The Public Editor\'s Sunday Column: Covering Clinton\'s Candidacy in Waiting

Covering Clinton's Candidacy in Waiting

WHEN Hillary Clinton joined Twitter in June, her profile described her many roles - as the former first lady of Arkansas and the United States, former secretary of state and New York senator, and as “hair icon” and “pantsuit aficionado.”

And it described her future with three letters: TBD. To be determined.

Mrs. Clinton may consider her future up in the air, but The Times apparently does not. Or at least it's hedging its bets.

Not long after Mrs. Clinton's first tweet, a reporter who had been covering the news media, Amy Chozick, was moved to the political desk to cover the Clintons - particularly Hillary - as a full-time beat.

It's a major use of precious reportorial resources, considering that Mrs. Clinton holds no public office and has not said that she's running for one. And, after all, the next presidential election is more than three years away.

What gives? And for readers - and citizens - what are the potential benefits and the possible pitfalls?

Carolyn Ryan, The Times's political editor, made the case to me for the assignment. Mrs. Clinton, she said, “is the closest thing we have to an incumbent, when we look at 2016.” And getting in early allows The Times to develop sources and get behind the well-honed facade.

“With the Clintons,” she said, “there is a certain opacity and stagecraft and silly coverage elsewhere. Amy can penetrate a lot of that.” She praised Ms. Chozick as a relentless reporter who is “very savvy about power and has a great eye for story.”

Two articles last week give a sense of how she is developing the beat so far. In the first, which appeared on page A11 of most Tuesday editions, Ms. Chozick covered Mrs. Clinton's speech in San Francisco, in which she called for efforts to protect voting rights; it also detailed awards she is receiving. The second piece, which appeared on Wednesday's front page, was more substantive. Co-written with Nicholas Confessore, it examined the finances and shifting focus of the Clinton Foundation, and was an impressive example of enterprise and digging.

Brendan Nyhan, an assistant professor of government at Dartmouth College and a media critic, said that the Clinton Foundation story began to change his mind about the wisdom of a Clinton beat.

“I haven't been sure there is enough news to sustain a full-time reporter's time,” he told me, “and a dedicated beat creates the incentive to make news.” A full-time Clinton beat at The Times, he said, “could help cement the perception that she is the inevitable Democratic nominee, and effectively serve to pre-anoint her.”

Tom Rosenstiel, executive director of the American Press Institute, echoed that concern, and raised a related one: “Is it in the public interest to perpetuate the permanent campaign? Should the press resist enabling it?” Both said that they saw positive possibilities, as well, in this effort.

Carl Bernstein, the Watergate reporter who wrote the well-regarded biography of Mrs. Clinton “A Woman In Charge,” told me in a phone interview that she is “really difficult to get a reportorial handle on.”

“She's someone who tries to write her own narrative,” and who, in words from the last chapter of his book, “has a difficult relationship with the truth.” So, The Times's putting an aggressive reporter on Mrs. Clinton early, he said, is a laudable effort to publish “the best obtainable version of the truth.”

But beat coverage, by its nature, is tricky. For every ounce of inside access and insight that is gained by a reporter's day-in and day-out attention, an ounce of independence and objectivity may be lost, notes Sandy Maisel, chairman of the government department at Colby College.

“The question is, does the reporter become captive,” writing largely positive pieces to maintain access, he said. Mr. Maisel praised the foundation story, though, as “not a puff piece and not a hatchet job, just very interesting.”

Ms. Chozick told me last week that her aim is to write a broad range of Clinton-related stories - from quirky to serious.

“I want to write stories that resonate beyond the bubble, that will appeal to my mom in Texas as opposed to Gawker.” She noted that other news organizations, particularly Politico and The Washington Post, are covering Mrs. Clinton heavily now, too. And because her editors, including the executive editor, Jill Abramson, want her to “own” the Clinton beat, “I live in constant fear” of losing a big story to another news outlet.

When The Times - still so influential, even amid today's constant media barrage - brings this kind of pressure to bear, who benefits?

The potential candidate may or may not. Constant tough scrutiny may not be welcome but, on balance, I think The Times's treatment of Mrs. Clinton as an undeclared, free-agent front-runner helps her. She can play her cards close to the vest and still maintain the highest possible profile.

The reader may or may not. If the intense and competitive coverage produces stories that serve the unintended purpose of promoting a candidacy in waiting, the reader-as-citizen loses. If that coverage digs beneath the surface to ferret out what ought to be known, the reader-as-citizen wins.

Jodi Kantor, the political reporter who has covered President Obama and his family for The Times and in her fascinating book, “The Obamas,” sees a simple proposition: Sometimes, she said, “The best campaign coverage happens before the campaign.” Once it begins, “the frozenness, the rigidity and the defensiveness make reporting that much harder,” she told me.

With Mr. Obama only seven months into his second term, and Mrs. Clinton's future still TBD, The Times runs the risk of overdoing it and, in Mr. Nyhan's term, “pre-anointing” a candidate. But it certainly runs no risk of having to make up for lost time.

Follow the public editor on Twitter at twitter.com/sulliview and read her blog at publiceditor.blogs.nytimes.com.  The public editor can also be reached by e-mail: public@nytimes.com.

A version of this op-ed appeared in print on August 18, 2013, on page SR12 of the New York edition with the headline: Covering Clinton's Candidacy in Waiting.

Who Gets to ‘Snow-Fall\' or ‘Jockey\' at The Times, and Why?

At Wired magazine's annual business conference in New York last May, the executive editor Jill Abramson made the observation that at The Times, “snow-fall” had become a verb.

“Everyone wants to snow-fall now, every day, all desks,” she said.

The reference was to the elaborate Pulitzer-winning multimedia effort from late last year, “Snow Fall: Avalanche at Tunnel Creek.” As The New Republic wrote this week, the project “marked a significant shift in the culture of the newsroom, where digital blockbusters are now seen as a way to become a star.”

Now there's a new effort in the “Snow Fall” genre: “The Jockey,” written by Barry Bearak, and detailing â€" through words, and Chang W. Lee's photographs and integrated video â€" the experiences and career of Russell Baze, the winningest jockey in America. The writing approaches poetry at times â€" “the serene musicality of hoofbeats and hard breathing” at a sunrise workout â€" and the visuals are inventive and absorbing. You can feel the thoroughbreds surging out of the gate and the steam coming off their coats.

It took many months â€" and many talented people â€" to produce. Like “Snow Fall,” the project has been widely praised, and has brought readers and viewers to The Times that it wouldn't normally have. Jason Stallman, the sports editor, said that numbers for “The Jockey” paled in comparison to those for “Snow Fall,” which everyone knew going in; it's a different kind of project, he said, which appeared in the summer doldrums. He added, “Chasing ‘Snow Fall' numbers is a fool's errand.” That project initially generated more than 3.5 million page views.

As Ad Age wrote, it's also a way for The Times to bring in a new kind of revenue and to experiment with more elegant ways of weaving custom ads into the overall project design. The revenue potential of video production is very much on the mind of the leadership at The Times these days.

Is the finished project â€" gorgeous as it is â€" really worth it, from a journalistic standpoint?

A reader, Bruce Lambert, from Hempstead, N.Y., who is a retired Times reporter, has a reaction to both projects that I found worth considering:

Despite having no personal interest in skiing, I found “Snow Fall's” writing, layout, photos and graphics to be engrossing, almost sweeping me away like the powerful avalanche it portrayed. But after finishing it, I wondered why so much talent, effort and expense was devoted to the story of a few elite athletes in a luxury sport who knowingly and needlessly took risks that turned out so badly.

After a minute or two of the equally visually impressive “The Jockey,” I decided not to expend any more time on this profile of an apparently superb rider in the sport of kings; no offense to those who prepared it so well. Especially at a time of constrained journalistic resources, why has The Times so far chosen only limited feature topics?

Why not, instead, pick an issue of far greater import - global warming, the Great Recession, income-wealth disparity, gun safety, stop-and-frisk, health care financing, Middle East turmoil or fracking, to name a few possibilities.

On Monday, I asked Dean Baquet, the managing editor, why the two major multimedia extravaganzas so far have been sports-related feature stories, and whether â€" as Mr. Lambert wondered â€" they are the most sensible use of resources. Each of the projects, he acknowledged, “took many, many months to produce” and involved writers, editors, graphics and technology people.

“Sports is very visual,” he said, in a way that “document-driven” investigative work is not. Sports stories offer narrative storytelling possibilities that lend themselves to this kind of effort. And the topics are “less competitive” in nature, allowing a long gestation period.

How well will this approach hold up over time?

Writing in Slate, Farhad Manjoo offered this prediction: “I suspect that years from now, we'll look back at ‘Snow Fall,' ‘The Jockey' and their copycats in the same way we now regard 1990s-era dancing hamster animations - as an example of excess, a moment when designers indulged their creativity because they now have the technical means to do so, and not because it improved the story or readers' understanding of it.”

Even Mr. Baquet admitted that such efforts “could have been handled in 900-word feature stories,” not 10,000 word extravaganzas. But he strongly believes they are worth the resources. Editors pitch ideas at the twice-monthly enterprise meeting, and a group of editors and graphics people make the decisions on who gets to “snow-fall,” with an eye to what projects lend themselves best to the new approach, are worthwhile, and stand a realistic chance of succeeding, given all the elements. Many more are proposed than accepted, he said.

The Times has no intention of slowing down, but the pace isn't particularly fast either. The plan is to produce “four or five” such projects a year, Mr. Baquet said. “We're just learning how to do them. We're not capable of doing zillions yet.” One that's in the works is on a very serious news-related subject, he said, but did not want to go into detail.

My take: I like the innovation - it is nothing short of necessary. And the projects are beautifully executed.

But I'm with Mr. Lambert in hoping that when The Times is fully up to speed, editors will make room, more often than not, for journalistic subjects that really matter, and to balance news value with the expenditure of resources.

How Well Has The Times Advanced a Story That It Didn\'t Break?

Updated, Friday, August 23, 1:41 p.m.

The New York Times did not break the story that has dominated national security news all summer: revelations of widespread surveillance of American citizens by the National Security Agency. I explored the reasons for that in a recent Sunday column.

But how well has The Times done in covering or advancing that story since it first appeared in The Guardian and The Washington Post? Is The Times holding its own, gaining or losing ground, and how hard is the paper of record pushing, on this extremely important story?

I'll offer some initial observations, in what may turn out to be a continuing consideration of that question:

1. The Times has broken some notable stories of its own and provided some good analysis. The lead story on Wednesday's front page, by the prolific Charlie Savage, was an example of this, describing how the federal government is developing facial scanning techniques to enhance the surveillance of the future. An earlier story by Mr. Savage, also on the front page, reported that the N.S.A. is not just intercepting e-mail but is “searching the contents of vast amounts of Americans' e-mail and text communications into and out of the country, hunting for people who mention information about foreigners under surveillance.” It moved the story forward significantly. Eric Lichtbla u reported in July on the power and secrecy of the nation's surveillance court, contributing a new, important angle. And a valuable analysis piece by Mark Mazzetti and Scott Shane provided perspective.

In addition, Peter Maass's article on Sunday in The Times Magazine on the video journalist Laura Poitras gave a frightening glimpse of the intimidation brought to bear on those involved in breaking the N.S.A. story.

2. Less positively, The Times sometimes has played down the importance of other papers' reporting on this subject. One example came last week. The Times rewrote a Washington Post blockbuster story on the N.S.A.'s breaking of federal privacy rules, but then buried it in a one-column format on Page A12. The underplaying of a competitor's story is nothing new in journalism but unfortunate nonetheless, given what's at stake for citizens.

In fairness, the story did get good display on The Times's home page when it first broke, and it got a one-sentence mention on the front page of the paper, referring readers to the article inside.

3. On some occasions, The Times has seemed less than intensely interested in the developing story and its ramifications. I wrote recently, for example, about The Times's exclusive interview with President Obama, a 40-minute session in which - astonishingly, in my view - no surveillance issues were raised.

In addition, the articles about the British government's intrusions into press freedom - including the appalling destruction of The Guardian's hard drives - were well written by the London bureau chief Steven Erlanger but played on inside pages of the paper. The headline on one of them, “British Newspaper Has Advantages in Battle With Government Over Secrets,” seemed to miss the larger point of what had happened. One reader, Jim Michie, was angry about The Times's “superficial” treatment of the British assault on the press and wrote to me calling The Times's quiet coverage “amazing and disgraceful.”

4. While The Guardian and The Washington Post have maintained their edge, continuing to break stories, other news organizations who came in later than The Post and The Guardian are digging up other angles: The Wall Street Journal got in the game Wednesday, leading its front page with a story that said the N.S.A. is reaching 75 percent of Americans' Internet communications. And NBC News on Wednesday had a report that an “overwhelmed” N.S.A. still doesn't know the extent of what Edward J. Snowden took from the agency. The NBC report was widely picked up elsewhere.

And notably, it was not a mainstream news organization like The Times, but a free speech and privacy rights group, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which sued to obtain the court ruling that made front-page news on Thursday: A federal judge in 2011 found that N.S.A. surveillance had violated the United States Constitution.

I asked Dean Baquet, the managing editor at The Times, to respond to these observations. He told me that he thinks The Times has done a good job of advancing the story and disagrees that it has played down the stories of its competitors. “Once you get past the first stories by The Guardian and The Post, no one has broken more ground than we have,” he said, admitting that the first stories were by far the most significant.

He disagreed with the premise that The Times's interest has been anything less than intense. “We reacted the way you're supposed to react when you get scooped,” he said. “They beat us, that's life. We've followed it and we've had some significant stories.”

I've heard a great deal from Times readers on this subject. Here are two e-mails - making quite different points - that give a sense of a frustrated tone that is becoming familiar to me on this subject.

John Shepard of Horsham, Pa., who describes himself as “an old soldier and defense contractor,” wrote that he would like to read deeper, more explanatory coverage of the surveillance revelations: “As a regular online reader of The Times, I find that something has been missing from the reporting on the materials leaked by Edward Snowden over the past few weeks. Much of the reporting - both in The Times and other media - has focused on Snowden, his statements, his movements and his travel status. Little, at least that I have seen, has been said about the materials Snowden has released.” He described himself as tired of the “hyperventilation” and looking for deeper answers from The Times.

And George Hickey, “a decades-long fan” of The Times, wrote that he had become disenchanted: ”The New York Times today is not The New York Times of the Pentagon Papers era. Although The Times still does good journalism you have lost a good deal of courage and are much too compliant with government demands/requests to be completely trusted. The American government is creating a police state and you are not resisting nearly enough.”

Mr. Baquet took issue with Mr. Hickey's statement when I read it to him, calling it “an unfair criticism,” and pointing to a number of stories in recent years - including many disclosures from WikiLeaks - that have shown the paper's willingness to push back against the government.  He also noted that it was The Times, in 2005, that broke the original story, by James Risen and Mr. Lichtblau, of a government spying on its citizens in the Pulitzer-winning story about warrantless wiretapping. It took courage to print that, he noted, even considering the much-criticized long delay while The Times considered the government's request not to publish.

So this is a mixed report. But like many readers, I would like to see a greater and more consistent sense of urgency reflected on The Times's news pages in dealing with this subject, which has such profound implications for civil liberties, for press freedom, for the privacy of American citizens and for democracy.  This story is not going away. Given The Times's resources and reporting talent, there's still plenty of opportunity to make up ground.

Updated, Friday, August 23, 1:41 p.m.
On Friday, Ben Smith, editor-in-chief of Buzzfeed, reported that The Times will work with the Guardian on further Snowden stories. Noting that The Times and the Guardian have collaborated successfully in the past, he wrote: “The decision to publish the revelations concerning the British intelligence service jointly with the Times may give the Guardian leverage in its battle with the British government, which is trying to prevent the stories' publication. It may also relate to the stronger protections for free speech and press freedom under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution; Britain has no such protections, and its Official Secrets Act is aimed at keeping government secrets secret.”

It will be fascinating to see what comes from this encouraging development.

The Soldier Formerly Known as Bradley Manning

Pfc. Bradley Manning told the world on Thursday that he identifies as a woman and wishes to be known from now on as Chelsea Manning.

The development sent Times editors scrambling to their stylebooks and to past articles on other transgender cases of well-known people for guidance. But there is no precise comparison, given the extraordinary prominence of the United States Army soldier who was sentenced to 35 years in prison this week for the leaking of documents.

Here is the entry on it from The Times's “Manual of Style and Usage,” a guidebook used by reporters and editors throughout the newsroom:

transgender (adj.) is an overall term for people whose current identity differs from their sex at birth, whether or not they have changed their biological characteristics. Cite a person's transgender status only when it is pertinent and its pertinence is clear to the reader. Unless a former name is newsworthy or pertinent, use the name and pronouns (he, his, she, her, hers) preferred by the transgender person. If no preference is known, use the pronouns consistent with the way the subject lives publicly.

Susan Wessling, the deputy editor who supervises The Times's copy editors, told me that there are two important considerations. “We want to respect the preferences of the subject,” she said, “and we want to provide clarity for readers.”

Toward that end, she said, “We'll probably use more words than less.” In other words, The Times will explain the change in stories.

“We can't just spring a new name and a new pronoun” on readers with no explanation, she said. She noted the importance in the stylebook entry of the words “unless a former name is newsworthy or pertinent,” which certainly applies here.

An article on The Times's Web site on Thursday morning on the gender issue continued to use the masculine pronoun and courtesy title. That, said the associate managing editor Philip B. Corbett, will evolve over time.

It's tricky, no doubt. But given Ms. Manning's preference, it may be best to quickly change to the feminine and to explain that - rather than the other way around.