Gawker: linda greenhouse

Times In Three-Decade Spelling Scandal!

Ryan Tate — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 07:28:23 EDT

Sometimes the wheels of justice turn slowly, it's true. But it is surely unexpected that a Supreme Court justice, of all people, would have to wait so long for deliverance from reckless cruelty. Over and over and over again, year after year since 1980, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has had to endure the sight of her name carelessly rendered "Ginsberg" or some similarly awful facsimile in the pages of the Times. Would the paper deign, even once, to run a correction? No, it would not. Any formal objections were presumably, well, overruled. Until now.

Today the Times finally issued a correction for its misdeeds. The admission was attached to, of all things, a metro story about an award for Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, and how orthodox Catholics opposed the honor because of a stance the justice took on abortion. Ginsburg was mentioned in passing as "Ginsberg."

One might easily imagine a phone call or email of complaint ensued, followed by a frustrated reporter's realization he had been betrayed by his paper's own archive. Then, a few computer searches, a bit more digging to confirm there was no left-field explanation for past errors, and, finally, this:

It would be speculative to conclude that retired Times Supreme Court reporter Linda Greenhouse was largely responsible for the spelling errors, given the overlap of her lengthy tenure with the period in question. We'll presume her innocent. At least until proven guilty.

With Every Buyout, a Young Reporter Gets Wings

noelle_hancock — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 12:48:22 EDT

Should we be worried that The New York Times, Newsweek and The Washington Post are buying out their old seasoned writers and leaving behind a bunch of young reporters who possibly don't know what they're doing? "No!" says Jack Shafer. According to Slate, these voluntary buyouts (also known as "If we pay you a large sum of money, would you please leave already?") are going to end up revitalizing journalism.

See, when writers stay in their jobs for decades, the papers lose their freshness and stop innovating. In the meantime, talented young reporters are having a hard time getting hired for top positions because no one ever leaves (sort of like when you're following in the car behind an old person and they're weaving all over the road and you can't get around them).

That's right — the boomer ceiling has been keeping us down, man! After all, if Michael Jordan had never left, there wouldn't have been room for Lebron James (we're pretending that we watch sports today). Besides stifling innovation, these old sea dogs of journalism also cost news organizations shitloads of money with their overinflated salaries. Young reporters, on the other hand, come cheap.

Recently, New York Times Supreme Court reporter Linda Greenhouse
accepted a $300,000 farewell package and Newsweek's David Ansen and David Gates have taken deals as well. But it's not all "move bitch, get out the way"! Most of these graybeards wind up with a nice parting gift in the form of jobs in academia (Greenhouse is headed to Yale Law).

Shafer adds: "While I hold the 61-year-old Greenhouse in great esteem and will miss her coverage, it's worth noting that she had covered the Supremes for nearly 30 years. Disco was still big when she took the assignment. Starsky and Hutch was on television."

Laugh all you want but in 40 years, they'll be judging us for hip-hop trance mixes and Ghost Whisperer.

Linda Greenhouse Rules In Favor Of Cash

rebecca — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 12:37:49 EST

The first victim, or victor, of the New York Times buyouts is Pulitzer Prize winning legal journalist Linda Greenhouse. Greenhouse, whose overhyped news stories on the Supreme Court blockbuster summer rulings made her the Michael Bay of reporting, says she would have retired in a few years anyway. And at 61, she can already qualify for some senior citizen's discounts. But the departure comes less than two months after a public editor column parsed her marriage with preeminent military lawyer, Eugene Fidell.

Clark Hoyt found that Greenhouse's marriage had not affected her reporting, but chastised the Times for not making the implications of her marriage clearer. Still, Greenhouse couldn't have been too stoked to have the ven diagram that is her professional and private life examined in the Sunday paper.

The column was prompted by Ed Whelan, Greenhouse's blogger foe at the National Review Online, who has repeatedly accused Greenhouse of being biased. Incidentally, Whelan also broke news of her buyout yesterday afternoon.

Now the pressure is on Whelan to find a new reason to hate the next Times Supreme Court beat reporter.

NYT's Greenhouse Takes Buyout Offer [AP]

Public and Private Lives, Intersecting [NYT]

New York Times Supreme Court reporter Linda...

abalk — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 10:10:10 EDT

New York Times Supreme Court reporter Linda Greenhouse is afraid that if she appears on C-Span she might reveal the paper's secret agenda to force abortions on everyone. [NYP]