Ask Helen Thomas if you're over-interpreting.....

What exactly do people think the Whte House can do to a reporter?  Draw and quarter them?  (And I don't think "they will lose access" is a good answer - it seems to me that access is given when some person in the Whte house wants to put something out, not because they like the reporter, no?)

I don't think those reporters need fear that Karl Rove will order them killed over a newspaper article that isn't complimentary to Bush. So, I guess you could be said to be over interpreting. This is not to say that the "guilty" reporter wouldn't wish he had been killed after Karl Rove gets through with him. Unfortunately, I have seen no evidence yet that there are limits to what the Bush administration will do. For sure, the Constitution has not been much of a limit.

I don't think you're overinterpreting by bringing this issue up. I think it brings up very important points about the transitional period we are in between editing for print and editing for the net.

I'm a long-time print version reader, and have for a couple years often gone from the first reading the print version to the website to look things up to post on the net. And I have long noticed the importance of the difference and the mis-communication resulting from it.

What I noticed about these not too common but often very intriguing short ditties with the byline of "by the New York Times":

In print layout, if you are sensitive to the layout editing and what kind of messages are sent by it (a long tradition), these little stories "by the New York Times" are always placed like a "sidebar" story. In newspapers a "sidebar" story is one that is sort of an addition to, or an add-on to a main story. (Like in a food section, there's the main story, and then there's a sidebar with the recipes mentioned in the story.) Well, these always look like sidebar stories in their presentation, the way they are placed.

I always got the impression from that that they are an insertion by editors. It's like this: the editor sees that something in the news, an intriguing bit of news, on a related topic on the page has not been covered in any of the stories, and he thinks the Times should have it. He has "staff" write it up and plops it in.

This one is a little 3-column at the bottom of page A14 in the print edition, below a big 5-column "Some Sunnis Now Support Constitution, Splitting Opposition" by Edward Wong, with 2 photos covering the whole left side, a right single-column "Bush Cited 2 Allies Over Arms, Book Says" by Douglas Jehl, and a bottom 5-column "Pentagon Forces Are Improving, but Still Can't Fight Alone," by David S. Cloud and Eric Schmitt, and then there's a teeny sidebar at the right side bottom: "Names of the Dead," which is run all the time without a byline.

So, once again, put the story in that context of that print page and you can see why they are easily called a liberal Bush-administration-bashing paper by supporters of the war. It's the nattering negativity thing, someone just had to throw in another last minute negative "staff-written" story on Iraq at the last minute, there wasn't enough. That's the way I read it. :-)

The whole NYT editorial choice and layout message, it's all lost on the net version. You were supposed to 'get it' that this is just a minor story in the editors' vision, an add-on, and that it didn't warrant the assignment of "real" reporter, you see? In the olden days, before net, you as a reader could even disagree and get mad with this...write a letter complaining: why didn't you assign a reporter to this and put this on page A1, it was important? Now on the net, where everyone choses what they look at whenever and wherever, all that is lost and you are puzzled why there is no by-line. The main content editors, they are just are not in sync with the net yet, they are still thinking print, and not only that, they are thinking a once a day package and presentation, not continual update.

Actually, I wish that ombudsmen of all the big papers would address this issue. Here's the bigger picture why:

All of this traditional "newspaper editing layout" is lost on the internet website versions--the user gets to do his own layout. He doesn't see from the paper which pieces that the editors thought were important and which they thought of as intriguing little add-ons. This is something that intrigues me, as an interpreter of art and communicating--this tossing out of the newspaper editors' vision; the net just doesn't let them control what they put out so easily. It also causes misunderstandings about how much they meant to stress something. Also, I see clear evidence that the editors of the website layout very much pander to vox populi--whatever is bound to get the most clicks gets on the home page.

P.S. If you're into the 'reading of newspapers' and iconography and messages sent by the layout of them, I find that the blogger Bag News Notes does a pretty dang good job, mho. Since he usually does just photo-journalism, it applies to the net too. Once in a while he does layout issues on the NYT as he appears to subscribe to the print version.

Matt - thanks for the  FYI on lack of byline.  NYTimes may be afraid but the often docile Washington press corps' pounded Scott McClellan in 10/13 press briefing.
 
WH briefing reference at end. Questions on President and troops follow: 

Q Scott, why did the administration feel it was necessary to coach the soldiers that the President talked to this morning in Iraq?

Q Well, they discussed the questions ahead of time. They were told exactly what the President would ask, and they were coached, in terms of who would answer what question, and how they would pass the microphone.

Q I'm just asking why it was necessary to coach them.

Q But we asked you specifically this morning if there would be any screening of questions or if they were being told in any way what they should say or do, and you indicated no.

Q And I asked if they were pre-screened.

Q But I also asked this morning, were they being told by their commanders what to say or what to do, and you indicated, no. Was there any prescreening of --

Q President's encounter with the troops, you said that the choreography of this was because of a technological challenge involved in the satellite feed. Well,

Q So you're saying this was not a staged conversation for PR purposes?

Q Now, we all saw the event, so without getting into what the President said and what the troops said, can you just talk specifically to the choreography? Did the soldiers know what questions they would be asking? Did they --

Q So you, personally, do not know if those soldiers rehearsed their answers before they were on air, live?

Q Who was the audience for today's event and how will the soldiers actually see it in Iraq?

Q How will the rest of the troops that the President is seeking to reassure see it?

Q You're not aware of any such provisions at this point?
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/10/20051013-2.html

For what it's worth, the Washington Post has a similiar story...

President Bush yesterday sought to rally U.S. troops behind his Iraq strategy -- and he and his aides left little to chance.

Before the president spoke via a video link, his event planners handpicked 10 soldiers from the Army's 42nd Infantry and one Iraqi soldier, told them what topics the president would ask about, and watched them briefly rehearse their presentations before going live.

The soldiers did not disappoint. Each one praised the president, the war and the progress in training Iraqi troops. Several spoke in a monotone voice, as if determined to remember and stay on script.

...right on A2 in the print version and bylined to Jim VandeHei.

Can anyone tell me what happened to the reporter who was embedded with the US Army on their way to Baghdad and published those pictures of the 377 tons of high explosives missing from the Al-Qaqaa weapons depot the US soldiers broke into and then left to be looted?

YES

 More significant than the NYT or the Post pulling back the curtain on Bush's chat with the troops is the AP doing likewise, under a byline--Deb Riechmann.  If anything, I thought the AP account was more revealing, as was the fact that the reporter identified herself.  Keep in mind, this is the version most readers are likely to see.

With respect to the tradition of The Economist, a magazine I like, I think that readers are entitled to a byline.  It's not just for a writer's joy at seeing their name or for getting a clip, it's for the reader, who should know who wrote what.  Bylines, after all, create records and give us reason to doubt Judith Miller when she says she's got WMD right under her nose.

If the story was compiled by so many journalists that bylines would get ridiculously long, then we should be told it came from staff reports.

In the absence of that, we have to assume that the publication itself, as in an unsigned editorial, is responsible.  But that should only be done in extreme cases and is best left to the editorial page.

I don't know if the Times is trying to protect the access of a reporter here, as Matt speculates.  If so, that's lame.  The Times owes its readers first, not its sources or access for its reporters.  If access is at issue, you still run the byline and if the reporter is cut off for it (it's the White House, they're not going to kill the writer, I don't think) then you run a story on that.  I guess that my arguments about Miller on this site have convinced me that reporting stories isn't enough and that  moder readers want to, and deserve to, know how there news was gathered and who did the gathering.

The Oprah Winfrey question was posed by Lester Kinsolving, resident crackpot and occasional lifeline for Scottie

To Scottie's credit, he said he wouldn't dignify the question with a response but he did get a momentary break from the pummeling.

Not overinterpreting in the least.

Recall the Koran Flush? How Rove tried to Rather Isikoff?

Well that backfired nicely and now the media are beginning to do their job...I wonder if we have been having this discussion a year ago.

I doubt it. I hope that soon, I expect it, that authors of articles like this one will be proud to have their bylines on page one.

Minneapolis/St. Paul City Pages

Found In Al Qaqaa: KSTP's Integrity

by Paul Demko

November 3, 2004

....Given this level of support for GOP candidates, it must have been a bit galling for the Hubbard clan to witness last week's bombshell report on KSTP-TV (Channel 5) showing footage of the al Qaqaa munitions complex in Iraq.....

Former KSTP news director Scott Libin argues that it's a testament to the integrity of the station ownership that the report wasn't smothered. "I think it underscores that, political passions aside, the Hubbards are in the news business and they don't let their ideology get in the way of their reporting," he says.

Yet it's more than a little fitting that the man of the moment, reporter Dean Staley, no longer works for KSTP. In recent years, the station has been beset by constant turnover and miserable ratings. The most recent upheaval occurred in July when nighttime anchors Harris Faulkner and Kent Ninomiya were given the boot.

Staley was already out the door by then. He left in March for a weeknight anchor gig with Northwest Cable News in Seattle.

Sources both inside and outside the station insist that it was a largely amicable parting and that Staley simply jumped at a chance to be a full-time anchor.

"It was just an opportunity for Dean to climb into more of a solid anchor role," says Joe Caffrey, the KSTP photographer who accompanied Staley to Iraq. (Staley did not return a call seeking comment for this story.)

Current news director Chris Berg gets testy when asked if the station made any efforts to retain the reporter, who somewhat inadvertently captured KSTP's biggest national scoop in memory. "I'm not going to sit here and answer questions for a story about how we ran Dean Staley out of town," he says. "That's simply not the case. What we have here is an organization that is making national news today and Dean Staley was an important part of that."