Genius no-longer-quite-so-young whippersnapper Ezra is, I think, massively overly polite here: As Ezra Klein say, Jill Abramson is part of a system that regards giving credit to others for the work they have done as a sign of weakness: Spend any time drinking with other reporters and ask them about New York Times journalists. You may well hear that they go out of their way to pretend that they have done work actually done by others, and have a strong positive aversion to acknowledging even the existence of other journalists. This attitude appears baked into their culture. This does not strike me as something the would be true of any group of people worth admiring. And Abramson appears to have it in spades.
I would note that Abramson—and, increasingly, the rest of the New York Times—these days appears to be doubling-down on anti-blogging: access not explainer journalism; stenography for favored sources not working for readers. I am not sure why they want to double-down on this, just as I am not sure why Jill Abramson thought she should carry here disdain for others working on the story beyond the book-publishing and academic plagiarism red lines, but it seems to be what they do—like saving 15% or more on car insurance:
Ezra Klein: @ezraklein: "I've long admired Jill Abramson, but the definition of plagiarism she gives here is a... looser one than has been true at the publications I've worked at, and I think it shows less generosity in citation than is appropriate...
...Sean Illing: A book that talks at length about journalistic ethics and praises legacy media titans like the New York Times and the Washington Post while lambasting new media companies like Vice and BuzzFeed for sloppy reporting that is, well, filled with errors and what appears to be very sloppy reporting. A couple of weeks ago, I scheduled an interview with Abramson planning to discuss the trajectory of the news business. But almost overnight, the story evolved, and our interview on Friday morning took a different turn....
Jill Abramson: There are some missing citations and errors in the footnotes of the book, and there are 70 pages of footnotes. All of the allegations that I lifted material or plagiarized—that’s not true—but I did make mistakes in the footnotes, and there are some uncited passages. Those sources are credited in other footnotes; it’s just those specific quotes are not, and that’s an error and it will be fixed pronto. I feel really terrible about it. I didn’t want there to be anything wrong in the book, and I really wanted it to be about the importance of truth and facts. I don’t think these issues should overshadow what I think is a really interesting book.... Look, I was trying to write a seamless narrative, and to keep breaking it up with “according to” qualifiers would have been extremely clunky. But in retrospect, I wish I’d done that....
Yeah, I can’t find that Malooley citation in the book. But it should be in there, and I can’t find it. But we will get it corrected pronto.... I mean, I have 70 pages of footnotes and I tried to credit everyone’s work as best I can. What we’re talking about here are sets of facts that I borrowed; obviously, the language is too close in some cases, but I’m not lifting original ideas. Again, I wish I had got the citation right, but it’s not an intentional theft or taking someone’s original ideas—it’s just the facts.... I teach journalism, and if this had happened at the Times and someone didn’t credit someone else, and took their words in this way, it would have to be corrected. So yeah, it’s an error. When you make a mistake, you’ve got to correct it and be honest about it. This is what I teach my students, and it’s what I believed when I was the editor at the Times.... I’m not going to get into a semantic argument about whether this fits some definition or not. I really think I’ve talked about this in full, and really would love to move on.
#noted