Defending the Family   

AJR contributing writer Alicia C. Shepard also interviewed Washington Post Executive Editor Leonard Downie Jr. about the Ruth Shalit contretemps.

AJR: What was your first reaction to Ruth Shalit's piece?

LD: My first reaction was that I was appalled by the unprofessionalism of the piece because it contained so many obvious important errors of fact on which she based her conclusions. And that it was so obviously designed to provide only her point of view, that so much of the information was twisted to do that.

AJR: What do you think her point of view was?

LD: Her point of view, that is to say the magazine's point of view and the point of view of the owner of the magazine, is strong opposition to affirmative action or diversity programs of any kind. I also know from people here who know people at TNR well that [owner] Marty Peretz has tried for a long time to get somebody at TNR to do this story.

AJR: Are you saying the magazine was taking advantage of her youth?

LD: I think it is a terrible slur on the professionalism of a lot of people of her age [25] who perform outstanding work at places like the Washington Post and other newspapers and magazines to use her age in any way as any excuse for unprofessionalism.

AJR: There were some 40 factual errors?

LD: We've lost count. Somewhere between three dozen and 40.

AJR: Which of those are firable offenses?

LD: The plagiarism for one thing. One entire sentence is taken from David Halberstam's book "The Powers That Be." It's one of the errors of the piece that struck me as very odd. It said, "The Post's national staff is tiny, the waiting list, endless." I thought, that's very odd, because she talked to a lot of people here and spent a lot of time here. She had to know that our national staff is quite large. In fact, it may be the largest national staff in the country. It has 50 reporters and 20 editors. I thought, how could she miss that? That is one of the big errors in the piece because she uses that as her basis for saying it was unusual to hire Kevin Merida [an African American] directly onto the national staff as opposed to going on the metro staff first. Even though he's an outstanding journalist who was doing national level work in Washington for the Dallas Morning News before he became an editor there.

AJR: Any other serious errors?

LD: Oh yes. Saying that [Publisher] Don Graham intervened to have Milton Coleman made assistant managing editor for metropolitan news. Something that never took place. He was chosen by me because he was the most outstanding candidate. That Gene Robinson was chosen to be foreign editor only because he was black, which was absolutely untrue. That the job was first offered to a white woman, Caryle Murphy. Absolutely untrue. Things like that that are not only important errors of fact because she used them for her conclusions, but they are terribly hurtful to the reputations of the people involved. If they weren't journalists, they would probably sue for libel. But journalists don't do that sort of thing.

AJR: She said, Len, that you've created a climate of fear and people interviewed are backing down from their quotes because of it.

LD: I find that kind of laughable because I'm well-known for running a newsroom where there's an incredible amount of collegiality. I'm always ready to change my mind when people bring things to me. I'm also well-known for constantly throwing out ideas and criticisms. The editors and reporters know that if I'm right, they'll do it. If I'm not, they'll disregard it (laughs).

AJR: Ruth says the Post admits and deplores the small pool of minority journalists. Is there really a small pool of qualified minority journalists?

LD: That's hard to tell. There certainly are a sufficient number of good minority journalists for us to hire. We are at the top of the food chain so we can take advantage of people working throughout the industry.

AJR: Many people have said they are amazed by the vehemence of your reaction – even some Post staffers. What was going on? It looked like she struck a nerve.

LD: There were two reasons for it. I care deeply about this profession, which I've now been in for more than 30 years. When I see unprofessional conduct at that level, it bothers me deeply. Similarly, I get appalled at reckless disregard for the truth, which is what that piece is full of. But I was particularly angry about the reputations of really outstanding journalists of color who were besmirched. These are my family. Far from a climate of fear here, I count myself lucky every day to come to work and work with these wonderful people. To see them attacked like that made me very angry and I don't think my reaction has been nearly strong enough. I feel constrained by my position to act as strongly as I would like to act in defense of these people whose reputations she dealt with with great reckless disregard of the truth. It's not just she. It's TNR. I hold the editors there, too, responsible for this kind of journalism, which is quite outrageous.

AJR: How would you describe the state of race relations at the Post among black and white staffers?

LD: I'm one of those people who believe it's one of the paramount issues in the United States today. It underlies everything from politics to economic tensions. And our newsroom is no exception to that. The only way you can have an exception to it is to have it only be one race. Instead, we are working hard to create a truly diverse newsroom consistent with having the best possible people working here so we can put out the best paper we possibly can every day. In doing so, in transitioning from a white male world to a world in which there are many more women and people of color, there are bound to be tensions, questions and misunderstandings.

AJR: Talk about what you are doing in terms of management training. What about white editors perpetuating tension by saying to white reporters, "Gee, we'd love to hire you but.."?

LD: The broader answer is that the senior managers of the newsroom – about 25 of us, a goodly number of whom are women and minorities as well as white males – are taking a management training course especially created for us by the American Press Institute that includes diagnosis of how well we manage people and then the potential remedies and ways in which we can learn to do better.

AJR: This is not just dealing with diversity?

LD: No, it's dealing with all ways of managing people. That obviously includes how you deal with people who are unlike yourself.

AJR: You don't deny that there's any resentment over diversity goals in your newsroom?

LD: Sure. Sometimes there are resentments by different people about different things. Sometimes race is a factor; sometimes it isn't. Sometimes it's tensions between different staffs – the national staff has always been regarded as somewhat more prestigious even though that's probably not the way it ought to be.

AJR: The other thing Ruth Shalit brought up was that efforts to diversify the staff have affected and diminished coverage.

LD: I'm sure they've affected coverage because you don't just have one set of backgrounds influencing our coverage. But I think it's only affected coverage for the good. Again, that doesn't mean we haven't made mistakes or that there isn't disagreement in the newsroom on how you cover something like Louis Farrakhan, for example. It's out of such disagreements and open discussions, for example, that I think we improve our coverage because people will see things they might not have seen brought up by someone else.

AJR: Wasn't there some truth in Shalit's article?

LD: It depends on what you mean by truth. That we are engaged in an ambitious effort to diversify our newsroom while at the same time continuing to upgrade the talent of everybody in it and manage people better, and that sometimes in that process there are tensions in the newsroom in addition to all the other tensions? Yes, that would be true. But that's not what the piece told us. I know that she and her editors say that when we say the piece is not true that means we are saying this newsroom is without argument, without tension. That would be ridiculous.

AJR: Ruth Shalit has never worked at a newspaper. Does this show anything about the need to be grounded in the fundamentals to do good solid journalism?

LD: You need to be grounded in the fundamentals someplace. It doesn't necessarily have to be at a newspaper.

AJR: Would you ever hire Ruth Shalit?

LD: I don't think it's fair to answer that question. l