Well wouldn't you know. In the wake of Bill Moyers' unflinching report on who dropped the ball and how during runup to Iraq War, the NYT has a huge credibility problem on their hands.
What to do... tap, tap, tap...
Wise underling: "Why not hire a new Editor here from that crackerjack team at Knight-Ridder?"
And that's exactly what any self-respecting worldwide News organization would do. Go to the source of unpolluted news writing and publishing.
The Times Names Public Editor
he New York Times today named its next public editor, Clark Hoyt, a former Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and editor who oversaw the Knight Ridder newspaper chain’s coverage that questioned the Bush administration’s case for the Iraq war.
In the prelude to the Iraq war and the early days of the war, Knight-Ridder stood apart from most of the mainstream news media in raising doubts at times about the Bush administration’s claims, later discredited, that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and ties to Al Qaeda. Bill Keller, the executive editor of The Times, said that record contributed to his selection of Mr. Hoyt.
Really, Bill, you think ??
"There was a lot of work Knight-Ridder did that was prescient, that wasn’t easy to do," Mr. Keller said. "It’s always hard to go against conventional wisdom. I think it probably brings him a measure of credibility that helps in getting started on a job like that — that he’s been associated with a brave and aggressive reporting exercise like that."
Yeah. Going against conventional wisdom, aka GROUPTHINK, which your paper finally copped to a year or two too late, after all the damage was done. Well done, Bill Keller, Well done indeed.
Mr. Hoyt said that in 2002 and 2003 he had fielded a great deal of criticism "from angry readers who believed that we weren’t being patriotic, from government officials who said that what we were doing was wrong."
Wow, and this would be .... unusual ... for a news organization? As opposed to what the NYT did of course...
Mr. Keller said he considered, but ultimately rejected, the idea of hiring someone from within The Times, or someone from a digital news operation.
Hah hah! The most hilariously underspoken line in the whole piece. I wonder why you went outside your own pool of tainted lapdogs. Well, here's hoping that bringing in someone who didn't cave will help rebuild your cancerous organization, Mr. Keller.
But the sad thing is: Did you ever see Woody Allen's Broadway Danny Rose? The loyal and patient agent who always stood behind his up and coming acts would be dropped, time and again, as the performers he cultivated got their break, hit the big leagues, and promptly fired their agent to go with a more established one.
I don't blame Clark Hoyt in the least. But it's a shame that Knight-Ridder, now McClatchey, is having a hard time business-wise... despite their being the only maisntream org in America who did their jobs and were ignored.