Tom Scocca: You have never.

Choire: I have so! (And Will Leitch and others are reading from it tonight in New York!)

Tom: What have you learned from it? What does James Frey have to say about reality television?

Choire: ARE YOU GOING TO MAKE ME OPEN THIS?

Tom: Well, I can't open it!

Choire: I have reservations with discussing James Frey at all, due to discussions about him getting extremely distorted and misunderstood. But, since this book is here...

Choire: His introduction is actually pretty lively and funny?

Choire: And then he writes:

Choire:

I learned the great secret of reality television, and of writing, and of every other form of narrative self-documentation and narrative storytelling: that it's all fake, every second of it, every minute of it, every page of it, every episode of it. It's all fucking fake. Manipulated and embellished and edited. Fake so that it can be real. Structured and polished. Fake so that we can consume it and connect to it and identify with it and enjoy it. Made to entertain. We call it the real world, but it's not. It's all fucking fake.

Choire: He goes on a bit.

Choire: "And to me, at least, it doesn't matter. I don't care. Actually quite the opposite. I revel in reality's fakeness."

Choire: This bit is prefaced by his realization that when he started writing about his life, he realized "it wasn't enough to just document it or portray it in some objective way."

Tom: So now we are all living in James Frey's world.

Choire: Well, he is, I guess?

Choire: I'm not.

Choire: I sort of don't begrudge him this viewpoint?

Choire: It seems rational even? And he's welcome to this belief!

Choire: And to this practice.

Choire: It's not for me. And I don't think he should universalize it, but that's fine.

Tom: It is a bit of a funny stance for a fellow to arrive at after tattooing "FTBSITTTD" on his arm, though.

Tom: I guess he can just enclose the D and make it an B? "Feel the Bull-Shit, It's Time to Throw Bullshit"?

Choire: I can see why all sorts of people give up on reality.

Choire: The influence of fake reality IS pervasive, and if the stuff in this anthology gets to that, great.

Choire: And actually maybe Frey is the right person to introduce this!

Tom: Sometimes stunt-casting works.

Choire: Sometimes you're actually the expert in a field.

---

See more posts by Tom Scocca

17 comments

Choire Sicha: Uh oh.

Tom: I'll let you go ahead and watch the TimesCast program for me.

Choire: Oh no. You're not getting off that easy.

Tom: My browser is cloggy. Too many tabs! I am therefore Old Media.

Choire: Honestly? I can never get it to play in my browser.

Tom: Do they have an editors' meeting now to prepare for the editors' meeting?

Choire: I can't imagine they'd have time to do that. Okay, I am actually watching the April 9th edition? And it's very strange! Kind of cute? But they say like "And the top story of the day is..." And they show a story... published on the Times website? And then, you're like... So that's this morning's news! Then there's some traditional story-pitching to the team–jockeying for A1 space, I guess, etc.–that you are familiar with. Then there's some jazz! Then there is some really fakey fake chat between editors in the newsroom itself? That part is absurdly faux.

Tom: It does say they have the power to say "Cut!" and have a do-over.

Choire: Yes. You know what, I dislike this. But I would like it if it was like raw feed from the A1 meeting?

Tom: Sure you would, but it would be stupid and irresponsible for them to do that.

Choire: HIGHLY.

Tom: Editorial meetings are not meant to be seen. This is the same mistake Newsweek made when it published its inane and offensive internal e-mail chain about when to use or not use the term "terrorism."

Choire: I like the ideas behind these things?

Tom: What about the idea do you like?

Choire: So once upon a time those institutions were in the business of making a thing. Now they make a couple of things? Or at least a thing and then a thing highly related to the thing? And I view TimesCast etc. as both an extension of at least one of those things but also a way to understand the underpinnings of those things? I mean, you know I am a fan of the sausage getting made. But this isn't the casings and the guts. This is just a PR initiative.

Tom: Look, I'm a big admirer of The Muppet Show.

Choire: Well who isn't!

Tom: The structural genius of the Muppet Show was that the Muppets were performers putting on a theatrical production, so they were creating a frame within a frame–one more level of distance between the viewer and the guy crouching out of view with his hand in a felt bag.

Tom: The Muppets let you go "backstage."

Tom: They presented "backstage" narratives explaining what went on between the curtains.

Tom: They even had Statler and Waldorf up there in their box, disparaging the show–at the Times, they would be the Public Editors.

Choire: I'm sure plenty of people in the Times would agree (not in a nice way though)!

Tom: So when they put Bill Keller in the TimesCast, is he Frank Oz, or is he Fozzie Bear?

Choire: In my limited sampling, he has not been much of a character? But I assume he has a hand in someone's ass. (Or his head, or wherever a Muppet gets it?) Huh. Do you know what the top news story of the day is?

Tom: According to their meeting?

Choire: Yes.

Tom: Nukes? Someone playing golf?

Choire: Historic Nuclear Summit in Washington! Dow Breaks 11000! "Obviously the big news of the morning is the nuclear summit in Washington" is what AME Jim Roberts said at today's meeting. 1. Is it? 2. I think they mean "news event"? Or something like "pre-news"? 3. If it is, it's not at all on the front page of NYTimes.com except in the box that says "Today's TimesCast." Maybe it was earlier news but it turned out not to be news later and/or yet? THEN there is the fake back and forth again, in the news room, between Roberts and Marcus Mabry, a senior editor. Then there's something about recycling in Denmark? And bootlegging in Pakistan?

Tom: That all sounds very responsible and worthy of the Newspaper of Record.

Choire: It... does. It's also dull and vague as newsprint run through dish water.

Tom: I'm checking to see what's Most Viewed:

# The Queen of Talk Declined to Speak
# Hallucinogens Have Doctors Tuning In Again
# Georgia on My Mind
# Leaders Gather for Nuclear Talks as New Threat Is Seen
# Worlds Without Women

Choire: Hmm! Well that's not an un-match! Wait. I NEED TO HAVE A SIDEBAR.

Tom: " . . . "

Tom: I hope it's called "Sprezzatura."

Choire: I...

Choire: You know what, I'll just not have an opinion for once.

Tom: Me too. Anyway.The puppets. I don't want the New York Times to let me into its editorial meetings.

Choire: Well they're sort of NOT? Except they are enough to get in "trouble" with the "public editor."

Tom: I'm saying: I don't want them to do it for real, and I'd just as soon they stopped pretending to do it.

Tom: Can you imagine if we'd had a Webcam in Peter Kaplan's office? Instead of merely the presumption it was all going to end up in somebody's roman a clef?

Choire: Well, I mean, it'd be amazing! I'd like one at the Times too! I love the idea of the future where we can just look into anyone's office. But. It's not good for anyone or anything particularly? And I cannot imagine this isn't a huge time-suck. And I believe, WITH NO EVIDENCE, that this is happening because of the "image" "problem" at the Times. I can see the PR department saying that "If we personalize the paper, people won't 'hate' us." Which isn't wrong and also is wrong.

Tom: OK, well, let's consider another ombudsperson's column from the weekend.

Breitbart's $100,000 challenge may be publicity-seeking theater. But it's part of widespread conservative claims that mainstream media, including The Post, swallowed a huge fabrication. The incidents are weeks old, but it's worth assigning Post reporters to find the truth.

Choire: Oh my. Oh, I thought that meant the New York Post. And I was like, "that's weird." Wait! It's Pulitzer announcement hour!

Tom: Wait, Gene Weingarten won again?

Choire: He won in 08. And now.... has won... for THE STORY WE DO NOT MENTION.

Tom: Babies in cars?

Choire: SHHH. That's two to the Times, this year, by the way.

Tom: It seems the Post won a lot.

Choire: Also nothing to the NY Post, the NY Daily News and the National Enquirer.

Tom: Now that the Washington Post is the best newspaper in America, can I vent about their atrocious headlines?

Choire: Sure!

Tom: So the kid looks at the front of the sports page today and reads "Another jacket up his sleeve." You know how people are always yelling at the paper about HOW DO I EXPLAIN TO MY CHILD?

Tom: Well, how DO I explain that headline to my child?

Choire: "Another Jacket Up His Sleeve"? Huh?

Tom: I said, "OK, that's a picture of a man who won a golf game. And the prize for winning that golf game is a jacket."

Choire: Oh. Yeah, I needed that explainer too!

Tom: "And then when people say 'Up his sleeve,' they mean... well, they mean something is hidden, like there was some sort of trick or surprise prepared...which doesn't really have anything do to with winning a golf game, so..."

Tom: Please, publish a picture of two men kissing!

Tom: That is very easy to explain.

Choire: Ha! You're a minority parent on that one.

Tom: "They love each other." The end.

Choire: Oh. Hmm.

Tom: But how do I explain to my child, now that he is reading things, that sometimes adults don't care enough about stringing the words together in a way that makes sense?

Choire: I think that's a very morally damaging lesson to teach your child.

Tom: I don't want him exposed to that kind of perversion and depravity.

Tom: "Up his sleeve."

Choire:
That's just rude... I think. Or IS IT? I have no idea!

Tom: I'm going to have to start hiding the newspaper from him.

Choire: Can I say this about headlines as well?

WRAP ALERT: Subject: EXCLUSIVE: Washington Post Wins 4 Pulitzer Prizes

Tom: That is an alert from The Wrap?

Choire: Yes!

Tom: EXCLUSIVE. You know, I think I'm OK with them giving the prizes to what's left of Old Media still, then.

Choire: Hmm! Are all these things related? Like if the staff of the Times is so busy putting on makeup for this fake TV show, are they (or people just like them!) too busy to write good headlines for the Washington Post?

Tom: Maybe. And the staff of the Post is too busy getting mau-maued by Andrew Breitbart? Over the question of whether or not the people who were screaming "faggot" were also screaming "nigger."

Choire: Oh boy.

Tom: And whether anyone intentionally spat on a congressperson, or whether they just screamed in the person's face with such force and lack of self-control that they sprayed spittle.

Choire: Well! I bet Kathleen Parker could get us some answers.

Choire: You know. The one with the Pulitzer?

Tom: Yeah, I didn't even know what to say about that. She's one of the better op-ed columnists at the Post, but it's hard to express how minor an accomplishment that is. That just means she's not obviously an imbecile, a partisan hack, and/or a liar.

Choire: Well that does deserve some kind of badge and/or prize.

Tom: Like getting off the Post op-ed page?

Choire: Now that's a prize.

Choire: Ugh. I did it.

Choire: I fell into rereading the Weingarten story.

Tom: Happy afternoon! So are we going to put some of this up on the Web, to illuminate our internal process?

Choire: Only when I'm done weeping about the babies. And only if I can call it...

Choire: AWLCAST!

Tom: DONE AND DONE.

---

See more posts by Tom Scocca

9 comments

Choire: Oh neat!

Tom: I was working in some sort of coffeehouse at one end of a table. One one side, to the left, was Alex Balk. On the other side, to the right, was some tiny hipster girl blogging for Gawker.

Tom: In the middle of the afternoon, someone came around to the girl with a scorecard and a menu, showing her how many Blogging Points she had accumulated that day and what candy she could buy off the rewards menu. She still also had to pay some money for the candy, besides cashing in her Denton points for it.

Tom: And they made sure this transaction was really obvious and protracted, because they were trying to antagonize Balk by letting him watch it.

Tom: So I flipped out and went into a raging jeremiad.

Tom: Like, "YOU THINK IT'S OK FOR YOU TO WORK FOR FUCKING SKITTLES; YOU THINK IT'S FUNNY, YOU WORKING FOR FUCKING SKITTLES; YOU THINK IT'S FUNNY THAT IT BUGS THAT GUY THAT YOU WORK FOR FUCKING SKITTLES; BUT IF YOU ARE FUCKING WORKING FOR FUCKING SKITTLES, EVERYONE IN THE WORLD IS GOING TO HAVE TO WORK FOR FUCKING SKITTLES! EVERYONE! IN THE WORLD! SKITTLES!"

Tom: I swear to you that is what I did dream.

Choire: Sad to say, I can believe it.

Tom: I did not know that my subconscious even knew who Alex Balk WAS.

---

See more posts by Tom Scocca

30 comments

Tom: "CBS News boss: Tiger's return will be second-biggest media event of last 10 or 15 years."

Tom: "'I think the first tournament Tiger Woods plays again, wherever it is, will be the biggest media event other than the Obama inauguration in the past 10 or 15 years,' says CBS News president Sean McManus. Will his on-air announcers mention the scandal? 'I don't think there is a lot of reason to dwell on what has happened in the past because it is one of the most exploited and overexposed stories in recent memory.'"

Choire Sicha: Whoa. Sean McManus. The good news is that this "media event" will take place at the Masters, in three short weeks!

Tom: I can't really evaluate the truth or falsehood of this fairly false-sounding claim without knowing what a "media event" is.

Choire: Well? "Thing that the media covers"??

Tom: Does it mean "something for which people know in advance to send cameras"? Unlike 9/11, which did happen within this timeframe of 10-15 years? But people did know in advance that we were invading Iraq, and they sent camera crews there for that. You see my confusion?

Choire: I think you're confusing the invasion of Iraq with the "Mission Accomplished" press conference?

Tom: No, we had lots of footage of bombs and tanks and stuff.

Choire: Did we? I can barely remember.

Tom: You're confusing the present-day coverage of Iraq with the initial coverage of Iraq. We got live coverage of them struggling to slowly pry down that statue of Saddam. It was the only thing on TV.

Choire: Oh, when they stole all the paintings??? Right!

Tom: Weeks and weeks. But that was not a "media event," which is fine, because God forbid it should be compared to Tiger Woods playing golf. Still, then, why is the inauguration, which was an event-event, classified with the golf? And if pre-scheduling is what makes the difference, that would mean that O.J.'s Bronco ride was not a media event.

Choire: Well the inauguration has always been an event for display, but however, I think he's not talking about the inauguration. I think he means the actual event of the election?

Tom: He said "inauguration."

Choire: True he did! It's his word and he's welcome to it. [*]

Tom: You know what? If it takes this much work to try to figure out what he means by "media event," I'm going to go ahead and say he's full of shit. Tiger playing golf again is like the first episode of "Jon and Kate Plus 8" after they got caught cheating on each other.

Choire: It's less of a notable event even than a coronation–at least when there's a change in power, it's motivated by other forces than "Oh hey, I think I'll go out and do that thing I used to do every day again."

Tom: And that is nothing at all like the actual transfer of executive power in the world's wealthiest and best-armed nation. I am assuming that you have avoided the STR8 INTERNETZ enough to have missed the whole thing where Bill "The Sports Guy" Simmons declared that Tiger Woods' comeback was going to be tougher than Muhammad Ali's was.

Choire: I understood 6 of those words!

Tom: Lucky you. Simmons is a guy who built himself into a brand and got bought by ESPN as a regular-fellow sports analyst, which is to say he mixes sweeping, sometimes-interesting judgments about sports with middle-of-the-road pop-culture gags and a fascinating part-submerged and quasi-aspirational fear of women and nonwhites. Because that is how Guys are.

Choire: Well I know he is much-beloved by some friends, who consider him God-like. I still don't know who he is!

Tom: He says things about sports that are probably worth saying, and somebody could write a pretty good dissertation about what he deliberately and accidentally says about race and gender. But this thing he said about Ali and Tiger was incredible. The whole sports-reading Internet did a prolonged spit-take. And then he did a bunch of Googling or skimming of history books and tried to write a follow-up piece defending his insane claim that Tiger has it tougher than Ali did, which boiled down to the notion that today's athlete faces "pressure" unlike anything anyone could have imagined in the old days.

Tom: Eventually, I figured out that by "pressure," he meant "hype." The way George W. Bush kept saying "freedom" when he meant "us."

Tom: Probably that's what Sean McManus is talking about, too. But Sean McManus is making sure his announcers don't compound the hype by talking about Tiger Woods' ladyscandals. Bully for CBS.

Tom: I assume the CBS announcers will focus instead on Tiger Woods' relationship with Dr. Anthony Galea, the HGH-toting medical man who also helped Alex Rodriguez get over his hip troubles last year.

Choire: I'm sure they will!

Tom: That is a story that has been sadly overshadowed by all this jabber about cocktail waitresses. It will be great to see CBS go hard after the real news.

Tom: Unless...you don't suppose McManus is publicly promising Tiger Woods friendly treatment, to make sure that Woods returns to golf in time to give CBS boffo ratings for the Masters, do you?

Choire: I'm sure I wouldn't know. It is obvious that he is planning vast wall-to-wall coverage of Tiger Woods with a golf club in hand.

Tom: Oh. Perhaps "media event" means "something we can sell ads against." I can be slow sometimes.

Choire: Well, that's a given. Spectacle is ad-worthy.

Tom: But not the spectacle of the Iraq invasion. Or the Bronco chase, even. It has to be a spectacle where there's no leakage of bad feeling onto the advertisers.

Choire: Well you can't interrupt a Bronco chase for commercial!

Tom: OK. Now I know what business CBS News boss Sean McManus is in.

---

See more posts by Tom Scocca

12 comments

Choire: We need to discuss DAVID PATERSON: THE TOLD UNTOLD STORY but my mind is so blown by Sally Quinn that I can barely think.

Tom: I KNOW RIGHT??

Choire: I mean, for starters, I've never gotten over them naming their son Quinn Bradlee? This naming speaks either of WASP customs I don't understand or narcissism. (If those aren't the same two things.)

Choire: But not being a Washington insider like yourself, I was not aware of this controversy about the Bradlee clan's wedding dates, though I did just Google up a post from Politics Daily on the subject.

Tom: It is hard to know where to begin with this Quinn piece, but one way to begin is to pull back and take the wide-angle view, which is that she believes she has been given a column in the Washington Post Style section to deal with her personal business.

Choire: A WaPo Tumblr. About time!

Tom: I also had no idea that there was any controversy about wedding dates until Sally Quinn got into my morning newspaper and told me about it. I guess we, unlike Sally Quinn, don't have Google alerts for "Sally Quinn." But her column helps us make up for our failing.

Tom: Otherwise we might have missed the fact that anyone had something bad to say about Sally Quinn.

Tom: But. Could anybody have anything worse to say about Sally Quinn than Sally Quinn does? The column is like a particularly unhinged and confused letter to an advice columnist, only no advice columnist ever shows up to point out how self-deluded and wrong the letter-writer is. It is the Garfield Without Garfield to Ask Amy.

Tom: Sally Quinn is very upset that people have said that two sets of Bradlee offspring are having dueling weddings. She is so upset that she has gone to great lengths to explain the real situation.

Choire: Which is... that there are dueling weddings, I'm pretty sure?

Tom: The real situation, according to Sally Quinn, is that two branches of the Bradlee family hate each other so much–and one hates Sally Quinn so much in particular–that they have scheduled their weddings directly against each other, and the family is fully divided between the two occasions.

Choire: That's pretty much what I read!

Tom: That is what she describes!

Choire: Also that Ben Bradlee keeps the calendar, but not ably. (What is also fascinating however is that her husband, Ben Bradlee, goes unnamed throughout!)

Tom: Well, let's get to that in a moment.

Tom: Here's the background on the two weddings, as rendered by Sally Quinn: "Over Christmas, Greta's mother and I came to an understanding that, because of existing tensions, it would be best for all if none of us attended Greta's wedding."

Choire: An understanding, you say.

Tom: She doesn't specify how many people "none of us" embraces.

Tom: But Greta is the daughter of Ben Bradlee Jr., her husband's son. [CORRECTION: Due to the fantastic inability of the Bradlee clan to make any sense from the outside, it is only through diligent reporting that we have discovered that Greta's mother is not Bradlee's ex-wife, as we assumed; Greta is, apparently, Bradlee's granddaughter, descended from a previous wife (his first, we believe, but we will consult the literature further).]

Choire: (Who IS named!)

Tom: So the "us" seems to include the entire family unit created by Ben Bradlee Sr. after he got out of his previous marriage.

Choire: I... think so?

Tom: The perfection of the marriage of Sally Quinn and Ben Bradlee is one of the central themes of the writing of Sally Quinn. It is odd that such a wonderful thing as this marriage would have created so much apparent emotional damage and resentment in its wake, lasting down through the years.

Tom: It is almost as if other people had different feelings about the marriage than Sally Quinn does.

Choire: It is known however that there are some deep-seated feelings within the family, that has created a rupture, related or not related to that marriage.

Tom: Now, you mentioned the calendar-keeping business.

Choire: I did. Personally, I would expect better household record-keeping from the former social secretary to a leader of the Algerian independence fighters.

Tom: Although it's not completely apparent from this installment, the official or ostensible purpose of Sally Quinn's Post column is to allow her to share her expertise about the handling of social functions.

Tom: This is her specialty.

Tom: Parties and special events and how to run them.

Tom: Yet she hands off the save-the-date card for this wedding to her husband, puts the date entirely out of her mind, and then blames him for forgetting it.

Choire: Do you find that implausible?

Tom: I do! It does not seem plausible to me.

Tom: It would seem to require an active act of forgetting and rejection on her part.

Choire: It is possible and also not likely.

Choire: And I say that as someone who is excessively, aggressively disorganized regarding dates.

Tom: Yes, I have a bad time keeping track of dates, too. But I do tend to remember at least the season of the year involved when someone tells me of an upcoming wedding.

Tom: It also occurs to me that people don't send out Save the Date cards to people whom they are not planning to invite to their weddings.

Choire: That would follow.

Tom: So this understanding that was reached between Sally Quinn and "Greta's mother"–why, Greta's mother, that would be Ben Bradlee's previous wife–this understanding amounted to the rescinding of an invitation.

Choire: A date had been saved!

Choire: Then a date was no longer to be saved.

Tom: "Happily, we did not have a single overlapping guest," Quinn writes. That is true, but it was not always true.

Tom: Except Quinn also writes there, "We had already decided not to go to the California nuptials." But "we" would seem to mean her and Ben Bradlee, which contradicts the earlier account of her non-attendance being settled by a discussion between her and Bradlee's ex-wife.

Tom: She didn't decide; she was disinvited.

Choire: And, correspondingly, or not, also clearly did not extend invitations the other way (by agreement?) in planning the wedding of her son. (Not a single overlapping guest!)

Tom: And then–because they were "thrilled to learn" that their daughter-in-law-to-be was pregnant–she moved up the wedding date to conflict with the California wedding.

Choire: Thrilled! Which I actually think is a nice way of discussing that. They should be thrilled. And forthright.

Tom: But Sally Quinn was restricted in her choice of wedding dates because of the liturgical calendar, she says.

Choire: Lent!

Tom: Plus the trouble of lining up the caterer and the band. But, you know, the courthouse doesn't close for Lent. And the church would be perfectly happy to sanctify and solemnize existing secular vows at a later date.

Choire: But that is not a proper wedding for these people. (Although the yoga instructor bride might feel differently?)

Choire: In the end I think this Quinn column actually just makes me feel bad for everyone involved, and by everyone, and involved, I even mean myself! Now I'm involved, and I'm sad about it.

Tom: Isn't that what science says the narcissists do to us?

Choire: It's sometimes hard to tell a newspaper columnist from a narcissist but there is a difference and in this case this is not particularly newspaper columnizing? My main objection being that the story presented makes no sense, because I suspect that Sally Quinn has no idea that anyone is reading this who is not a Matrix-double of herself.

Tom: It is based on the premise that there is nothing embarrassing about being Sally Quinn.

Tom: I am not sure that anyone on the planet besides Sally Quinn feels that way.

Choire: Well, and now we know that only somewhere between 1/5th and 1/3rd of the Bradlee family at large agree with that opinion as well.

Tom: Or they don't want to spring for cross-country airfare.

Choire: Sure. Weddings are annoying AND expensive!

Tom: Oh, my goodness. Only now did I bother finishing reading the original gossip item to which Sally Quinn had so helpfully pointed me. The church which she was having such trouble lining up seems to be the National Cathedral.

Choire: Oh yes, the little neighborhood church around the corner!

Tom: On behalf of all of us Episcopalians, I say Henry VIII would be proud.

---

See more posts by Tom Scocca

53 comments

Choire Sicha: Ah. The whole "black man has been in jail!" thing.

Tom: It's just like the McCain-and-lobbyist story.

Tom: I am not even using her name, because she didn't have an affair with John McCain as far as I could tell.

Tom: But it is the same deal. The Times becomes, through its strenuous efforts not to appear irresponsible, exactly as irresponsible as it is accused of having been.

Tom: It gets mau-maued into reporting that it doesn't have good evidence of the claims that people were criticizing it for reporting on.

Tom: John McCain's campaign staff had concerns about the appearance of possible closeness to a lobbyist.

Tom: David Paterson has a favorite aide who has a not obviously alarming amount of documented trouble with the law.

Choire: Here's what seems unelaborated to me.

Choire: "And several current and former administration officials said that Mr. Johnson's dressing down of the governor's Washington office in September contributed to the departure of several seasoned people from the office."

Choire: 1. Several?

Choire: 2. Who!

Choire: 3. Where are they?

Tom: That clause there sounds like a minor but interesting news story about the Paterson administration.

Choire: Doesn't it? What sort of dressing down? Also... how big IS the governor's Washington office???

Tom: I would gladly read 850 words that answered all the questions that are not answered in that sentence.

Tom: What happened, to whom did it happen, where did it happen, why did it happen, and how did it happen?

Tom: It seems possible to me that a crisply reported account of this incident, one that answered these questions, would help a reader decide whether David Paterson is presiding over a bumbling, incompetent administration or not.

Tom: That would be, happily enough, a subject of interest to the voters.

Choire: I would be interested in such.

Choire: Because, unfortunately, I already know that the United States puts more than 1/3rd of black men in state or federal prison at some time in their lives.

Tom: But Choire–this particular black man is "6-foot-7, with a booming voice." So you see, right there, people have something to worry about.

Choire: According to data from the late 60s to the late 70s, 51% of all non-white men can expect to be arrested for a felony in their lives. When you cross-reference that by "extremely large black men," I assume that percentage rockets up to something like 70%?

Tom: Look at you, worrying about identifiable action by the criminal-justice system.

Tom: "She said she did not file a formal report, but said she had filed an earlier domestic violence complaint to the police about Mr. Johnson. She declined to offer evidence of that."

Choire: I assume that is a different incident than the Halloween-costume-ripping incident??

Tom: Yeah, that's a different one.

Choire: It is hard to keep this relatively complicated personal life clear!

Tom: It is. And the Times is too busy smudging the dots to connect them.

Tom: It's pretty amazing when you get to the end and see the additional-reporting-by tag, which brings the total number of reporters on the story to six.

Tom: Maybe the story would have come out better with only one reporter on it.

Choire: Maybe? I wonder how Danny Hakim's meeting with Paterson was. I can't quite really picture it!

Tom: I can't picture anything in this story.

Tom: It's all shadow puppets.

Tom: The trouble here is that the Times is so annoyed and confused by having had its scruples questioned, it descends into this parody of scrupulousness.

Tom: The headline that loads above the browser bar says it all: "Paterson's Ex-Driver, David W. Johnson, Is a Top Confidant."

Tom: So this is just a profile?

Choire: That seems to indicate that the story is a profile of a person.

Tom: Yet the headline on the text itself is "Paterson Aide's Quick Rise Draws Scrutiny."

Tom: So it is a story about controversy. Or is it a profile? Perhaps the New York Times should have made up its mind before publishing it.

Tom: What's irritating about these botched takedowns, this and the McCain thing and all the other awful campaign stories, is that the Times pretends that it doesn't have a responsibility to decide what the stories are about. We're just reporting objective facts!

Choire: Why these facts and not others? What about the price of granite and stuff?

Tom: Remember that story about how Biden used official funds for landscaping at his house? And the landscaper had no idea whether or not the landscaping was in preparation for official events there? Facts! Here are some facts for the reader. We report! You... decide?

Choire: Actually I don't really remember that story, it turns out.

Tom: You may have forgotten it, because it said nothing. Like this story.

Choire: I have read this story a few times now. And in the end I came away with conflicting "icky" and "sympathetic" feelings? On the one hand, I think, "Hey, this guy is like me, he used to run into trouble all the time and now he's got a job and working hard." And on the other hand, I think, "What is this dude's problems with women? Jesus Christ!"

Choire: And then I don't know anything, so I finally decide IT IS NONE OF MY BUSINESS.

Tom: Yep.

Tom: "Draws scrutiny." From whom? From the New York Times, seems like.

Choire: From some quitters down in D.C.?

Tom: Well, yes.

Tom: The Times suffers from a fundamental confusion about how to do scandal stories.

Tom: The Times is not a passive observer of these things. This kind of reporting is a prosecutorial activity. That doesn't mean the paper is out to get someone. It means that the paper has, through reporting, come to a particular factual conclusion, and it needs to prove that conclusion to the reader.

Tom: It's a very scrupulous kind of prosecutor.

Choire: That is a useful act.

Tom: The thing about a prosecutorial approach is, it assumes a vigorous defense.

Tom: Is the evidence you're obtained solid and persuasive, or can someone contest the facts? Are there gaps in your logic that would allow someone to reject your conclusions? Is there exculpatory evidence that you're overlooking? Would your piece survive the most skeptical and uncharitable reading it could get?

Choire: You mean, basically, someone asking over and over again: why are you writing this?

Tom: Yes. Why are you writing this, and how do you know you're right?

Tom: That is what the editors' job is.

Tom: But what the editing at the Times does is it fudges the indictment.

Tom: "We ain't sayin' nothin', we're just sayin'..."

Tom: They try to hide behind Teaching the Controversy.

Choire: This is complicated because it's not a controversy that we would know unless we worked in Albany.

Choire: Which, however, IS their job!

Choire: I do want them to enlighten me on what people are actually talking about!

Tom: Here's the controversy: a bunch of people who are losing influence in the Paterson administration, or who are otherwise hostile or self-interested, are running around saying, "Paterson talks about how bad domestic violence is, and his No. 1 confidant is a straight ghetto drug-dealing thug who beats up women all the time."

Tom: See also: infighting McCain campaign staff.

Tom: So there is good reason to approach these rumor-stories with caution. People have agendas.

Choire: Sure! And I do think that Times reporters are pretty sensitive to disgruntlement and motivation.

Tom: But you can't just pick up the accusations with a long pair of tongs and wave them around at the reader.

Tom: The disgruntled people are making substantive claims. Is John McCain fucking a lobbyist? Is Paterson's right-hand man beating up women?

Choire: And is he doing this ten years ago or now?

Choire: And is that related to his "sudden rise"?

Tom: The Times thinks it's OK to answer these substantive questions through innuendo, hearsay and discussion of appearances.

Tom: "She said she did not file a formal report, but said she had filed an earlier domestic violence complaint to the police about Mr. Johnson. She declined to offer evidence of that."

Tom: She declined to offer evidence?

Choire: I mean, listen, I believe Anita Hill and all. But what?

Tom: Is there paper, or is there not fucking paper?

Tom: You have six reporters on this story, and you are just asking the woman to offer evidence herself? Get the fucking paper, or shut the fuck up.

Choire: I'd like to think a parenthetical was cut by the editors there about shoddy police record-expunging.

Tom: I'd like to think I've got a homemade ice cream sandwich right here, but I don't.

---

See more posts by Tom Scocca

25 comments

---

See more posts by Tom Scocca

10 comments

---

See more posts by Tom Scocca

5 comments

---

See more posts by Tom Scocca

72 comments

Tom: Whahuh, Clark Hoyt?
Tom: I don't....
Tom: Ha, wow.
Choire: Shall we turn first to the sad, sad story of the Times copy editor who wrote a Complaint Box column about Jet Blue, an airline that he'd sued after missing a flight because he couldn't find the gate?
Tom: Thirty minutes?
Tom: Dude showed up 30 minutes before a flight?
Tom: It's not about fairness to JetBlue.
Tom: it's about not letting the writer embarrass himself.
Tom: But also it is INSANE to compare that story to Hoyt's other example: a woman pimping her boyfriend's restaurant.
Tom: And then he gets to the recurring Times junket problem.
Tom: He concludes: "The Times is right to stick by the rules."
Tom: Have you read the rules?
Choire: I have read the rules!
Tom: "137. Before being given an assignment, freelance contributors must sign a contract with the Times Company or one of its units. Such a contract obliges them to take care to avoid conflicts of interests or the appearance of conflict. Specifically, in connection with their work for us, freelancers will not accept free transportation, free lodging, gifts, junkets, commissions or assignments from current or potential news sources. Independent broadcast producers, similarly, must comply with our ethical standards during their preparation of any news production that will bear the name of the Times Company or one of its units."
Tom: Taking it from the top: "Before being given an assignment, freelance contributors must...."
Tom: How does that happen? The freelancers sign the Times contract before the Times gives them an assignment?
Tom: Should everybody just sign on in advance, before they pitch the Times?
Choire: Sure!
Choire: WE ALL MUST OBEY BEFORE WE KNOW WHAT WE ARE DOING.
Tom: I believe what they mean to say is "Editors for the Times must obtain a signed story contract from a freelancer before any reporting or writing that may appear in the Times can be done."
Choire: Most likely.
Tom: "Well, the pitch idea sounds intriguing, but are you sure there's enough there for a piece?"
Tom: "Not yet."
Tom: "OK, let me send you a contract, then you fill it out and e-mail it back to us, and once that's all set, please do some more reporting and see if it's a story."
Choire: Heh.
Tom: As a freelancer, I sort of like it! Taken to its logical conclusion, the Times should be paying people to write pitches.
Choire: As if.
Choire: Yes.
Choire: Well.
Choire: Also?
Choire: Did you notice Hoyt mentioned that this particular freelancer sent FIVE PAGES of story ideas to this editor?
Tom: That's pretty great.
Tom: Then comes this: "in connection with their work for us, freelancers will not accept..."
Tom: So why does her previous junket automatically disqualify her in Hoyt's eyes?
Tom: "The paper has strict rules that freelance travel writers cannot have accepted free trips, rooms or meals."
Tom: That's how he puts it, but it's certainly not what that provision says. Now, the next provision says this:
Tom: "138. Assigning editors and producers who deal with nonstaff contributors should be aware that a freelancer's previous involvements and professional behavior can prove an embarrassment. They should make every effort to insure that a freelancer has no history or ties that would raise a real or apparent conflict of interest on a particular assignment."
Tom: But I don't see how that vague language comes out to a retroactive application of the no-junkets-on-Times-assignments rule to every assignment a freelancer took before taking a Times assignment.
Choire: The Travel section does have different rules: "No staff member of our company who prepares a travel article or broadcast – whether on assignment or freelance, and whether for us or for others – may accept free or discounted services or preferential treatment from any element of the travel industry."
Tom: But that doesn't apply to non-staff freelancers.
Choire: Right.
Tom: Just to moonlighters from the rest of the paper.
Choire: Correct.
Tom: I'm just reading the rules that Clark Hoyt linked to, within the sentence where he said that this writer was de facto ineligible to write for the Times.
Tom: And I see nothing in those rules that says freelancers "cannot have accepted" junkets, past tense, which is how Hoyt puts it.
Choire: Righty.
Tom: So let's recap.
Choire: Go for it.
Tom: First of all, Hoyt is equating a staffer who wrote a piece about a personal complaint, clearly identified as such, with a writer who recommended her boyfriend's restaurant in a piece with no disclosure in it.
Tom: Now, the complaint piece was dumb, but it was not the least bit unethical on the writer's side.
Tom: It was unconvincing and it should have been spiked by the editor once it emerged that the guy had inflicted the troubles on himself. And the Times' way of mixing staff contributions with public contributions in that space could be a problem for people who worry about the paper throwing its weight around-but those ethical judgments or misjudgments were made by editors.
Tom: From the writer's point of view, all his cards were on the table for the reader to see.
Choire: Yes.
Tom: In the end, I came away from the piece feeling sorry for JetBlue for having had to deal with such a mad-tempered pest of a passenger.
Tom: But again, that is an editor's failure.
Tom: But Hoyt is more or less calling the guy a crook.
Choire: Allow me to blather on for a bit!
Tom: Yes?
Choire: May we return to Clark Hoyt's November 1 column?
Choire: Then, he wrote: "Now, with an around-the-clock news cycle, reporters file throughout the day, and copy can be edited over a smoother cycle, she said. That is the goal, but the editing staff is dealing with much more copy than before, some online articles are now read by a single editor instead of four or five, and I hear regularly from readers complaining about errors in grammar, spelling and word usage."
Choire: That Hoyt reduces the serious changes in workload and workflow that have been going on at the paper over the last three years to complaints about grammar is absurd, if not wrong. What he addresses in this column today, though he doesn't mention it, are the real effects of what he wrote about on Nov 1.
Tom: Yes. This freelancer shouldn't have written about her boyfriend's restaurant, but she did tell them about it. She just mistook their inability to pay attention for permission to go ahead.
Choire: So, as you say, these instances of editors being too busy, or overworked, or ding-batty, or whatever they were, to pay attention to minor bad-goings-on, and therefore making some dumb mistakes are, at best, just a symptom of what's going on at the Times (which is what's going on everywhere else). This is a newspaper that, as we all know, is losing 100 staffers more right now. That means: more unread emails by editors in the case of the bad-choosing-girlfriend-freelancer, or more bad shoe-horned-in columns by a coworker who can't bother to get to the airport more than 30 minutes before his flight and then actually gets lawyery over it. That Hoyt is unable to make these connections, and that is his job, I think, is terrible.
Choire: And that it's THEN compounded with an untrue statement of the Times' own policies?
Choire: That's just derelict.
Choire: *Gets off soapbox*
Tom: Don't get off your soapbox yet!
Choire: I was just making room for you up here!
Tom: I'm trying to figure out how the Public Editor's weird and confusingly vague sideswipe into the forced-miscarriage story serves the readers of his column.
Tom: It was bound up in the initial discovery of the conflict of interest, sure.
Choire: Well, he has a strange obsession with how things are found out.
Choire: Here's how Clark Hoyt finds things out: he gets letters.
Choire: Meanwhile, NPR gave credit, without necessarily knowing from inside the Times that such credit was deserved, to NYTPicker for bringing up the issue of the Miami freelancer.
Tom: While Hoyt gives no credit to NYTPicker.
Choire: (Which, to NYTPicker's credit, they brought up on November 23.)
Choire: (And the Times editors note was published on Dec 6.)
Choire: Anyway!
Choire: But Hoyt got a letter from a reader in "Miami."
Tom: Hoyt's job here, this late in everything, is to be a quasi-judicial arbiter of the ethics questions.
Choire: Yes.
Tom: And the forcible-miscarriage thing reads as an attempt to disparage the character of the writer by association.
Tom: She didn't just write about her boyfriend, she wrote about her boyfriend the sensational criminal, because she clearly enjoys trafficking in wrong behavior.
Tom: When the sleazy behavior that matters here is the Times' ongoing notion that everyone who writes for it must abide by a monastic code of ethics, even as a greater and greater share of the paper is written by people who do not get to share in the institutional and financial strength on which that code of ethics is based.
Tom: You want ethically impeccable writers? Then don't expect them to have to hustle for a living.
Tom: Don't blame them for getting bought, let alone for the potential appearance of having previously been bought, when you're too cheap to buy them yourself.
Choire: Yes, this poor girl should know better than to date some terrible owner of a burger joint. Also she should know better than to write about him. Stuff happens. Her side of the story? "I told my boss up front!"
Choire: She may not be the sharpest whatever in the whatever? But these things happen, and her defense is reasonable.
Choire: As is her editor's! Whose defense is: I don't have time to read all these fucking emails.
Tom: There's more to it than that, even.
Tom: Here's a piece of reporting the Public Editor could maybe have tried to do: who on the ground in Miami could have done the job without ethical complications?
Tom: They won't pay to send a staff reporter to Miami.
Tom: They want somebody who already lives there and is intimately familiar with the dining scene.
Tom: And they end up with a person who is....intimately familiar.
Choire: Also, there is the issue of Miami.
Tom: Sure.
Choire: For instance, you can have Brett Sokol write about art collectors, as he recently did, from Miami, for the Travel section.
Choire: (DISCLOSURE: YEARS AGO I ONCE HIRED BRETT SOKOL AS A MIAMI-BASED FREELANCER AND I LIKE HIM THOUGH I DO NOT KNOW HIM.)
Choire: And that is well and fine. But you also have to know that he is the arts editor of Ocean Drive magazine.
Choire: Ocean Drive is owned by Niche Media, which owns Gotham, etc. And is what I consider one of the filthiest media outlets in terms of relationships between editorial, social status and the advertising department.
Choire: Does this mean Brett shouldn't write for the Times? No!
Choire: Does it mean it would take a team of editors about three weeks to thoroughly investigate, I guess, every party he's ever attended, every airplane he's been on, and every collector's house at which he's consumed a canape? Sure!
Choire: These towns, and these beats, are small.
Choire: You cannot go to a party in the art world in Miami without running into Rosa de la Cruz.
Choire: Of course, he hasn't slept with the de la Cruz's, THAT I KNOW OF, nor did he break up with them due to dubious tabloid incidents.
Tom: But if you won't send an outsider, you get an insider.

[This is a good place to note, since we dragged Brett in without his consent or knowledge, that he is a CLEAN TEEN, who does not go on junkets, and never accepts comped services of any kind. We used him rather cavalierly as an example of a Miami freelancer-which was not to besmirch him in any way!]

Choire: Also: how would you FIND an outsider to write for you?
Choire: On... TUMBLR?
Tom: Probably yes, actually. But that would be work.
Tom: And they don't have time to do work.
Tom: But it's the sanctimony that gets me.
Tom: Here is what the Times has been doing: it has been adding coverage of lifestyle and travel–the areas where conflicts of interest are easiest to come by–and it has been cutting staff.
Tom: Both in response to economic imperatives.
Tom: We are in tough Times.
Tom: But stop pretending.
Tom: The Times has lowered its standards.
Tom: Lower standards are cheaper than high standards.
Tom: The Times has sacrificed integrity to save money.
Tom: So have lots of publications.
Choire: And also, and not to sound so terribly reactionary, but this is just another instance in which, if I were an editor at the Times, I'd be screaming "DAMN YOU CLARK HOYT" at my walls for the next 24 hours.
Choire: It's not that the ombudsman should be on the "side" of employees of the Times.
Choire: But that he should understand what's happening inside the paper. And this shows, in at least two ways, that he does not.
Choire: AND ANYWAY, PS: WEN HO LEE, THE END.

Previously: Wordplay Most Fouled: How Not To Write A Headline

---

See more posts by Tom Scocca

17 comments