SPECIAL
REPORT
The Romenesko
Factor
By
Susan E. Tifft
E xecutive editors at The
New York Times were once kings; now, apparently, they are prime
ministers who can be recalled for what amounts to a no-confidence
vote. And for the first time, the Internet played a role.
It was the newsroom’s lack of confidence in Raines that mattered,
of course, and the staff members’ fierce rebellion that did
him in. But the collection and dissemination of their wails on
the Web added to its weight and velocity. For weeks, Times journalists
posted internal memos and critical e-mail exchanges on the dominant
Web site frequented by reporters, the site destination known simply
as Romenesko (www.poynter. org/romenesko).
The vitriol in those e-mails kept the story roiling, exposed cracks
in the once vault-like newsroom, and chipped away at authority
at the top. The effect was to help atomize the power of Raines
and his managing editor, Gerald Boyd, and to some extent that
of the publisher, Arthur Sulzberger, Jr. It wasn’t exactly
the slave uprising in Spartacus, but there were echoes.
It’s a journalistic axiom that newsrooms aren’t democracies
— and shouldn’t be. Someone has to create a vision for
the paper and make final editorial decisions. But now, thanks
to the Internet, every copy clerk and stringer can make his or
her unhappiness known to millions. Michael Powell, chairman of
the Federal Communications Commission, may have been comfortable
effectively ignoring more than 700,000 e-mail and postcard dissents
to the FCC’s proposed changes in media ownership rules, but
the New York Times publisher felt differently. He knew that a
top editor’s power derives in large part from the consent
of the governed.
The Internet was only one of a number of factors in the unseating
of Raines, who despite his manifold management failures is a superb
journalist and a lyrical writer. That it was a factor at all is
not necessarily a good thing. Journalists should hold their editors
accountable, especially in matters of ethics, but newspapers have
enough credibility problems without indulging in the Web equivalent
of Family Feud. The long-term effects of this phenomenon remain
to be seen. In the short term, what Raines learned — and
other news executives may, too — is that in the whirring
democracy of the Web, commanders who underestimate the power of
their troops do so at their peril.
