CURRENTS

IN REVIEW: RAINES GUAGE —
WATCHING THE CHANGING TIMES

BY ALEX S. JONES

Howell Raines is the new top editor at The New York Times, the most influential news organization in the nation, perhaps the world. What does his appointment portend?

First of all, a revolution. It is well understood within the Times that there was an evolutionary candidate for the job -- Bill Keller, the managing editor under Joe Lelyveld -- and a revolutionary candidate, Raines, the editor of the editorial page.

The appointment of Raines and his chosen managing editor, Gerald Boyd, marks the first time in decades that both top positions at the paper represent a new regime, breaking a long-standing practice that has allowed for continuity during transition. For instance, when Max Frankel went from editorial page editor to executive editor in 1986, he chose Arthur Gelb as his managing editor. Gelb had been a deputy managing editor under Frankel's predecessor, Abe Rosenthal, and the two had worked extremely closely for decades. Though Boyd also becomes managing editor from deputy managing editor, his identification with Lelyveld is much less, and his appointment is viewed as something new.

Among friends, Raines speaks of his belief (the word is used in the sense of a near religious faith) that he was somehow destined for the job of leading and protecting what he sometimes refers to as "this institution that would not be reinvented if we let it cease to exist." He is an idealist and a romantic in his vision of the Times.

He is also a savvy corporate politician and, at fifty-eight, has the seasoning to understand that he must lead, not bully, his editors and reporters. But he is comfortable with power and he will exercise it, both within the paper and through its news columns.

The executive editor's main power is not the ability to fire people, which almost never happens at the Times, but to move people to new jobs. So the revolution will be most apparent a year from now, when one compares the line-up of editors and reporting assignments then to the present ones.

The newspaper that Raines inherits from Lelyveld is rightly considered to be at the top of its game. Nonetheless, look for Raines to signal early that something new is afoot. When he became editor of the editorial page, the tone quickly turned more aggressive and confrontational, and a similar shift in news would not be surprising.

Raines is a competitive newsman whose journalistic background is almost entirely in domestic political coverage. He will almost certainly be in all-out war with The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times for bragging rights on coverage of politics and public policy. Yet because Raines and Boyd have little foreign experience, they will probably go out of their way to prove that the paper's vaunted foreign coverage can get even better. Boyd, who is the first African-American to become the paper's managing editor, will be especially interested in issues of race, which will likely be well received by Raines, who cut his journalistic teeth covering the battle for civil rights.

Business coverage could also get some attention. The section has some ferocious truth-tellers who are not afraid to make people mad, such as Gretchen Morgensen and Floyd Norris, but that kind of business reporting is rare, even in the Times and The Wall Street Journal, much less on television. A new aggressiveness would suit the Raines temperament.

Arthur Sulzberger Jr., the Times's publisher and the company's chairman, is similarly comfortable with conflict and initially chose Raines for the editorial page to shake the place up, which Raines did. Sulzberger is also apt to serve as a tactful governor on Raines, a role Times publishers have long played. Also reporting to Sulzberger is his new editorial page editor, Gail Collins, whom Raines hired to the editorial board back in 1995, and she then became an op-ed columnist. One can hope that her highly developed sense of the absurd as a columnist will survive on the editorial page.

Not everyone was pleased by Raines's appointment, of course, and New York's junior senator, Hillary Clinton, and her husband, the former president, who has just made Harlem his headquarters, are likely among the least pleased. If it was Raines's karma to be editor of the Times, it may be the Clintons' karma to be saddled with him again. Raines's editorial page was the Clintons' scourge, and now the full power of the paper's news gathering ability could be aimed their way. Similarly, the institutional secrecy of the Bush administration is likely to be viewed by Raines as a fitting, juicy target.

The crucial test for Raines will be whether he can lead a newsroom that is tough and aggressive without becoming prosecutorial. His editorial page was often black and white, and news requires fairness and nuance. How he deals with the paper's missteps -- and his own -- will define his editorship as much as the way he covers the news.

For all his seriousness and ambition, Raines is also a man who loves the chase, who loves a great story and beating the opposition, who loves the electricity of a newsroom on deadline and working with a staff that is bursting with energy and shared purpose. He will have fun, and those who are like him at the Times are apt to have a great ride. Along with readers.

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Alex Jones, former press reporter for The New York Times, is director of the Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. He is co-author, with Susan E. Tifft, of The Trust: The Private and Powerful Family Behind The New York Times.