NYTimes.com is now aggregating blogs on the Judy Miller affair. Among the bloggers linked: Jay Rosen, Arianna Huffington, Powerline, Josh Marshall, Romenesko (oops, he’s not a blogger, is he?), Wizbang, Talk Left, David Weinberger, Dan Gillmor, Tim Porter, Mickey Kaus, Sisyphean Musings, Kos, Instapundit….
Len Apcar, editor of NYTimes.com, says they’ll do more of this now that they’ve brought on Philippe Lourier of The Annotated Times to help aggregate blogs and other content.
This is a good step. The Times is now linking out to those linking in; the Washington Post has been doing likewise with Technorati help. That finally starts to get papers into the conversation, including conversations critical of them.
But like a blogger, I’ll see an envelope and push it.
First, it would be good to hear more voices we don’t often hear. All those blogs listed above are good. But as I put together my Judy Chronicles, I was hitting Technorati and PubSub and finding comment all over. (Though, egotist that I am, I’m happy to be in there, too.)
Second, the next step in this trend in linking should be to link to the stories a paper is not covering. That is the real value of the connected world.
At any rate, this couldn’t happen with a better story. Bravo.
(Insert full disclosure here. Oh, and I went to college with Len.)
: Oh, and, why not run quotes from these bloggers in the paper? As news or as op-ed.
: Which reminds me: The link I’m really waiting for is to a New York Times editorial on Judy.
: LATER: Romenesko points to lots of tough talk on Judy and The Times today, including former Timesman Alex Jones:
…I worked at the New York Times for nine years. I love the institution. I think it’s absolutely essential to our democracy…. I feel like any reporter owes it to their editor to level with them, especially when the credibility of the newspaper itself is at stake. And the idea that you would have a news organization that could not pull in a reporter and say not only who the source was but what are the circumstances of your relationship; what are the terms; what is your relationship with the administration — especially now that these questions are being raised — how can you operate a news organization?…
I think this is an extremely important moment for the New York Times. I think it’s a moral crossroads. I think that the New York Times, if I were the editors of the New York Times, I would appoint an internal group that I had complete confidence in to review Judy Miller’s reporting, her journalism.
And I would expect her and ask her and insist upon her cooperating and engaging that. And if she refused to engage it, if she refused to be frank, then that would essentially be a firing offense as far as I’m concerned. I think Judy Miller needs this just as much as the New York Times does. I mean, her credibility is at stake. And I think that she needs either a clean bill or she needs not to be representing the New York Times anymore.
I think that now she has taken on the sort of symbolic credibility that is going to be something that’s visited on all the editors and reporters and on the institution itself. And this may not really matter to the public at large. But within the world of journalism for the New York Times to lose its stature as the moral leader, as the standard bearer, that would be tragic.
Who are Miller’s defenders? Know any?
If Miller is going to do the noble thing for journalism, it’s not going to jail. It’s resigning.
: LATER: Arianna is, of course, even blunter, calling Miller a cancer on The Times.
