NYT: Sex Over Death on the Front Page

I’m still hiatusing, but this at least deserves some pictorial comment. 

Here’s the top of the NYT home page right now:

Yeah, the biggest news in the world right now revolves around two wealthy white guys who had affairs within their offices.  Uh-huh.  Except… wait, if I scroll down a little… OK, more than a little…

Hey, over 1,000 people are dead in Indonesia! If only one of them had had an affair with a married co-worker (or with a co-worker’s wife), maybe they’d get to be the lead story tonight!

Good grief. At least Jon Gosselin isn’t on the cover.

Tales of a Former Treasury Secretary

On this anniversary of the Fall of Lehman, I’d like to take a moment to discuss one of the big “villains” of that era: Mr. Hank “King Henry” Paulson, the former treasury secretary.  About a week ago, I stayed up late to devour Todd Purdham’s lengthy, three-years-in-the-making piece on Paulson, which I recommend. Of the Current Events must-reads on my list this fall, Hank Paulson’s memoir of the crisis probably makes the top ten. I’m really (really!) not an ongoing Treasury Secretary Stalker, I promise (and not just because it’s a condition of my parole). Instead, I want to read Paulson’s book because I find him to be a compelling character in our recent national drama: For better and worse, he’s simultaneously the man who said in mid-2008 that the system was strong and everyone was handling things just fine and the man who only weeks later went down on one knee to beg Nancy Pelosi to pass the bank bailout.  He’s the man who was — it seems — very much driving the bus when Lehman went under it.

But he’s not that simple.  At times he seems like a Democrat trapped in Republican cabinetry: He’s rumored to have willed the entirety of his fortune, upon his death, to nature conservation, because “saving the environment is a ‘race against time, the ultimate global issue.'” While working for Goldman Sachs in Illinois, he and his wife lived in a farmhouse that had, at one point, four named raccoons running freely through it, along with Paulson’s pet snakes, flying squirrels, mice, dogs, cats and turtles. He names Nancy Pelosi and Barney Frank as his favorite congresspeople in the Purdham interview. He is the author of the bank bailout and about the first advocate for cash infusions into banks — also known in GOP circles as socialism — that we saw last year.

He’s also the guy who engineered some rather shady deals while in the Bush administration, deals (like the AIG bailout) that have benefited Goldman Sachs, his old company, and deals (like the failure of Lehman Brothers) that seem to have been botched as much through neglect and disorganization as malevolent intent.  While at Goldman, he pushed for and benefited from the rule changes in the 1990s and early 2000s that contributed to the current crisis.  And he still seems to believe that he wouldn’t do much differently, given the chance.

In short, I do not know what to make of Henry Paulson. I do not believe Purdham’s claim that history will figure this out; I think, perhaps, that questions about the character and make-up of a man, any man, but particularly a distant, celebrity figure like Paulson, are often unanswerable, because they require a level of objectivity people just cannot achieve. I would like to believe that Hank Paulson was a villain, but I am increasingly aware that it’s just not that simple. He, like even those I hate the most, was usually doing what he thought was best. He was usually doing the best that he could, and if that is his failing, well, it’s really the failing of the man who hired him.

Just as I don’t know what to make of Paulson, neither, it seems, does Todd Purdham, even after three years of semi-regular meetings with the man who had the nation’s ATM card in his pocket. Purdham’s piece is a wonderful example of post-event journalism, the kind of thing for which Bob Woodward is pretty famous. Purdham essentially traded continuing access for a guarantee not to print anything as it happened. This is a bit of a Faustian bargain — a journalist trades away the opportunity to report on news as it happens for better long-term access to the source. The idea is that seeing someone more regularly, and talking to them over the longer term, often provides a more accurate picture — with that much-lauded journalistic ideal, context — of the man in the center of the storm. Beyond which, of course, there are dozens of other journos covering the day-to-day. 

It took me a while, but I think this bargain was worth it, even with how ultimately unsurprising the long piece on Paulson is. Was Paulson more candid with Purdham than he’s been in other interviews? Sure.  Purdham’s promise to keep things off the record until they couldn’t change the immediate course of things most likely did elicit commentary that will help future journalists and historians clarify what exactly happened last year. 

But there’s a price for all of that, and reading something like Purdham’s piece so quickly after the fact, the cost seems particularly clear. If, a year ago, Henry Paulson had come out and said, Pelosi is right, the Republicans are wrong, and I’m being obstructed from adequately doing my job by the ideological bent at the White House, he could have changed the course of our current national crisis. At the very least, he could have changed the tone of the conversation about it, instead of letting it become an even deeper, more entrenched partisan battle. A member of the Bush cabinet speaking out about the Bush madness — and speaking out clearly, in a language of numbers, from the strength of his Goldman Sachs, friend-of-the-street credentials — would have meant something in September 2008. Hearing it a year later is interesting, but has less effect.

I’d apply that to most of the post-mortems I’m seeing today about Lehman, as well. Understanding what happened after the fact is nice, but I don’t think we’re yet so far away that we can understand things.

Two U.S. Journalists Sentenced to 12 Years’ Hard Labor in North Korea

Euna Lee and Laura Ling, journalists working for the Current TV network, have been sentenced to 12 years of hard labor for allegedly crossing into North Korea’s territory while doing a story on human trafficking.  The trial has been going on since Thursday — but it’s also been news since the two women were detained in mid-March.

The great hope for the trial was that the women would receive stunning (but smaller than this) sentences, and then the sentences would be commuted in exchange for some act toward North Korea by either the U.S. or South Korea.  That the sentence is greater than expected (and having been handed down by the highest court, it can’t be appealed) doesn’t bode well.

The sentence was delivered the same day that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton mentioned the administration is considering interdicting North Korean air and sea shipments that could carry weapons.  The administration is also, apparently, considering placing North Korea back on the list of states who sponsor terror — the old Axis of Evil list, if you will.

Secretary Clinton who apparently sent a letter personally apologizing for the Lee and Ling’s possible border crossing and requesting the two women be released, also said today that the administration is working to keep the Lee/Ling issue separate from its own political work with North Korea, calling their detention an issue of “human rights,” not politics.  I agree that this should be separate from political actions, but it’s ridiculous to think that it can be.  These women are American journalists, working on a piece that would have doubtlessly cast North Korea in a dark (and deserved) light.  That their sentence came down — and that it was so harsh — at the same time the U.S. is considering harsher consequences for North Korea’s bad behavior must be part of the whole picture.

So it comes down to that movie-tested line: The United States of America does not negotiate with terrorists, or with kidnappers.  There are arguments that can be made that North Korea’s detention of Lee and Ling makes the government a sponsor of both.

Now we wait.  We wait to see if it’s true that the U.S. doesn’t negotiate.  We wait to see if this is in any way a ruse on North Korea’s part, an attempt to get more attention, an attempt to seem merciful if the women are let go, an attempt to scare other journalists away from its borders.  We wait, and we hope — which is precisely the position that is most frustrating in these situations, and precisely, I suppose, the position that a mature democracy has to take.

None of that helps these two women.  None of it helps their terrified families, none of it shortens the gut-wrenching sensation that must accompany a sentence of 12 years’ hard labor.  My thoughts are with them, and the many hundreds of journalists who risk similar fates every year to bring us valuable stories from the darkest reaches of the world.  Theirs is work that should be honored, and protected, worldwide.

The Ultimate Beat Sweetener: The 31 Year Old “Dismantling G.M.”

The New York Times had a piece up over the weekend about Brian Deese, a 31-year-old law school student (on break, apparently) who according to their headline is “in charge of dismantling G.M.”

This story caught on, as just about any section-front story from the NYT seems likely to do.  I’ve seen it linked copiously (and I’ve done it myself), and it’s currently the top e-mailed and blogged story in the business section at NYTimes.com.

But here’s my question: Can they prove their headline?

The story includes a quote from Steven Rattner, “one of the leaders of President Obama’s automotive task force,” about Deese’s grad-school beard.  It has a quote from Larry Summers about his intelligence.  It cites “several people who were present for the debate” as saying that Deese spoke out against liquidation for Chrysler, and says he wrote a very persuasive memo about the bad that Chapter 7 could cause.  But the only one who seems to say that Deese was ever the guy in charge of the taskforce is Deese.  In fact, the White House doesn’t list Deese as a member of the Auto Task Force at all.  He’s listed as an economic adviser to the president at the White House Web site, but there’s no more formal designation that I can find.  So to say he’s running it is a pretty substantial leap.

And the Times seems to get that, but much further down in its story:

Every time Mr. Deese ran the numbers on G.M. and Chrysler, he came back with the now-obvious conclusion that neither was a viable business, and that their plans to revive themselves did not address the erosion of their revenues. But it took the support of Mr. Rattner and Ron Bloom, senior advisers to the task force charged with restructuring the automobile industry, to help turn Mr. Deese’s positions into policy.

Normally, I kind of enjoy mindless profiles of major Washington players — they’re what Matthew Yglesias calls beat-sweeteners, pieces journalists write both to inform the public and to make their own jobs easier.  But this one seems particularly damaging, as it implies that the administration is leaving some very big decisions in the hands of a guy whose total automotive industry experience is apparently sleeping in the parking lot of a G.M. plant on his way to volunteer for the Obama campaign.

I’m wondering whether I could get a few friendly quotes dropped into the paper and turn myself into the point girl on, say, Health Care or NASA or something.  Who wants to try?

Could a Blog have Saved Edmund Andrews from Foreclosure?

About two weeks ago, the New York Times ran an excerpt from Edmund Andrews’s forthcoming book, Busted: Life Inside the Great Mortgage Meltdown.  I wasn’t alone in saying it would be the weekend’s must-read; Andrews’s tale of how he, a successful business writer for the Times, and his new wife were facing foreclosure makes for a fascinating read.  It’s a very personal story:

^{Image by: Respres (Flickr)}

The panic attack hit me around 2 a.m. on Patty’s birthday. It was Oct. 17, 2007, and I was lying in bed obsessing over bills that couldn’t be postponed and the money we didn’t have to pay them. Like many of my predawn fear cascades, this one had its start with a specific unpaid bill: $240 in traffic tickets — $140 for speeding, $50 each for expired tags and inspection. The fines would double if we didn’t pay them in less than a week. The tickets had uncorked the bottle on all the other “must pays”: the $400 electric bill with the cutoff date printed in red; the $220 cable/telephone/Internet bill for the past two months; the MasterCard and American Express bills — at least one of which had to be brought current or I wouldn’t even be able to travel for work. And of course, there was the $3,271 mortgage payment.

After its publication, Megan McArdle at The Atlantic found that Andrews neglected to mention in his piece or his book that his new wife filed for bankruptcy just after they first married — and had also filed once before, during her first marriage, making her not exactly the kind of good-credit help-mate that one might think she is from Andrews’s descriptions.  McArdle:

Andrews’ desire to shield his wife is understandable–hell, laudable.  No decent person wants to parade their spouse’s financial trouble in front of the world.  But this is material information that changes the tenor of his story.  Serial bankruptcy is not a creation of the current credit crisis, and it doesn’t just happen to anyone, particularly anyone with a six figure salary.

While I agree with her conclusions, I also agree with Andrews’s response that it’s not terribly material to the story he was trying to tell, about the ease with which he — clearly unqualified — got massive loans and credit he couldn’t afford.

But what I find even more interesting was a piece McArdle wrote that same morning, about Credit Reports and whether black marks “have staying power.”  She writes:

On the other hand, I can attest from personal experience that those smudges have staying power.  Through a series of bizarre events including a misfiled state tax return, multi-state residence, and an apparently incorrect address, the state of New York slapped me with a tax lien a few years back.  The State of New York has since admitted they were entirely in error, and indeed, that they owed me about $500 in refund.

(Not that they paid.   Funnily enough, the statute of limitations for getting a refund from the state is much shorter than their statute of limitations for coming after arrears.)

Megan McArdle is the Business and Economics Editor for The Atlantic, as well as one of its leading business bloggers.  Just in replying to the day’s news, above, she brought in her own personal experience — instant connect between what’s happened to her and what’s happening in the world.

Edmund Andrews, as an economics reporter for the NYT, says, “I have been the paper’s chief eyes and ears on the Federal Reserve for the past six years.”  Yet Andrews was able to disconnect himself so completely from what he was writing about that he fell into a terrible trap despite being so well informed.

If in 2004, Edmund Andrews had been blogging for DealBook at the Times in addition to supplying objective reports on the “spike in go-go mortgages,” maybe he would have been forced to realize what was coming for him.  Maybe one day he would have posted, “My wife and I are thinking about buying a $500,000 house –” and would have had to stop right there, hit in print by the impossibility of that ever working out.  And, I guarantee, if just writing it wasn’t enough to shake him into reality, the fiery comments that would have followed would have offered at least 75 persuasive descriptions of what he could do with that idea.

This thing we do, blogging — it’s in first person for a reason.  To do it well requires an amount of honesty that often leads to self-awareness, whether through realization or through readers forcing it upon you.

I’m continually bothered by the way that we cheer for distance between reporters and what they report on.  I understand the desire for objectivity, but not the belief that it’s possible.

WSJ: Chrysler Heads to Bankruptcy, Or Fiat, Or Not, Or…?

The Wall Street Journal has a rambling piece about the possible future of Chrysler that starts with this:

Chrysler LLC is preparing to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection as soon as next week, whether or not it reaches a deal with its lenders or forges an alliance with Fiat SpA, said several people familiar with the matter.

This sentence kicks off an 1,100 word article in which only three words — “in its totality,” in the last line — are attributed to anyone by name.  The rest of the article quotes:

• “these people” (x4)
• “people familiar with the matters”
• “people familiar with the matter” (again)
• “Fiat” (no clarification on whether that’s the whole company, the signage out front, or someone’s talking car)
• “The Obama administration” (again, no clarification on whether they spoke united)
• “an administration official”
• “one person”
• “people familiar with the situation” (x2)
• “Obama advisers”
• “Officials with President Barack Obama’s auto task force”
• “people familiar with the talks”

That final quote from Fiat CEO Sergio Marchionne came from a conference call.

From this combination, it’s hard to figure out whether there’s any original reporting at all in this story.  It’s also hard to tell what qualifies one to be a person familiar with the situation — let’s hope it requires more than just reading WSJ coverage every day.

The point the story starts out making — that Chrysler is going into bankruptcy even if it cuts a deal with its lenders — is seriously undercut by anonymous quotes within.  We start with the above lede, then travel to someone in the administration and an unnamed Fiat negotiator saying that bankruptcy won’t be necessary, travel to a Chrysler source saying to lenders (via some third party source) that yes, they’re going into bankruptcy so Fiat can pick and choose pieces of Chryster, then finally land on Marchionne’s quote that Fiat is “interested in Chrysler ‘in its totality.'”  In the middle, there’s a side-show story about Fiat seeking a possible merger with G.M. — and the story says both that this will be only a takeover of G.M. European Opel division and a way for Fiat to spread into the American market.

I should not be more confused at the end of the story than I am at the beginning — unless the point of the story is to show the chaos that’s currently reigning within automaker negotiations.  What I get a sense of here instead is the chaos in the newsroom of a paper that sees itself as the premiere source of business news in the country.  Really, it took five reporters to write this?

A friend on OS asked a while back why there aren’t any embeds in the financial crisis — people on the ground, covering the story from within, sending reports back from the front lines.  I spent some time trying to answer this, and kept coming back to the same problem: Embedding a reporter in a bank — in any private enterprise — would seem to be a breach of privacy.  At best, even assuming a reporter did get internal access to the major goings-on, I figured we’d end up with some Bob Woodward-like book on the financial crisis a year after things are concluded, revealing who made who do what and for how much (read that in any way you want — I assume it’s all very messy in the banking industry right now).

But while real-time insider reporting might not be feasible, actual reporting is necessary.  As I rarely spend a day making any calls myself, I’m lecturing from a glass podium on a stage made of very thin crystal — but I’m an unpaid opinion writer, whereas the five reporters who contributed to this Wall Street Journal article about what could be one of the more important financial incidents in a year that hasn’t yet been boring get paid to go out and report the news.  That means not just talking to sources, but getting them to go on the record — and when they won’t go on the record, it means finding more sources who will.  It means telling a story that makes sense, and that’s credible, and that can be tracked and proven.

It also means reporting without a pre-set agenda.  Consider these three paragraphs:

Reorganizing three auto makers on three continents could move the world-wide car industry a big step toward the kind of large-scale consolidation that long has been overdue. For years, auto makers have struggled with excess capacity that has fostered intense price competition and squeezed profits.

The problem has festered because stronger car makers have steadily added plants while governments often have stepped in to prop up ailing car companies to preserve jobs.

Any bid to restructure three auto makers is likely to prove highly complex and risky for the companies involved and the Obama administration. Chrysler is in such bad shape precisely because its cross-border merger with Daimler AG ended in failure after eight years.

That may all be true, but I have no idea who’s claiming it.  Who says consolidation is long overdue?  The reporters?  Half of the reporters?  An unnamed source?  The Wall Street Journal itself?

Hundreds of experts exist in the U.S. who would have been willing to assist in this story, even on a Thursday when there’s good new T.V. to watch.  Likewise, though perhaps no one directly involved with the ongoing negotiations might be willing to go on the record, official sources at all of the companies involved get paid to answer media inquiries, and I bet even their non-denial denials of the statements above would have told us something.

Beyond even that, every time the government thinks about making a deal, a tree dies.  There’s paper out there.  Someone must have been willing to hand over a report or a sketch of where things could be headed.  Someone must be already working on the court filing for Chrysler.

I agree whole-heartedly with Glenn Greenwald that anonymity is being granted all too often these days, and I think we’re in more danger of being complacent about it when it appears in an article full of numbers and semi-familiar economic arguments.  The more complex the argument, the more carefully it should be explained.  The more controversial the event, the higher the bar for granting anonymity.

The more I read of the Wall Street Journal, the more frustrated I get.