Asymmetrical Information

You may be right, but don't discount the Raines was an asshole theory too quickly. Businesses like the NYT are dependent on a constant flow of talent walking through the doors, and being able to minimize the amount of talent walking out the door. At the extreme, like during the tech bubble, a manager in such a business who cannot excel at these two tasks must be ruthlessly tossed to the sharks. The NYT doesn't work in that extreme an environment, but if one waits for a revolt of the talent to erupt, one has waited too damn long.

Someone ought to create a New York Times version of the old game Clue. Just lay out the board like the newsroom of the Times, trade out the original cast (Mustard, Plum, Scarlet, etc) for the new cast (Raines, Sullivan, the publisher, etc.), and then leave an assortment of weapons (Jayson Blair, a blog, a subpoena, etc.) for the players to select from.

Raines/Boyd resignation agreement exposed by Mike Luckovitch!

Much as we never know what goes on inside someone else's bedroom (a quote I originally made when my Cousin was divorcing her husband--when my aunt commented about how she couldn't understand how my mean cousin could just up and leave such a nice boy), you can't know what goes on behind the doors of the NYTimes upper ranks.

While I suspect everyone was pretty happy with the 7 Pulitzers and increased circulation, you don't know who go pissed off when. I suspect Jayson Blair was a convenient excuse for the "resignation" but not the major reason.

I heard an interesting story about it on NPR right abter Raines left, talking about how to get to the Times you have to be The Best Of The Best...you must be capable of editing your own work, following your own "muse" as it were. Raines didn't like this and tended to edit everyone. He played favorites. People hated coming to work and had begun to look for other jobs.

Again, not the only reason he's no longer there, but probably one of many factors involved.

I tend to think that it's d) all of the above. The combination of the Blair scandal, lack of support among the staff, and a (vaguely defined) reputational impact all reached a point of no return.

What I don't buy for a second is that the blogosphere had anything to do with it. If nobody had invented the Internet, if Sullivan and Kaus had never been born, I suspect Raines would have resigned the same day for the same reasons. Those opposed to him would have used other methods (fax machines, newsletters) but the end result would have been the same. Exactly who, among those that are relevant in this decision, give a hoot what Sullivan thinks?

The blogosphere is good way to read different opinions but too many of its inhabitants seem to have a warped perception of their influence. Think of our favorite columnist, PK, and the campaign the same anti-Raines bloggers have launched against him.

The result? Krugman is more influential than ever, as evidenced by the National Review dedicating someone full time to counter him. Too bad they chose such an idiot.

Meanwhile Sullivan is reduced to begging for money at his website. Some influence.

I don't buy your argument, Jane.

First of all, hadn't the NYTimes circulation been falling by more than its peers lately? See the Ken Layne: "The New York Times' circulation fell 5.3 percent, nearly triple the drop of the next biggest loser (the Washington Post at 1.92 percent). In six months, the NYT's weekday circulation dropped by more than 60,000 copies."
(can't link but I found it through the instapundit archives)

Secondly, you don't have to wait until the 10-Q is in to decide a manager has tarnished the image of the organization. Take an analogous situation: producer X of TV sitcom y has both managed to piss off the show's fans with bad plot lines and has overseen y during a period of falling ratings. Would anyone be surprised by x's replacement? Would anyone seriously argue, "well, NBC's EBITDA still grew 10% this quarter so why should x be fired"? No. The damage to the show's image and appeal to its fan base would be viewed extremely critically by sr management.

Finally, you also make the argument that Raines' management may have led to long-term damage to the brand. That's an indictment in itself and enough to sack him.

Fax machines and newsletters are nowhere as effective as the instantaneous worldwide impact of the Internet. The blogosphere is almost totally responsible for Howell Raines resignation. In the relatively recent past, the lying and deceitful Liberal establishment would have downplayed everything---and the crap would have continued.

Thankfully, the Internet allows individuals like Andrew Sullivan, Jane Galt, and Mickey Kaus to level the playing field. In other words, the Liberals of today are not allowed their normal free rides. Paul Krugman’s shabby work, for instance, is being consistently taken to task. The man’s credibility is rapidly deteriorating by the “truth squad” of the National Review and others dedicated to setting the record straight. “PK” has turned into nothing more a clown who is reckless with the facts. Oh by the way, he claims that our national economy is close to “unraveling.” Has anybody been noticing the current improvements in the stock market?

Blogs have caused papers to issue apologies for Maureen Dowd's unethical writing. Blogs got Lott replaced. The NYTimes is a joke in the opinion of a large number of intelligent, educated people because of blogs.

The only currency the Times had was credibility and a reputation for excellence. Now it has neither. I wouldn't breezily dismiss the long-term consequences. The Times is a very liberal paper which pretends not to be. It is mostly read by liberals. Financially, it won't suffer much of an immediate loss of readership by having the obvious bias exposed so openly. But it has suffered a serious blow to the position it once commanded as paper of record. I think that will eventually be felt on the bottom line.

"The blogosphere is almost totally responsible for Howell Raines resignation."

So you claim but with nothing to base it on.

The same anti-Raines crowd have launched on several other crusades which have failed spectacularly.

David, I'm sorry to hear you rely on the Luskin's Truth Squad for your anti Krugman arguments.

As for the reputation of the NYT it remains the most important newspaper of all and still sets the national agenda as both Tony Blankely (sp?) of the Wash Times and the National Review have acknowlewdged.

Heavens to Betsy, our lovely GT must have really been sucking on that crackpipe today.

In case you didn't figure it out, my dear, there is a little thing called the fanout effect. When Sullivan's "begging" nets five-figure results, it becomes clear to the logically-minded that he has a large sphere of influence, and from there we can make a logical deduction that some portion of that sphere might just have expressed their discontent to the Times. Hence, influence.

As for your PK comments...let's just leave it that he seems to have the same effect on your mind as that crackpipe. Smoke less of both for a healthier, logically-tuned mind!

Sure.

GT: Take a look at the latest Krugman fact-checking at http://www.justoneminute.blogspot.com/2003_06_01_justoneminute_archive.html#200409411

I suggest you simply stop defending PK. It's not necessary to your cause.

“David, I'm sorry to hear you rely on the Luskin's Truth Squad for your anti Krugman arguments. “

Oh, and why is that? Can you point out any alleged inaccuracies or is this merely an argument ad hominem attack? Speaking of the National Review’s Truth Squad:

“Now the bad news: One of his (Paul Krugman’s) sources is al Qaeda.

This latest column blasted the Bush administration for deception about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. But this was not Krugman's usual pastiche of insane, wild-eyed, and unsourced allegations. No, it was a pastiche of insane, wild-eyed, and sourced allegations. As you'll see, when America's most dangerous liberal pundit is holding the pen, citing sources is just a whole new way of lying.”

http://www.nationalreview.com/script/printpage.asp?ref=/nrof_luskin/truthsquad061103.asp

The NYT is still the most important newspaper, but that isn't the question. The NYT should be the most important newspaper in the world (particularly for non-business news) for the forseeable future. The question is would it still be after 5-10 years of Raines' stewardship. Maybe it would, or maybe not. That doubt is enough to take action.

Part of the Times' appeal is that even those opposed to its views respect it as a strong institution. Opposition by the Times used to be significant. If you disagreed you could be sure you faced stiff opposition with serious, relevant ideas. Continued misplaced partisanship for an extended period would have half the country conclude it is a political ragsheet instead of the newspaper of record. This is partly why the recent events are so hard to fathom. The NYT is the dream job for most journalists. How could this happen where you have the cream of the crop available? It's a place that everyone wants to work until they get there. That's pretty damning.

I don't think Raines was let go because of anything specific said on one or any number of blogs. On the other hand, blogs were part of the feedback process that let the publisher know what the public thought of Raines' management. I think chances are that without blogs Raines survives. I don't agree at all that faxes et al would have the same effect. The ease of the internet doesn't increase commentary by percentages: it increases commentary by multiples.

I also want to add a few more point about our improving economy. The stock market today went up another 128.33 points and currently sits at a respectable 9183.22. Has anyone else noticed that Paul Krugman’s most recent NY Times columns have little to do with economics! Krugman probably senses that the economy will continue to grow and prosper---which means a likely Democrat disaster in next year’s elections. Thus, he will almost certainly get crazier and less able to handle reality. Gosh darn it, what must it be like for a Democrat to realize that only a national disaster will be sufficient to help their party regain the White House?

"But as any consultant will tell you, when episodes like that happen, the organization would usually do better to sack the boss."

I'm sure that most consultants would also tell you that keeping a lot of super-voting stock in the hands of family members of the boss ain't such a good idea either.

David,

If by now you don't know or understand why Luskin is a joke (and that is putting it mildly) I don't think there is anything I can say other than too bad. Maybe you should read Arnold Kling's posts?

And for a reason that escapes me you seem to equate the stock market with the economy.

As for the NYT and the blogosphere I think all would agree that without the Blair incident Raines would still have his job. It was a necessary, but probably not a sufficient, condition. What did the bloggers provide in the Blair case? Did they discover it, keep it alive?

I'm curious as to what mechanisms people have in mind when they say that bloggers caused Raines' downfall.

“If by now you don't know or understand why Luskin is a joke (and that is putting it mildly) I don't think there is anything I can say other than too bad. Maybe you should read Arnold Kling's posts?”

I wasn’t aware that Arnold Kling is a fan of Paul Krugman’s. When did this occur? Furthermore, some of still expect you to cease with your ad hominem attacks on Luskin. Please supply us with some substantial objections.

“And for a reason that escapes me you seem to equate the stock market with the economy. “

The rise in the stock market indicates that many investors, rightly or wrongly, are predicting a bright economic future. They are at least betting their own money that things are significantly improving.

“As for the NYT and the blogosphere I think all would agree that without the Blair incident Raines would still have his job. It was a necessary, but probably not a sufficient, condition. What did the bloggers provide in the Blair case? Did they discover it, keep it alive?”

The bloggers made sure that the Liberal media establishment did not allow the matter to be dropped. I am utterly convinced that ten years ago Raines would have easily survived this crisis. If nothing else, a number of Times’ employees were discretely sending information to bloggers like Mickey Kaus. In the past, they would have virtually unable to take effective action.

I don’t think you comprehend the Internet’s value in getting out the views of the virtually powerless. Never before in the history of the world could someone of modest means speak truth to power as they can today.

David,

Like I wrote, read what Kling has written about Luskin. (while you are at it check how you were wrong about PK and the CA crisis on the thread you and I were discussing). Or, if she feels like it, you could ask our host.

As for Raines and Blair, I fail to see how bloggers had anything to do with the issue. They did not keep it alive (like they did with Lott, for example), They simply reported what happened. It was the NYT itself that made it public and other mainstream media that kept it alive.

“Like I wrote, read what Kling has written about Luskin. (while you are at it check how you were wrong about PK and the CA crisis on the thread you and I were discussing). Or, if she feels like it, you could ask our host.”

Arnold Kling has indeed expressed some discomfort with Donald Luskin, but I don’t think the two men are that far apart regarding the shenanigans of Paul Krugman. I well remember that Krugman stated that the energy crisis in California was due to the duplicity of some large companies. When did Krugman concede that California has a real energy problem due to the silliness of the utopian environmentalists?

“It was the NYT itself that made it public and other mainstream media that kept it alive. “

Baloney! Pinch Sulzberger is a raving ideological Liberal like Howell Raines. He was merely hoping the storm would pass. And the “other mainstream media” were also more than willing to look the other way. After all, they are just about as morally and intellectually corrupt as the New York Times.

David, I already debunked your views on what Krugman wrote on the CA crisis on Kling's website (http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/000149.html). No need to repeat that here.

As for the Baloney! can't say that I follow you. We learned of Blair's plagiarism and lies because the NYT dedicated a huge front page story to it. Not because of anything Sullivan or Kaus did.

Let's not reinvent such recent history.

“We learned of Blair's plagiarism and lies because the NYT dedicated a huge front page story to it. Not because of anything Sullivan or Kaus did. “

The New York Times merely preempted the inevitable. Does anyone really believe that the San Antonio newspaper was going to remain silent about Jason Blair’s plagiarism? The crap was hitting the fan---and the Times smartly followed the advice of public relations gurus who always say its best that you get your side of the story out first.

“David, I already debunked your views on what Krugman wrote on the CA crisis on Kling's website (http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/000149.html). No need to repeat that here.”

I concede that you are at least half right about Krugman. He apparently did indeed assert the following:

"The biggest single cause of the California power crisis is simply that nobody expected demand for electricity to grow so rapidly. When the political momentum for deregulation was building, in the mid-1990's, California's economy was still suffering the aftereffects of a nasty recession; most experts thought that there would be excess generating capacity well into the next decade. Then California began growing faster than anyone had thought possible. The result was surging demand for power.”

Alas, I’m still not quite willing to let Krugman off the hook entirely. He is wrong to say that “nobody” warned about California’s possible future energy troubles. Krugman failed to point out that the radical environmentalists did everything they could politically to prevent new energy plants from being built. These decisions were premised upon ideological considerations and not rational thinking.

A post at Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics suggests that there might be at most 115,000 bloggers. Technorati tracks 362,537 blogs currently. In any case these numbers are relatively small compared with the NYT daily total circulation of 1,130,740 (March 2003). Obviously, the total number of Times readers is significantly larger than the number of bloggers by perhaps as much as an order of magnitude.

However, if we view bloggers as something more than readers, not quite journalists, but at least active consumers of news and compare this to the number of staff the NYT has: 218. Granted, this is the number of staff members who have chosen to make their addresses available to the public - while the number of total staff is surely larger, it at least gives us some insight into order of magnitude which can be used to describe the total number of staff. Let's estimate that the total number of writing staff is 650. By comparison, the total memebership of the Society of Professional Journalists is about 9,000.

So when we compare the 9,000 members of the SPJ or the 650 NYT staffers to the as many as 300,000 bloggers, the influence of the blogosphere becomes a bit more believable.

Clearly bloggers aren't nearly as numerous as the readers, but they are, however, much more involved consumers of news. If we try to figure out an "equivalent weight" we end up with a ratio of (NYT staffer with public address):(guesstimate of total NYT staff):(SPJ membership):(blogs):(NYT readership) that works out to roughly 1:3:41:1663:5187 - or in other words, the readership outnumbers bloggers by about 3:1.

The vast masses of readers aren't usually vocally critical consumers of news. However, I imagine that reputation within the community of journalists probably does carry significant weight within that community. In terms of globe-changing influence, the introduction of bloggers basically creates readership (in terms of whether or not the journalistic community really cares what we think). However, being vocal in ways that might more closely resemble professional criticism within the journalistic community, we have to consider that we outnumber SPJ members by more than 40 to 1.

So it isn't necessarily that we have large numbers or that we have a great deal of influence, but it might (if there is any correlation at all) be simply that we might be more influential than the general readership (because we have primitive mass media at our fingertips) and that we're way more numerous than actual journalists (because we work for free).

Drudge, the most famous blogger, has 6 million hits a day. His site is much more influential around the US than the NYT.

NYT’s influence is pretty much limited to a portion of Manhattan and the left wing on the East coast. And there are not that many liberals that read. Outside of that small group, most people do not know the NYT exists.

There are many newspaper reporters around the US are reading conservative blogs for story ideas and facts. It makes sense because the conservative blogs now have the better minds and the better writers than the media.

Once a blogged story hits a few newspapers, Drudge picks it up and it is national news. Three or four days latter, the NYT will pick up the story.

jake, assuming you live in any US city large enough to have a modest daily rag in circulation, look comb through it for a few weeks and carefully examine the sourcing. I'll bet you'll find the NYT listed on an article here and there.

Second, I'll bet at least some of those journalists writing your local paper also get, and read, the Times. If NYT picks up on a major story, odds are good your locals will pick up on it also even if they do their own reporting. And if NYT chooses to ignore a story, odds of your local paper picking it up just went down noticably.

This industry does not function in isolated pockets.

“This industry does not function in isolated pockets.”

I candidly admit that the New York Times is highly influential. My only point is that the blogs on the Internet are now forcing this newspaper to behave itself. The Times has not been destroyed, but it will never again experience its past dominance and wide perception of near infallibility. The Drudgereport is economically speaking a minor league entity. Still, its readership figures are daunting and not to be sneered at. A site which daily attracts millions of eyeballs is kicking some serious but!

I recently read the following aphorism:
"A common rule of consulting is to charge double when the client is a family business. It's not enough, but it's a good start."
The author then describes the poisonous consequences which ensue when an organization is founded on the fact that at the levels which supposedly matter the most, merit is not the primary criteria.
Of course, the NYT is a family-run business at the very top (se Frank Bruni's Ambling Into History for a lovely GWB diss on the topic). But even in the newsroom, it seems clear that Raines' star system was taken to unhealthy extremes and had similar poisonous effects on the organization. If the NYT hires consultants, they can expect to pay more.

Cynthia Cotts in the Village Voice has an interesting take on the subject, along with what the management of the NYT thinks was the role of the internet in all this.

" But Raines had only been gone a few days when the company line began to change. In the weekly news roundup that appeared in the Times' Week in Review section on June 8, an unsigned item cited the Internet's role in bringing down Raines, but intimated darkly that the Web is an enemy of management, rather than a tool that allows whistle-blowers to expose abuse. For weeks after the Blair scandal erupted, the item noted, "internal memos and critical e-mail exchanges, placing or denying blame, popped up almost daily on professional Web sites frequented by journalists, a stunning display of the Internet's ability to undermine a top executive's authority." End of item.

The Web site in question is poynter.org/medianews, a/k/a Romenesko, which is fun to read and popular in the media industry. It's indisputable that Jim Romenesko's coverage (which included nonstop news stories and signed e-mails from Times employees) accelerated Raines's departure, but to suggest that the Internet was the underlying cause of his resignation seems like bad rhetoric of the blame-the-messenger type. All Romenesko did was to provide a public forum for uncensored comment. Raines undermined his own authority by alienating so many colleagues.

To further deconstruct the Times' item of June 8: the "top executive" who probably feels most burned these days is the publisher. It was Sulzberger who installed Raines as editor in September 2001, believing the man's claims that he would keep the newsroom collegial and collaborative. It was Sulzberger who protected Raines as he consolidated power in the hands of a few favorites, dictated ideas to the rest, and shunned or punished his critics. And it was Sulzberger who turned a deaf ear when Times staffers, including veterans, warned him that Raines was not working out. (Arguably, the publisher's failure to listen to reason left his underlings no choice but to go to the press.)"

Raines used fear and intimidation as management tools until the Blair scandal erupted. With the staff and reporters then able to use the Internet to talk about him without fear of retaliation, he could no longer function, and had to walk the plank for the good of the Gray Lady. The asymmetric difference in power was offset by the power of the internet, where anyone with a computer and an internet connection can throw something on the wall and see if it sticks. Raines died the death of a thousand electronic cuts, and there will be others after him who will share in his fate.

I don't think Raines was helped by the number of good people who bolted when he took the reins.

The internet may simply be massively accelerating a trend in open societies and economies that has been underway for some time; the weakening or outright destruction of hierarchies that use authoritarian power to manage people. These days, when anybody with a modem can mount an information campaign, and managers who attempt to rule by intimidation can be undermined by guerilla warfare. Intimidators traditionally have promoted a sense of isolation among their minions, in order to kepp them cowed, and the era of isolation is over, at least for workers with valuable skills. The successful manager today must be a salesman, in the best sense of the word; he or she must always have their ear to the ground, listening carefully to what the talent's problems are, and not just by what they say overtly, but by reading between the lines. The manager then must ask questions, and not just superficial ones, but questions that help identify problems and possible solutions, and then help form a consensus. This must be a constant, never-ending process, and the manager who tries to steamroller his talent is going to fail miserably, because the talent now has the means to sabotage the steamroller.

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