Jill Abramson’s Book Charts Journalism’s Stormy Seas, With Some Personal Regrets and Score-Settling

The Times still has great breadth but WashPost has far surpassed it in the quality of domestic political reporting. And even more, the quality of the the Times reporting and editing has declined significantly under Baquet -- mistakes, bias, omissions are all now a regular feature of the paper I have been reading on a daily basis for more almost 60 years. What hasn't changed is the refusal to admit error. If you don't believe me, just ask the Times's Public Editor. Wait, what ...?

A great example of the integration" of news and business is that one can buy Abramson's book from this site and the Times will earn a commission on the purchase!

Whatever one thinks of Amazon, Jeff Bezos purchase of the Washington Post was a godsend. The paper is now as great as its ever been.

This is how the article describes Abramson's departure: "In May of that year, she made her move — and completely bungled it. She offered a managing editor position in charge of digital to Janine Gibson, an editor at The Guardian. Abramson then deceived her deputy, Dean Baquet, about the offer; when he found out the truth he was furious. A few days later, the publisher, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., A. G.’s father, fired Abramson. Baquet became executive editor." As a non-journalist and non-insider, all I get from this is that Abramson "deceived" her "deputy," Baquet. How? Why? Was it her job, being senior to him, to get him to rubber-stamp hires? I ask because it was a big deal for Abramson to ascend to the position she briefly held. Women almost never get hired to do these jobs. So, without jumping to conclusions, when I hear that she "bungled" her "move" by "deceiving" her "deputy" (and what does this have to do with her "resistance" to an "innovation report"?) all I have is questions, not answers, about how her firing was handled and whether it was appropriate. The author--playing his inside baseball and anticipating how Baquet (his friend?) will refute Abramson in his own as-yet-nonexistent memoirs--seems to assume we are all on the same page about it.

The Innovation Report is a masterpiece of analysis and prescription. It's shocking that Abramson was so resistant! Its key recommendations were designed to empower journalists and bolster journalism amid digital disruption. Deeper understanding of readers? A renewed focus on user experience? Handing the newsroom more of a say around strategy and product? These are all no-brainers and have enabled the Times to pivot to a sustainable digital model built on subscriptions - one that unifies editorial and commercial interests around a single point: the reader.

It has been much more than a 10-year struggle. In the late 1990s, then Jonah Peretti was a graduate student at my lab, the top brass at the NYTimes told me point blank that the Times would never be on the Internet (We still capitalized it back then). At the News in the Future program at MIT, in which the Boston Globe participated as proxy for its NY owner, we had argued that advertising would follow its audience on line and therefore print media had to participate in order to remain economically viable. We argued (and demonstrated) that on-line didn't mean abandoning thoughtful reporting and editing, and powerful storytelling. It would mean a different relationship to the reader, but one where the Times could excel while sticking to its principles. There have been many opportunities missed in the intervening years, but 20 years later, I think the Times has a credible presence on internet despite the foot-dragging.

I hope NYTimes does not fall into the trap of digital fad. Speaking from experience of the past 12 years or so I never felt NYTimes website was lacking in fundamental ways. I always used a desktop, not tablets, etc. I therefore think it is a waste of money to invest large amounts on new digital features. Simply put the gains do not match investments - the law of diminishing margin is in full force. NYTimes should continue to build and nourish Scholarship, Experience and Expertise, key ingredients to its current standing. I could be biased here but I believe NYTimes subscribers are what I would like the general population to be.

"Bezos focuses on the product and engineering departments at The Post, making the pages fast to load and the stories easy to read across platforms." The NYT might want to take a lesson here. Their pages are so filled with ads, especially video-embedded ones, that it takes forever to read on my older mini iPad. How about offering a scaled-down version of the paper's ads -- I'll pay the same amount. Ask your advertisers to keep the clutter down. And don't go truly interactive on me with any newspaper features unless and until I press a button to do so.

At the time of Abramson’s separation from the NYT I thought the issue was salary equity. Now this version. What gives?

A shout-out to Matt Chase for the outstanding graphic!

"....Baquet emailed Lichtblau: “I hope your colleagues rip you a new asshole.” Everytime we go behind the scenes, we find that the Gods' gifts to men are coal, not diamonds.

If what you write is accurate then Abramson's integrity is more valued, for journalism, than prescience.

Does Ms Abramson address her part in selling the sill illegal in 2019 invasion of Iraq in 2003 when she was head of the NY Times' Washington DC bureau? If not, why do I care about further reflections on her time at the NY Times? The NYT didn't drive readers away because of a bad website. (Now it 2018, it did switch to a bad website formulation, but that was after Ms Abramson was fired.) The Iraq war, missing the coming crash in 2007, and refusing to acknowledge how unhelpful Obama was to everyday citizens, drove readers away. While in 2019, sections like "Style" designed to pull in web readers can't get basic facts about NYC correct (year round ice skating in Harlem was a big one) and they portray upper middle class [white] women as the normal new mom in Brooklyn. Does Abramson address her anti-Bernie Sanders columns in the Guardian (irony) from 2015/16?

I pay $$$ to the NYT and The Guardian, for which Abramson now writes, but haven't quite decided on WaPo yet. And I'm keeping an eye on the yet again 'refurbished' LATimes. Support The Fourth Estate. We are dead and buried without it.

As an editor, Ms. Abramson's arrogance proved to be her downfall, but it's good to see her summon enough humility to help us learn from her mistakes and better understand a news ecosystem that thus far has been hijacked by Donald Trump. Alan Rusbridger's current book, "Breaking News: The Remaking of Journalism and Why It Matters Now," was well worth reading, and, judging from this review, it appears that "Merchants of Truth" is an ideal companion volume. Most important of all, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian et al. are continuing to fight the good fight, and we should be grateful for that. Amid so much political cowardice and so many attacks on the First Amendment, a free press is our last line of defense against out-and-out tyranny.

I'm part of a decreasing minority, those who came of age before the internet, when a single building housed reporters, editing, typesetting and then the presses churning out the product, to be distributed in time for the readers trip on the subway. Now, the Times is leading the country in making newspapers interactive. I only read articles that include comments, like this one, as rather than a lecture, it becomes a discussion. So, if the reporter slips up, there are hundreds who will amend a story, explaining why it does not best address the issue. Reader comments, now screened by an A.I. system, have transformed newspapers to be closer to a type of pure democracy, one's authority not defined by election, but cogency of argument. For this the Times has excelled over all other competitors. I would say the worst mistake is to have discontinued the public editor (ombudsman) without so much as an extended article explaining why. Online newspapers must maintain a high level of accuracy that contrasts with trump's "fake news" to the degree it must even avoid being close. The public editor facilitated this, and is sorely missed. Because of President Trump, distortions by the legitimate media have become immoral, a word I specifically use to contrast with the claimed immorality of the Wall. Doubling down by the legitimate press when they come close to printing fake news, must be castigated by the same people who deplore Trump's casual use of the word.

I know many people who have worked for the NY Times. It is the greatest paper on Earth. However, somebody once told me something that I did not understand until recently. A benevolent family run business like the NY Times when the money was pouring in like it was from the Great Depression aftermath to the year 2000, is the greatest type of business to work for. They really went out of their way to spread the money around to the workers, truly generous, went overboard. When the money stoped coming in, like after 2000, it was a horror company to work for, worse than average.

"...and following the metric charts that told the paper what stories to run." So following "metric charts" in deciding what stories to run is a good thing? How much does that influence editorial judgment, taking it away from editors themselves? How many bad and inaccurate stories get through to further that goal?

can't wait to read this. Abramson makes sense when she appears in public. Trustworthy and bankable: and owning up to miscues as well. Doesn't get any better if truth and justice are the watchwords.

I am still trying to process that Ms. Abramson's worries drove her to poach someone form the Guardian, perhaps the most click-bait oriented online platform I have ever used, that it, until Bezos bought the Washington Post. Journalism needs to think outside the box rather than recycling insiders. The industry needs to stop being a jobs program for the under-educated.

Well, I shall have to pick this one up the next time I run out of sea salt in the pantry. Interesting and fair review.

What this review doesn't allude to - and perhaps Abramson's book does) is what a terribly dangerous period we live in - when the public no longer trusts journalists. This is largely because 'journalists' in much of the 'new media', have little professional experience, and even less maturity. Thanks to 'click bait' strategies, less and less responsible journalism is possible - editors are almost all driven by the numbers a story attracts, and as we know stories about basset hounds, cats and celebrities get higher numbers than thoughtful/foreign/investigative pieces. The very idea that tech or internet moguls have driven much of the change in media content should truly terrify intelligent readers. Meanwhile, most freelance journalists are now writing as a 'sideline' because the rates being paid have gond relentlessly down and down and down over the past decade. Responsible, public service, ethical reporting is moribund.

Funny (but not really) that Ms. Abramson doesn't take the opportunity to discuss how, when she took over at the Times, one of her first steps was to start a series of articles written by herself about her beloved dog "Scout" (all the news that's fit to print, right?), which she eventually turned into a book, which then received two glowing reviews from the Times (and which no doubt made her a lot of money). Funny indeed!

“Of all the executives who had faced the ferocious waters of the digital revolution, Arthur Sulzberger Jr. had come closest to crossing to safety.” Is that right? Buying the Boston Globe (and whoever "negotiated" this deal for the Globe pulled the greatest corporate swindle since another Bostoner got Rick Middleton for Ken Hodge) for $1.1 billion (don't you love the .1?), later sold for $75 million.... And the willful destruction of the Times's last remaining crown jewel, the International Herald Tribune. (Yes, one of the great pleasures of a trip to Europe, reading The International New York Times.) But you're right. Those decisions aside....