Ten years ago I took my daughters on a trip to New York City. It was one of those whirlwind tours that focused on what would be highlights for young kids; we focused on mid-town, the ferris wheel at Toys R Us, the Nintendo store at Rockefeller Center, four-stories of Forever 21 was a big hit.
The day ended with a Broadway show, but before that, there was a late-afternoon lull where I took opportunity of having my friend, Bruce, who was a long time news editor, give us a tour of the New York Times, the highlight of which was the traditional 5:30 p.m. Page 1 meeting of senior staff. You may think you don’t know what I’m talking about, but you do. The Page 1 meeting was where Lou Grant battled it out with other desk editors to decide what got placed on the front page of the Los Angeles Tribune back when Ed Asner made the transition from Mary Tyler Moore comedy to drama, but kept the same character. Deadly dull stuff for kids, but it was the opportunity of a lifetime I didn’t want them to miss.
The Page 1 meeting doesn’t exist anymore. In the digital age the practice was abandoned around 2015. Visitors to this spectacle were generally frowned upon, the argument being that they discouraged the free flow of conversation. But journalist are also first amendment sticklers, all business should be conducted in the open, so there we were, four tourists occupying the back row of the Page 1 meeting room, some of us barely able to keep our eyes open. I would describe the room, but the New York Times did it so much better in a great piece about the history of their Page 1 meetings:
“Dominating the room like an aircraft carrier with a flight deck of European cherry is a bowed table 25 feet long and 10 feet wide. You can’t actually land a Boeing Super Hornet on it, but you can seat 24 editors together. (Sometimes an equally challenging proposition.) Two dozen more attendees can watch from two long observers’ desks on either side of the room.”
That would be us at the observers’ desks, boorishly chomping on bags of granola as we tried to rest up before three hours of Peter and the Star Catcher.
The room was very full that evening. I remember Bill Keller being there, though by this time he has stepped down as executive editor of The Times a year earlier. The big story was Obamacare, or rather that the Supreme Court had upheld the Affordable Care Act in a 5-4 decision. There was little question that this would be the front page story, though someone from the science desk was pitching a story about a genetically engineered tomato.
I guess this is on my mind because I’ve been reading The Elements of Journalism, Bill Kovach and Tom Rosensteil’s first-position work on what it means to write what they call, “the literature of civic life”. I sort of feel that I’ve lost my way as an activist, exposer, reformer, and need to return to these first principals. Or maybe it’s everyone else who’ve strayed from that path. Call me old fashioned, but I don’t consider a restaurant review or weather alert or even a “5 on your side” exposé news. Even when the New York Times tells me a story is a paid advertisement that doesn’t give much comfort.
Bill Keller once famously stated, “The civic labour performed by journalists on the ground cannot be replicated by legions of bloggers sitting hunched over their computer screens.” Perhaps, but I don’t see much civic labour being performed lately. When a figure like Maurice Boucher dies, as the former Quebec Hells Angel leader did last week, I expect a little more content and analysis from the news than simply a renumeration of his exploits. That’s not being objective, that’s arithmetic. A little reflection on what his devastating exploits meant to Quebec society, of the social impacts, the consequences of the years of police inaction which enabled him, would be appropriate. The news can have an opinion, or maybe they’re all afraid of offending someone. In which case, you’re no longer a journalist, you’re just one of my neighbors, and the news is reduced to over-the-fence gossip during weekend lawn mowing.
At the conclusion of that meeting, my friend, Bruce, who had been sitting in front of us at the aircraft carrier, leaned back to my bleary-eyed companions and stated plainly, “So did you get all that? Tomato above the fold.”
Bric-à-brac
I’ve done a lot of interviews lately. This one from on The Curious Man podcast I think is quite good. I don’t know, maybe Matt just caught me on a particularly inspired day.
Thank you John.