In the lede of his “Hard News” review, Slate's Jack Shafer asks,
If New York Times Executive Editor Howell Raines hadn't insisted on covering the Augusta National Golf Club's lack of female members as if it were a human rights violation ... if Jayson Blair hadn't lied, plagiarized, and fabricated his way to infamy ... if Rick Bragg hadn't sent his "intern" to Apalachicola, Fla., to do his first-person reporting for him ... if these mini-calamities that make up the three acts of Seth Mnookin's Times tragedy, Hard News, had never happened, would Raines still be running the Times?Which is just about the same question I asked Mnookin myself the other night (the answer? “probably not”). Like Shafer (and Mnookin), I should be paid to be a media critic. Posted by Stephen Silver at November 11, 2004 07:09 PM