Happy New Year, Times Readers

I woke up this morning (slightly disoriented -- I blame it on the leap-second) to Byron Calame's column [as "The Public Editor"] about the New York Times and the decision to publish the story that launched Snoopgate, which is as notable for what it doesn't add to the story (i.e., anything), as for what Calame set out to add. As he writes:

If Times editors hoped the brief mention of the one-year delay and the omitted sensitive information would assure readers that great caution had been exercised in publishing the article, I think they miscalculated. The mention of a one-year delay, almost in passing, cried out for a fuller explanation. And the gaps left by the explanation hardly matched the paper's recent bold commitments to readers to explain how news decisions are made. 

What's fascinating to me about this story is the extent to which Calame appears to have been stonewalled by the Times brass in trying to figure out why they finally broke the story on December 16, why they held off on the story "for a year," and why the story itself was so obtuse as to the timing. In short, Calame asks (and asked) important questions about the process, questions that no one at the Times appeared ready or willing to answer.

In his words: "For the first time since I became public editor, the executive editor and the publisher have declined to respond to my requests for information about news-related decision-making."

When I first wrote about Snoopgage, I suggested that, as scary as the story itself was the fact that the Times sat on the story for over a year. I had been hoping for a convincing explanation as to why. But as I take Calame's column, things only seem to be getting worse for the Paper of Record. So, Happy New Year, readers.