When Editors Do Bad Things To Decent Copy
February 18, 2008 -- 8:45 AM EST // //

The other day I noted that New York Times reporter Kit Seelye had stuck a wholly gratuitous plug for Matt Drudge into one of her stories. I asked whether this was yet another example of reporters giving Drudge a plug in hopes of getting linked on his site.

It turns out, though, that an editor stuck the reference in. TPM Reader CR emailed Seelye the other day to ask for a response to the Drudge question, and Seelye emailed back this (which she signed off on my posting):

Thanks for asking. I happen to agree with (most of) what Mr. Sargent says, and had he asked, he would have learned that an editor inserted the Drudge reference into my story.

Sincerely,

Kit Seelye

This is a fair response, and it hits on one of the problems with doing this kind of blogging. To do it, you need to be able to presume that people wrote the words that are under their bylines. But of course you can't really presume this, since layers of editors constantly stick their hands into the mix and so forth. On the other hand, it seems like too much to have to verify that a given reporter wrote every word under his or her byline every single time you blog about a piece.

The possibility that folks will take a hit for bad things done by editors is just one of the hazards of the profession. At the same time, in order to approach this stuff fairly, we really do need to keep in mind that much of the journalism brought to you by the big news orgs is the result of collaborative efforts.

The comments section is broken and currently undergoing repair. To reach the homepage of this blog, click here.

---

---