Departing NYT Public Editor: Progressive Worldview ‘Bleeds Through The Fabric Of The Times’
After two years, Arthur Brisbane will be stepping down from his post as New York Times public editor in September. Now that he is about to part ways with the newspaper, Brisbane is using his final column to highlight what he sees as a progressive worldview that “virtually bleeds through the fabric of The Times” and saying that certain issues within the newsroom have become “more like causes than news subjects.”
Brisbane uses his column to reflect on the challenges the newspaper faces in an age of social and mobile media, and argued that the paper could afford to be more transparent, but he also acknowledges the political bias that influences the way certain departments cover news stories.
When The Times covers a national presidential campaign, I have found that the lead editors and reporters are disciplined about enforcing fairness and balance, and usually succeed in doing so. Across the paper’s many departments, though, so many share a kind of political and cultural progressivism — for lack of a better term — that this worldview virtually bleeds through the fabric of The Times.
As a result, developments like the Occupy movement and gay marriage seem almost to erupt in The Times, overloved and undermanaged, more like causes than news subjects.
Brisbane will be succeeded next month by Margaret Sullivan, the former editor and vice president of The Buffalo News.
You can read Brisbane’s entire column here.
h/t POLITICO
