'Times' Biz Editor's Problematic Murdoch Book Proposal
A couple weeks ago, the Columbia Journalism Review defended the New York Times' coverage of the Dow Jones-Rupert Murdoch deal from the editorial writers at the Wall Street Journal, who alleged that the Times only had its own self-interest at heart: "I really object to the Journal's editorialists calling into question—by name—the motives behind The New York Times and The Financial Times for their coverage of the News Corp. story." But now people are saying that the NYT's Business section didn't have the purest of motives in its coverage—its editor is shopping a book about the deal itself.
According to the Post's Keith Kelly, Business editor Larry Ingrassia was originally going to write the book with one of his reporters, Joe Nocera. (And not Richard Perez-Peña, who did much of the heavy lifting on the Murdoch story.) According to Kelly, Nocera has pulled out of the deal.
Now, does Ingrassia's intended book sully the paper's coverage of the deal? Well, that seems like an untenable leap of logic. But, perhaps it's trouble in other ways:
Word of the Times duo's book plan has also triggered resentment inside the Times newsroom as well.
"It is fraught with conflicts of interest," said one insider. "Larry was supervising coverage of the deal and he never told the newsroom he was working on a book. Presumably, he knew who all their confidential sources were."
It also posed another problem in the eyes of the insider, because Ingrassia was contemplating a joint business deal for the book with someone who reports directly to him in his day job.
Mega-agent Andrew Wylie is handling the book, by the way.
This is exactly the sort of problem that Times Books should, in an ideal world, be able to solve: The paper's imprint at Henry Holt, however, only compels Times staffers to consider a bid on the book from the house. The paper does not demand a right of first refusal on books by staffers. The trouble is that this is one case where a Times employee's work product seems inextricable from what he'd like to also call his own money-maker.
