The Plane That Did Not Crash, and Other News

After being away for much of the past week or so, I'm catching up with a few issues, along with some other items of interest.

1. A “Lives” piece in The Times Magazine on May 19, written by the contributor Noah Gallagher Shannon, describes the author's thoughts as his flight to Denver developed mechanical problems and was diverted to Philadelphia. The article's sub-headline reads, “The plane was about to crash. Now what?”

It's a gripping read. You feel Mr. Shannon's fear: “After they cut the electronics, the engines powered down to a hum. My body froze. In the quiet dark, the plane began to pitch and roll.” And you feel his relief, as the flight lands safely.

But after the article appeared, many of those who read it â€" particularly aviation experts - objected, saying that many of the details did not ring true, especially from a technical perspective. Some even suggested that it was made up of whole cloth.

James Fallows of The Atlantic wrote three blog posts in a matter of a few days about it. It got attention on Jim Romenesko's media Web site, and was a hot topic on Twitter. Writing in The Daily Beast, Clive Irving, a senior consulting editor at Condé Nast Traveler, specializing in aviation, called it “overwrought” and wished it had never been published. And many readers of The Times wrote to me about it, too.

The Times Magazine editor, Hugo Lindgren, defended the piece in a blog post. He confirmed that the flight had happened and provided details on the date, aircraft and the author's seat assignment. And he wrote, “He only reported what he heard and felt, which is consistent with the magazine's Lives page, where the account was published.”

Many readers and observers still aren't buying it. One who wrote to me, Alex Dering, in challenging some aspects of the recollection, expressed the doubts of many, and entertainingly so: “Every fiber of my editorially stunted and bitter soul tells me that the story is equal parts fact and homespun daydream.” How, for example, did the “plane without landing gear” manage to “kiss the ground like any other flight”?

After the furor, The Times investigated the article again and found it essentially accurate, but it's hard to fact-check thoughts, feelings and perceptions about a flight that happened nearly two years ago.

Like another popular Times feature, Modern Love, Lives is, by its nature, personal and subjective. But these memoir-style pieces must also be accurate. The standards shouldn't be those for fiction (or even some blended style that might be called “faction”), but those for Times journalism. Toward that end, Times editors have been rechecking the piece in recent days.

“Everything that we could check has checked out,” Philip B. Corbett, an associate managing editor, told me.

At the very least, the piece should have been edited and presented differently, making it clear that certain statements (“a plane without landing gear is like a struck match” and “the plane was about to crash”) were expressions of the writer's fears not statements of fact.  And the inclusion of some real-world details - like the date of the flight and the airline - would have grounded it in reality and kept it out of the clouds of controversy.

2. Jill Abramson, the executive editor, mentioned the concerns of Times readers in her appearance on “Face the Nation” on Sunday, in discussing the chilling effect on journalism of the Justice Department's leak prosecutions. She also explained why The Times chose not to attend Attorney General Eric Holder's off-the-record session with media leaders last week to discuss that issue. Her comments are worth catching up with for those who missed the program. A strong front-page article in The Times the same day by Peter Baker, Charlie Savage and Jonathan Weisman describes Mr. Holder's recent troubles, including the furor over the leak prosecutions. Journalistic subjects don't get much more important than this.

3. One of the stranger things that's been in The Times in recent days was a DealBook opinion piece by Jack Grubman, a former telecommunications analyst who, after settling a conflict-of-interest lawsuit in 2003 with the Securities and Exchange Commission, has been permanently barred from the industry. The piece carried a lengthy editor's note describing Mr. Grubman's background â€" a necessary piece of transparency â€" but there seemed no good reason for it to appear at all unless The Times is in the business of rehabilitating careers.

4. On a more positive note, I'll recommend to readers who may have missed it a terrific piece in last week's magazine - the deputy magazine editor Joel Lovell's profile of the Irish-born author Colum McCann. Mr. McCann is the author of the acclaimed novel, “Let the Great World Spin,” which many believe is the most important work of fiction to come out of the 9/11 era; his new novel is called “TransAtlantic.” The opening description of the tiny space in which the author writes is memorable, and the piece's ending - in which Mr. McCann discusses “radical empathy” and the possibility of hard-won optimism in the face of darkness - is moving.

5. And finally, speaking of magazine pieces, I was watching with great interest as the magazine's “The Scientific 7-Minute Workout” stayed and stayed on The Times's 10 most e-mailed list last month. I asked its author, Gretchen Reynolds, about its popularity.

“There is inexhaustible interest in getting fit as quickly and easily as possible,” she responded. “I would point out, though, that this particular workout isn't easy; it's fairly strenuous but it is very short and that is endlessly alluring. It was the brevity and simplicity of the workout that attracted me in the first place.” The simple illustration helped, too.

I asked Ms. Reynolds about correspondence I had had from readers who are also fitness instructors, complaining that this workout represents “gain with no pain” and that The Times should not have appeared to endorse it. She responded: “The science about the effectiveness of high-intensity interval training is well-established. People can certainly quibble about the exercises chosen or the order or whether someone should do multiple repetitions of the entire workout in order to become even more fit. But the article appeared in an American College of Sports Medicine-affiliated, scientific journal.” She said she prefers that a program be peer-reviewed and published before she writes about it.

As for “gain with no pain,” she said, not so fast. “I did the seven-minute workout before I suggested the idea,” Ms. Reynolds said. “It left me gasping and sore, and I'd thought that I was in pretty good shape.”