BEAT THE PRESS

This afternoon after my customary laps around the pool downtown, I headed over to the Cato Institute at 1000 Massachusetts for a not-quite-a-panel discussion on the New York Times scandals. Mayhaps you've heard of them. Speakers were former Newsweek writrer Seth Mnookin, whose new book "Hard News" occasioned the event, and Slate press critic Jack Shafer, whose (favorable) take on the book can be found here.

I was woefully underdressed for the event, as I usually am for such things. Mnookin grinned through the intro as Cato's David Boaz listed his affiliations with Salon, Slate, Spin, New York, the New Yorker, etc. and quipped: "This is the bluest bio I've ever read." Polite laugh from the audience on that, as does any comment that can be dismissed as a quip, but Mnookin seemed to be quite amused to have written a book with so much interest potential to the red-minded. (Not that Cato can really be called "red" &mdash a quick glance at their foreign policy recommendations should disabuse you of that notion.) Mnookin spoke briefly on the Times' history and his interpretation of what went wrong in the newsroom. To wit: Howell Raines let the success of their post-9/11 coverage — "I won seven Pulitzers!" he apparently thundered at one staff meeting — go to his head, and stopped building relationships with his staff. Even the Times newsroom couldn't see why Raines wanted Augusta National's men-only policy on the front page. When Jayson Blair and Judith Miller aroused suspicion and skepticism, respectively, no one wanted to question him.

When it was Shafer's turn, he stood up and announced that he had a slightly different take on things … and then proceeded to back up Mnookin's account, while adding thoughts of his own. Mnookin said the press had "lost its air of authority"; Shafer, looking at least a little like a Dean Stockwell-bullfrog hybrid, explained how the new media made this possible. He described his own role in Slate's infamous "monkeyfishing" expedition, wherein a young reporter "wrote himself out of the industry" by making up a story about using bananas on string to bait and harass local rhesus monkeys. Shafer told him no one would believe it unless he added details. The writer fabricated some good ones. Before long, readers of James Taranto's online WSJ column had called out the story as a hoax.

Shafer did go further, arguing the scandals emanating from all this "incompetence and malfeasance" are a good thing: This sort of thing has happened in every era of journalism, but only recently have we been able to catch them. The second point is inarguable, and I'm inclined to agree with the first as well. As he put it, the rise of blogs are sending a message to the media: "Watch your ass."

Mnookin said he'd found story ideas on blogs — specifically, his 2003 Newsweek article debunking a Rolling Stone report on so-called "bug chasers," via Andrew Sullivan. Shafer — who just yesterday added a few caveats to the blogging "revolution" — even copped to looking himself up at Technorati on a near-daily basis to see what the blogs were saying about him. So if you're reading this, Jack, I take back the bullfrog comment.

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posted by WWB at 9:20 PM |