Exactly what do the NYT's ethics rules cover? The New York Observer refers to "freelancers who accept freebies/payment from the people they cover." Last Sunday's NYT Public Editor column, which was devoted to letters from readers and responses from management, included this statement from Bill Keller, the paper's executive editor, says:
We can't afford to put everyone who writes a book review or a travel article on full-time staff. If we stopped using freelancers to supplement our staff reporting we would deprive our readers of much interesting material (and deprive freelancers of both income and a prestigious outlet). And if we let freelancers take freebies from people they write about, we would compromise the integrity that people demand of The Times.
This suggests a rather narrow policy: Don't take any money from someone you write about in the Times and don't write about anyone you've taken money from. But the "ethics" rules, at least as a lot of current, former, and potential contributors--and employees--understand them, are much broader. And they have exactly the effect Keller fears. They "deprive [NYT] readers of much interesting material."
As laid out in the author's questionnaire that is appended to the contract that in turn subsumes the paper's ethics guidelines, the rules control a lot more than what you write for the Times or how you behave when representing the paper. A frequent contributor tells me that the current contract requires a yes/no answer to a question asking whether the writer "at any time in the past, in any context" accepted, in the writer's paraphrase, "any form of reimbursement, expenses or compensation from basically anyone I might in the future have any reason to write about." If you choose to leave the question blank, you do not get paid. This writer and I assume that a "yes" answer would be disqualifying.
So if a travel writer let a hotel comp him a room, even 20 years ago, at a place he'd never write about for the Times, he cannot write for the paper at all. Or if I once gave a paid speech at Target or P&G (and I have), I'm disqualified from writing about business for the paper, even if my articles have nothing to do with any of my speaking clients. (Would the paper also care that I've been paid to speak at Princeton or the University of North Texas?)
This is the Mike Albo standard, as explained in Clark Hoyt's earlier column: "The paper's rules apply even for work done for others."
This is crazy and, as I told Hoyt, borderline unethical. Like any good publication, the Times should know about, disclose, and possibly forbid, any relationship between the sources and subjects of Times articles and the writers of those articles. But in any normal system, that control would be exercised over the articles, not over the lives of the writers outside their work for the paper. Treating the article, not the freelancer, as the locus of oversight would also force the kinds of conversations between editors and writers that aren't currently taking place.
But until the NYT adopts such a reasonable policy, could we stop pretending it merely forbids taking money from "people you cover"?
Posted by Virginia Postrel on January 15, 2010 • Comments
Nick Paumgarten's New Yorker profile of John Mackey offers a couple of interesting observations about the secrets to Whole Foods' success. In short, the chain thrived by understanding that it is selling pleasure, not virtue.
On the store's early days:
[I]in 1980, the four of them opened the first Whole Foods, in a former night club. It was ten thousand square feet. They stocked not just lentils and granola but, in contravention of the co-op ethos, indulgences like meat, beer, and wine; there were aisles full of five-gallon bottles of distilled water, to avoid the embarrassment of empty shelf space. The idea was to go beyond the movement's old tofu severity, the air of judgment and self-abnegation. Their version of decadence seems Spartan now, but at the time it represented a cultural shift.
and, later
A grocer, typically, wants to hide what goes on in back. A grocery store is a theatrical production, designed to dazzle the customer, and to disguise the artifice and hard work behind the scenes. Over the years, grocers have helped keep their customers happily ignorant of the food's origins--of the horrors of the slaughterhouse, the miseries of the onion fields, and the absurdities contained in a can of soda or a bag of chips. Our interface with the food chain ended with the stock boy and his sticker gun in Aisle 6.
Whole Foods sought to change that. It began to sell information and narrative, along with the food. It told stories about where the food came from, putting up displays by the seafood counter with photographs and descriptions of the real fishermen who had caught it all--a genre that Michael Pollan, in The Omnivore's Dilemma, called "supermarket pastoral."
The profusion of provender--the array of colors and shapes, the gleaming fruits, fishes, and meats, the grains and cakes and ranges of artisanal cheeses and beers--is as much an apotheosis of America's abundance and reach as it is any kind of refutation of it. Whole Foods may aim to be a rebuke to the excess that comes of petrochemical might, unconscious gluttony, and corn-bloated immoderation. But it is also an imperial presentation of progress's spoils, like a king's Christmas feasts. The business depends on it, even if the brand image does not. The layout encourages impulse purchases. This is how a weekend grocery bill there can easily run to four hundred bucks.
As an aside, I like the way The New Yorker's site automatically gives you the URL when you cut and paste text from one of its articles.
Posted by Virginia Postrel on January 11, 2010 • Comments
Amazon is having a huge DVD sale. Highlights include complete episodes of The Prisoner on Blu-ray and, specially recommended for me, the complete series of M.A.N.T.I.S., which I did enjoy when it was originally on TV. Carl Lumbly plays a genius superhero inventor with remarkably conservative political attitudes--a sort of Thomas Sowell-Iron Man mashup.
Posted by Virginia Postrel on January 10, 2010 • Comments
Celebrity Attorney seeks Writer that can compose and SUCCESSFULLY post a Wikipedia Entry including links etc. Attorney has appeared on all major national television networks and worked on well known and publicized cases.
Compensation will be cash or personal check written out to writer who can post entry WITHOUT it getting DELETED by Wikipedia.
Payment is $50.00 or more based on length and quality of work as well as more work opportunities to follow.
Given the state of the freelance market, they'll probably get some takers. From Wednesday's LAT:
The list of freelance writing gigs on Craigslist goes on and on.
Trails.com will pay $15 for articles about the outdoors. Livestrong.com wants 500-word pieces on health for $30, or less. In this mix, the 16 cents a word offered by Green Business Quarterly ends up sounding almost bounteous, amounting to more than $100 per submission.
Other publishers pitch the grand opportunities they provide to "extend your personal brand" or to "showcase your work, influence others." That means working for nothing, just like the sailing magazine that offers its next editor-writer not a single doubloon but, instead, the opportunity to "participate in regattas all over the country."
What's sailing away, a decade into the 21st century, is the common conception that writing is a profession -- or at least a skilled craft that should come not only with psychic rewards but with something resembling a living wage.
Read the whole thing. (No, I was not interviewed for this story and, in fact, did not even see it until my kidney-donating Internet friend Tom Simon sent me the link.)
Posted by Virginia Postrel on January 08, 2010 • Comments
Glenn Fleishman, who writes about technology for The Economist and other publications, emails:
I was quite glad to see your blog entry exposing the penny-pinching New York Times. I contributed several articles a year, from paragraphs to features, to Circuits and Business from 1998 to 2006 or 2007. I eventually stopped writing for the Tim.
One reason was money. When I started, I was paid 50 cents a word, which seemed ludicrous in 1998, but I was a younger writer, and knew newspapers were cheap. In 2000, I was writing a column every four weeks for Business 2.0 for about $2.50 a word under retainer...and the Times was still paying 50 cents a word. I believe the Times may have paid that rate since the 1970s, and simply found inflation-adjusting rates was unnecessary.
I often said, I subsidized by writing for the Times through other work, which seemed silly, but I wasn't writing enough for them to be a real drain.
What the Times was paying you for your columns shows me how really cheap the organization is.
From my understanding, the $1,000 column rate (or about $1 a word) is actually fairly high for the Times. It includes a premium for delivering a column on time every four weeks, regardless of what else might going on in the world or your life. But I will note that in the six years I was writing it, the Times never increased its rates.
I should also confess that as editor of Reason I hired writers at rock-bottom rates--they dreamed of 50 cents a word--and paid them very slowly. But Reason was an always-struggling, cause-oriented nonprofit that could barely pay its bills. Most of our freelancers had other employment and were not contributing to the magazine primarily for the money. Unfortunately, the Reason model appears to be the future of journalism.
Posted by Virginia Postrel on January 04, 2010 • Comments
Mary Tripsas is out and NYT flak catcher Clark Hoyt devotes his public editor column to the issue. He and I talked at length on the phone and exchanged a couple of emails. While he doesn't exactly get what I said wrong, I'm concerned that some subtleties got lost. In particular, I made a distinction between doing the job of a management professor and doing the job of a Times columnist and a distinction between giving a journalist a junket to influence coverage and paying writers (professors or journalists) to share their own ideas as speakers or consultants. Maybe I wasn't fully clear, but here's what I wrote to him. First, in response to his initial query.
Hi Clark, I did not turn down the column because of the rules. (Don't believe everything you read on Gawker.) As I said in my post, I never got that far. I turned down the column because it looked like a black hole of time and research expenses. I have a contract to write a book on glamour for The Free Press and wanted to focus any freelance writing on subjects related to my book. If I had entered into negotiations, however, the rules would have eventually led to my disqualification.
As you may know, I was an Economic Scene contributor for six years, before the new restrictions were in place. At that time, conflicts were considered on a column-by-column basis, and no significant issues arose. I wrote about academic economists, who weren't ever going to pay me for anything. (There were a couple of minor situations that Tom Redburn, my editor, and I hashed out. I don't remember the details, except that one involved my ownership of 100 shares of Amazon stock. I know that Hal Varian, who is a great economist and a great columnist, did run into a lot of conflicts with his consulting, but he just didn't write about those topics.)
For Economic Scene, I was paid $1,000 a column and was grudgingly granted airfare once a year to attend the American Economic Association's annual meetings; my hotel expenses were covered by my husband's academic department, since I shared his room. I was under the strong impression at the time that the NYT would not have sprung for the hotel room. Although we never got to discussing fees for Prototype, my assumption was that similar payments would apply, although the Prototype column would require much more time, both to develop new sources and report individual columns. To be done right, it would also need fairly in-depth, on-site reporting of the sort the Times is loath to fund for freelancers. Keep in mind also that the Times, unlike most publication, also demands all rights to stories rather than, say, first and nonexclusive rights.
Under the new rules, I don't see how I could write anything other than an op-ed or occasional book review for the Times, and I may be skirting the rules on that.
I'll give you a call tomorrow to discuss this further. Best wishes, Virginia
After we talked, Clark was kind enough to send me a copy of his draft for fact-checking. It included the following paragraph about me.
Virginia Postrel, a writer and former Times columnist who was recruited for the "Prototype" column before Tripsas got it, thinks the paper's rules are unfair to writers and are themselves "borderline unethical." The paper wants to treat freelancers like staffers without paying them or giving them the benefits of staffers, she said. It expects in the case of a Tripsas that Harvard will pay expenses the paper should pay. She said The Times is operating under "the false assumption" that companies like 3M are flying out a professor to influence her when they are instead trying to learn from her, as much as she is trying to learn from them.
I probably should have left well enough alone, but I sent the following email:
Hi Clark, Thanks for sending the piece. I understand the space constraints, but you've actually conflated two issues: why companies that hire potential Times writers (like Tripsas or, for that matter, me) to speak or consult because they learn from them, and why 3M offered Tripsas and other professors a plant tour. (I'm sure 3M wanted to continue to build its reputation as an innovation leader among Harvard profs.) The revisions below, while not as graceful as your original graf, more accurately reflect my points.
Virginia Postrel, a writer and former Times columnist who was recruited for the "Prototype" column before Tripsas got it, thinks the paper's rules are themselves "borderline unethical." The paper wants to treat freelancers like staffers without paying them or giving them the benefits of staffers OR FUNDING THE RESEARCH EXPENSES THROUGH WHICH THEY BUILD EXPERTISE, she said. It expects in the case of a Tripsas that Harvard will pay REPORTING expenses the paper should pay. She said The Times is operating under "the false assumption" that companies PAY SPEAKING OR CONSULTING FEES TO PROFESSORS OR AUTHORS IN ORDER TO INFLUENCE THEIR FUTURE WRITING, rather than to learn from them. IN THE CASE OF TRIPSAS'S 3M TOUR, SHE SAID, A BUSINESS SCHOOL PROFESSOR'S JOB IS TO UNDERSTAND AND IMPROVE BUSINESS PRACTICES, SO FOR THAT PURPOSE, AS OPPOSED TO COLUMN RESEARCH, WHO COVERS THE EXPENSES IS IMMATERIAL.
I strongly believe that the Times is using its market power to freeload on the human capital--including both personal reputations and the expensive process of learning things--of its freelancers, which is one reason it is so happy to have so many professors on board, (something that will end if you seriously start enforcing the prohibition against earning any money from anybody who might conceivably be a source for any theoretical future article). But, hey, you can always dig up some more 24 year olds.
I 100% guarantee you that the blogs will be buzzing with the words "David Pogue" after this column runs. Since he has a bigger brand than the Times in his field--and thus more to lose if he loses readers' trust--I think the Times is perfectly justified in ignoring its policies for him. But a lot of people don't.
Best regards, Virginia
I had hoped that in response to this controversy the Times might adopt a more reasonable policy. But, at least for now, it appears that the paper is going to continue to drive away talent while substituting increasingly complex and intrusive rules for disclosure and editorial judgment.
Posted by Virginia Postrel on January 02, 2010 • Comments
Here are a few real ethical dilemmas faced by yours truly:
1) Do I dare write about the NYT's dumb ethics policy? What if I piss off the Times? Oh yeah, I can't write for them anyway, so I guess that's not much of dilemma. (But that calculation does explain why a lot of other people aren't piping up.)
2) I discover that Professor Postrel knows and likes Mary Tripsas. Should I not write about her problems, for fear of hurting their relationship? Should I not say her article wasn't very good?
3) Forbes.com asks me to write something on the occasion of Ralph Lauren's 70th birthday. I admire Ralph Lauren's use of glamour, but the company is in the news for a Photoshop disaster (not glamorous) and Ralph Lauren's most recent, Depression-inspired, collection borders on parody (silver lamé overalls!). For my glamour book, I'm going to want to use one or more photos from Ralph Lauren's ads. Do I write the column, include the recent missteps, and risk not getting permission to use such photos? (I did.)
4) I'm writing a DeepGlamour blog post about disappointing gifts. Do I include examples from my personal experience, at the risk of hurting the gift-giver's feelings? (I didn't.)
Note that none of these dilemmas have anything to do with who pays for what. They're all about relationships.
Posted by Virginia Postrel on December 30, 2009 • Comments
The latest "ethics" scandal buzzing through the journalism blogs provides another reminder that the culture and norms of the traditional journalism guild are ill-suited to the new "FREE" era. But first, a bit of personal context.
Back in June, I got an email from Tim O'Brien, the editor of the NYT's Sunday business section, asking if I'd be interested in writing a monthly column called PROTOTYPE about "creativity and innovation in the business world." I appreciated the invitation and was tempted by the subject matter. But, after a quick calculation, I demurred.
"The subject is certainly an interesting one to me," I replied, a bit snarkily, "but unless the Times has significantly increased its freelance payments and decided that research budgets aren't a waste of money, it's probably not worth the time away from my book writing."
Given my immediate no, our discussions never got far enough to hit the deal-killer: I am, in fact, ethically ineligible to write about innovation for the NYT.
I occasionally do paid speaking for companies that might conceivably be sources for a column on innovation. (Those speaking engagements generally pay quite a bit better than writing for the Times.) As an old journalism pro, I naturally know enough not to take a speaking gig and then turn it into an article, at least not without getting my editor's OK and disclosing any potential conflict to readers. But that's no longer enough for the Times. Its ethics guidelines now prohibit freelancers from taking honoraria or even travel expenses from anyone who might, in some theoretical future state of the world, be a source. In October, "Critical Shopper" columnist Mike Albo, a freelancer, was canned for taking a travel junket that had nothing to do with his NYT gig.
This overly broad policy presents the Times with a major problem that is only going to get worse. The paper wants writers who take no money, including expense reimbursement, from anyone who might conceivably be a "current or potential news source," even on beats unrelated to their NYT writing. The traditional way to achieve this goal was to pay staffers full-time salaries and cover their expenses. But the Times is no longer willing to foot that bill. To save money, it wants to use freelancers with independent expertise, gained through research the Times didn't fund. Yet for well-understood reasons of supply and demand, writers who have independent expertise nowadays rely on in-person engagements (speaking and perhaps consulting) for most of their income. Any freelancer you'd be eager to read on innovation--Michael Schrage, say--is almost certainly someone who also gets paid to share that expertise in person.
To fill the PROTOTYPE slot, the Times turned, as it does increasingly for business and economics coverage, to someone who wouldn't care about its low article fees or nonexistent reporting expenses: a tenured professor with an academic research budget, in this case, Mary Tripsas of the Harvard Business School. She is an expert on innovation, but a journalistic innocent. And now she's in trouble.
Along with some other academics, she visited 3M's innovation center, with the company covering her travel expenses. On Sunday, she published a column about such centers, with 3M's featured in the lead and spotlighted in photos. Charges of ethics violations were soon flying. If Mike Albo lost his slot, media bloggers argue, she should lose hers.
I don't believe Professor Tripsas did anything remotely corrupt. The main value 3M gave her was, in fact, the same thing journalists are bought off with every day: access. The travel expenses were incidental and surely would have been covered by Harvard had 3M not picked up the tab. But she did violate the Times's extraordinarily strict guidelines--guidelines so broad that she arguably shouldn't even have quoted the work of a colleague at Harvard Business School, since she relies on that organization for her salary and benefits.
The real problem was not that 3M covered some of Tripsas's reporting expenses. It's that the column wasn't very good. It lacked context about 3M's long history of internally driven innovation, the work of design consultancies like IDEO, or academic research on customer-driven innovation. It was old news. I wrote about a similar innovation center, at GE Plastics, in The Substance of Style, published in 2003 and researched several years earlier. (Tripsas's column in fact acknowledged that 3M opened its first innovation center more than a decade ago.) And the writing was noticeably cliched and strained: "In a world of online user communities, social media, interactive blogs and other technological means for companies to elicit customer feedback, you might think that face-to-face interaction is a thing of the past. Think again."
Instead of focusing on inputs, the Times should focus its quality control on outputs: what actually appears in the paper. Drop the absurd ethics guidelines, hire freelancers who know their subjects and how to write about them, and disclose any potential conflicts so readers can make up their own minds. Think about delivering value to the reader rather than ritualistically adhering to journalistic guild customs. Alternatively, the Times could shrink the paper to include only that reporting whose costs it can cover out of its own budget and stop trying to free ride.
CORRECTION: I sloppily jumped to a mistaken conclusion about Mary Tripsas's tenure status without actually checking. SMU's David Croson (a mutual friend), emails, "Mary Tripsas doesn't have tenure yet. (Harvard doesn't tenure its associate professors -- one of a very few places that doesn't.) She does, however, have an extremely generous research budget, so your points (about the Times' free-riding, and about HBS being willing to pay if 3M hadn't) seem essentially correct."
ADDENDUM: For those interested in the institutional context, this article (minus a couple of pages) by the eminent HBS accounting professor Robert Kaplan gives a picture of the ideal relationship among research, teaching, consulting, and case writing at Harvard Business School.
Posted by Virginia Postrel on December 28, 2009 • Comments
, called "supermarket pastoral."
. Highlights include complete episodes of 
and, specially recommended for me, the complete series of 
, which I did enjoy when it was originally on TV. Carl Lumbly plays a genius superhero inventor with remarkably conservative political attitudes--a sort of Thomas Sowell-Iron Man mashup.