Scrapbook
Scrapbook What a Real Newspaper Editor Looks Like Amid all the (admittedly delightful) hullabaloo over Jayson Blair and Rick Bragg, it's important to remember, The Scrapbook thinks, that How-ell...
...New York's isn't the only Times, for example...
...Why, if this is germane, wouldn't we point to legislators on the other side who are similarly bereft of scientific credentials...
...He recently published a piece in the Jordan Times questioning whether the United States wasn't "becoming a mirror of Nazi Germany in the 1930s...
...Along with his more obvious anti-Semitism problem, Qumsiyeh appears to have difficulty with facts...
...At Least They're Good Comedians "Democrats these days lack the killer instinct that it takes to sell blunt, demagogic messages," reports an obviously disappointed Adam Clymer in the May 26 New York Times...
...The reason I'm sending this note to all section editors is that I want everyone to understand how serious I am about purging all political bias from our coverage...
...They also want more explicit guidance about qualifications requirements for open staff positions, newsroom mentors assigned to push their careers, and free journalism instruction outside the newsroom...
...Scrapbook What a Real Newspaper Editor Looks Like Amid all the (admittedly delightful) hullabaloo over Jayson Blair and Rick Bragg, it's important to remember, The Scrapbook thinks, that How-ell Raines and Gerald Boyd aren't the only people directing newsroom staff at a big-league American paper...
...And few of them, we wager, have the foggiest idea what "Straussian theology" might be...
...Here's Carroll's May 22 memo, first obtained and publicized by Kevin Roderick's excellent blog "L.A...
...Let me know if you'd like to discuss this...
...aren't full-time newsroom staff at the Times, even the youngest of them, supposed to be rather beyond the point where "journalism instruction" is required...
...Elis and Other Jews James Kirchick of the New York Sun reports on an uproar at Yale caused by an e-mail distributed last Saturday— by a faculty member, no less—that singles out a group of 64 students by name (mostly Jewish) and criticizes them as a "pro-war cabal...
...It is not until the last three paragraphs of the story that we finally surface a professor of biology and endocrinology who believes the abortion/cancer connection is valid...
...We may happen to live in a political atmosphere that is suffused with liberal values (and is unreflective of the nation as a whole), but we are not going to push a liberal agenda in the news pages of the Times...
...Several had even taken public positions opposing the war...
...The apparent bias of the writer and/or the desk reveals itself in the third paragraph, which characterizes such bills in Texas and elsewhere as requiring "so-called counseling of patients...
...The New York Observer's Sridhar Pap-pu brings word that instead of quietly plying their trade and proving their competence after Blair's spectacular flame-out, Times tyros are using the episode as a novel opportunity for career advancement...
...Umm...
...A newspaper that is intelligent and fair-minded will do the same...
...We do quote one of the sponsors of the bill, noting that he "has a professional background in property management...
...The Young and the Restless It's not often you find The Scrapbook pulling for New York Times management...
...But do we quote him as to why he believes this...
...Qumsiyeh, co-founder of Al-Awda, the Palestine Right to Return Coalition, is well known for this sort of thing...
...Such a person makes no appearance in the story's lengthy passage about the scientific issue...
...Observed" (www.laohserved.com): To: SectionEds Subject: Credibility/abortion I'm concerned about the perception—and the occasional reality—that the Times is a liberal, "politically correct" newspaper...
...There's the Los Angeles one, too, where editor John Carroll recently circulated an admirably candid internal memorandum about a chronic but generally overlooked problem in American daily journalism: heavy-footed bias, conscious or otherwise, against the pro-life argument in American politics...
...Turns out, though, that while all the listed students were members of Yale Friends of Israel, many did not belong to the other outfit...
...Maybe it's stinkiest, though, not in the Times editor's suites—but right out there on the newsroom floor...
...Generally speaking, this is an inaccurate view, but occasionally we prove our critics right...
...We figured it was better to speak collectively as one voice rather than individually," says 27-year-old Times guppie Jennifer 8. Lee, whose middle name—not a typo—speaks collectively on behalf of several Arabic numerals, rather than individually on behalf of her very own self...
...It reached hundreds of students...
...So here's THE WEEKLY STANDARD's list of Prominent Idiots at Yale: 1. Mazin Qumsiyeh...
...We confess that ever since Jayson Blair was exposed as a coked-up and deeply malevolent con man (his book proposal's working title: Burning Down My Master's House), we've joined the world in assuming that this troubled youngster was merely the tailfin of a rotting fish bearing the head of a certain self-described "white man from Alabama...
...The story makes a strong case that the link between abortion and breast cancer is widely discounted among researchers, but I wondered as I read it whether somewhere there might exist some credible scientist who believes in it...
...As Bob Shrum, a prominent consultant for 30 years, said: 'It's probably a weakness that we're not real haters.'" Credit the habitually partisan Clymer with unaccustomed wit...
...It used to be the fashion to mau-mau Times management about racism...
...We quote his political views...
...His e-mail indicated that the listed "cabal" were members of the pro-war Yale College Students for Democracy...
...Lee and her fellow bratpackers, according to Pappu, want something called a "registry of hopes and dreams" to help sensitize their bosses to the special agonies of youthful ambition...
...I don't think people on the anti-abortion side would consider it "so-called," a phrase that is loaded with derision...
...Here's a refresher course for the Times whiner-boppers: Try finding some facts and writing them up intelligibly...
...I'm no expert on abortion, but I know enough to believe that it presents a profound philosophical, religious and scientific question, and I respect people on both sides of the debate...
...We did so today with the front-page story on the bill in Texas that would require abortion doctors to counsel patients that they may be risking breast cancer...
...Apparently the scientific argument for the anti-abortion side is so absurd that we don't need to waste our readers' time with it...
...Last April Qumsiyeh raised eyebrows when he distributed another mass e-mail linked to another list of Jews: "Prominent Jews in the Media...
...As everyone in Washington knows, Bob Shrum's prominence in American politics is owed almost entirely to his expertise in the kind of blunt, demagogic messages that only real haters know how to send...
...Said "cabal," the message from associate professor of genetics Mazin Qumsiyeh contended, "subscribes to the same Straussian theology that the no-cons [sic] around Bush have been pushing...
...Post-Blair, the blackmail du jour appears to be ageism...
...Seldom will you read a cheaper shot than this...
...Also, "there is significant overlap of this list with the 'Yale Friends of Israel.'" Qumsiyeh's e-mail was posted on a listserve maintained by the antiwar Coalition for Peace at Yale...
...No word yet on whether Howell Raines will cave to demands for a sushi bar and shiatsu massages...
...No doubt encouraged by the huggy-bear, self-flagellation throughout the building, junior Times journos are drafting a memo demanding that editors "end favoritism in the newsroom, develop transparent procedures for filling open positions, and provide other amenities for young reporters eager for advancement...
Vol. 8 • June 2003 • No. 38
