and healthy press, the commonly accepted practices of journalism have undergone a radical transformation between its beginnings and the present day. For the first century of the countrys existence, the notion of a uniformly objective press seemed quaint and nave. While some papers strove to be fair-minded and accurate, many others chose sensationalism, or political expediency, or tawdry slander. By the end of the nineteenth century, a pair of irascible (and incorrigible) press barons, Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst, had turned their bitter newspaper rivalry into a lesson in warmongering and dishonest reportage, creating scandals for the express purpose of embarrassing the competition and disseminating jingoistic propaganda. (Hearst, in his inimitable way, would later brag that he had all but started the Spanish-American War. He wasnt far off.)

It was into this world that the modern-day New York Times was born. In the late 1800s, the Times was a small, struggling broadsheet, minuscule in comparison with Hearsts Journal or Pulitzers World. The paper made a name for itself by seizing an underrepresented market niche. By emphasizing judicious reporting (and official proclamations), the Times transformed itself into a true paper of record, one avowedly uninfluenced by public opinion and dedicated to reporting the truth. Over generations, the paper earned a hard-won and much-cherished reputation for being fair and impartial. Readers, in turn, came to trust and rely on the Times with an almost religious fervor and, in doing so, helped to make the Times, and the sort of journalism it had created, the standard to which all other newspapers would have to compare themselves. More than any other single source, the Times would come to represent the closest journalism could get to unvarnished truth.

TODAY, The New York Times is the most important newspaper in America. Thats not to say its always the best. The Wall Street Journal is frequently more eloquent. The Washington Post often leads the pack on political stories and of late has been both nimbler and more authoritative. For the last several years, the Los Angeles Times has produced a more purposeful news report, and in 2004 it thoroughly dominated the Pulitzer Prizes. But The New York Timesby dint of the talent of its staff, its location in the worlds media capital, and its decades-long position as the bible of the American eliteis the institution that represents the pinnacle of its field.

Whether or not it will remain so is an open question. In an increasingly fractured media landscape that is characterized by declining newspaper readership, a proliferation of cable news networks and weblogs, and a blurring of the lines between entertainment and journalism, the Times is fighting to maintain the grip it has had on Americas collective consciousness for more than half a century. Ironically, that fracturing is as responsible for the Timess lingering dominance as is its journalistic excellencethese days, the number of media options is so overwhelming that there almost needs to be a default standard-bearer. The rest of the media world, from broadcast news to cable outlets to other newspapers to glossy magazines, still looks to the Times to tell it whats important, what each days conventional wisdom will be. Every evening, when the Times sends out the next days story list on its newswire, it sets the agenda for hundreds of other daily papers across the country. Every morning, the Timess front page comes closer than any other single source of information to determining what will count as major news for the next twenty-four hours. The New York Times continues to serve as a beacon for the rest of the media world, and it continues to set the standard to which all other media outlets must aspire or against which they must rebel. The Times is like Harvard or the New York Yankees. It so dominates our imagination that it has become an archetype of what it means to be a journalistic enterprise.

Thats not to say the Times can, or indeed does, take its position for granted. Aside from the fact that consumers are less likely to read a daily paper today than at any time in the last hundred years, it is also easier to get instant access to news from almost anywhere in the world. A 2004 Project for Excellence in Journalism study on the state of the countrys news media found that journalism is in the midst of an epochal transformation, as momentous probably as the invention of the telegraph or television. That five-hundred-page study also spent considerable space addressing how major news institutions have changed their product in a way that costs less to produce while still attracting an audience. To continue to dominate the field, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., the publicly held Times Companys uniquely powerful chairman and the The New York Timess publisher, has had to try to reimagine what it means to be both a topflight newspaper company and a news-gathering operation. Sulzberger is keenly aware that he sits at the head of a company that his familyand the countryregards more as a public trust than as anything so prosaic as a business concern. For more than a hundred years, the Sulzbergers and the Times Company have operated on the principle that they know how to do one thing well: run a big-city broadsheet. Their dedication to this mission has demanded that they pass up some plum investment opportunities. At the turn of the twentieth century, the Times Company declined an opportunity to invest in Coca-Cola because the soft-drink firm was too far removed from the companys core business. Just after World War II, it turned down an offer from the government to create a television station in New York City for next to nothing, so that it could focus on newspapering. (The Hearst Corporation, by contrast, eagerly launched television stations when given the opportunity and today is one of the countrys largest media combines.) As media companies were becoming media conglomerates, as family papers like the