Posts published by Clark Hoyt

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Anonymous Sources Postscript

Unfortunately, there were more examples of anonymous sources that drew reader complaints than I could include in this week’s public editor column.

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Could Plagiarism Software Have Spared The Times an Embarrassment?

Craig Silverman, the editor of Regret the Error, a Web site that reports on accuracy and honesty in the press, says most plagiarism by journalists is caught only when someone complains.  That’s what happened last month at The Times, which had to endure the mortifying experience of having a bitter cross-town rival, The Wall Street Journal, point out the theft of half a dozen passages from one of its news articles. Read more…

The Paterson Bombshell

4:02 p.m. | Updated This post has been updated to reflect Gov. David Paterson’s announcement today that he would end his election campaign.

It turned out to be a bombshell after all, the scoop that derailed the political career of Gov. David Paterson of New York.

But it wasn’t what all those rumors were predicting earlier this month, when the Internet was aflame with anticipation that a Times story about something seamy in Paterson’s own personal life would bring him down. Read more…

Letters: Freelancers and Climate Change

Re “Times Standards, Staffers or Not” (Jan. 3):
The clear intent of the freelancers’ contract seems to be, “You will not accept anything of value not provided by The New York Times.” What payers are covered as “current or potential news sources”? Is there any person or organization that is not at least a potential news source? Even a Stylite Monk sitting on top of a column for 30 years might serve as a source in a story about his motivations or experiences.
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Letters: The Archbishop’s Blog, Paying for The Times and Bloomberg’s Blowout

Re “The Archbishop’s Blog” (Nov. 8):
The explanation for The Times’s refusal to publish Archbishop Timothy Dolan’s letter is lame and defensive, as is the rest of your column. Your argument seems to be that because The Times gave the archbishop a lot of coverage and said some nice things about him when he first came to New York that it can with impunity publish imbalanced and biased articles about the Catholic Church.
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