TIMES: NEWARK NEED NOT APPLY
Journalists blast NY Times editor
Sergio R. Bichao
Issue date: 2/27/06 Section: News
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- Dean Demands Apology From NY Times (March 6)
- The RU Screw: New Brunswick Profs Back Times (March 6)
Top media ethics experts around the country blasted a New York Times editor for denying a Rutgers-Newark student an internship because one of his professors wrote magazine columns critical of the Times.
In a Feb. 1 e-mail to R-N journalism student Kejal Vyas, Times senior editor Nancy Sharkey said her newspaper would "go elsewhere" in New Jersey to find students.
"Based on what [Prof.] Allan Wolper has written about us, I cannot imagine that he would want one of his students to intern here," she wrote.
Although Times executives said Sharkey was being "facetious," the editor repeated her comment a second time to Wolper when the journalism professor and award-winning columnist called to ask about her e-mail.
Gary Hill, the ethics committee chairman at the Society for Professional Journalists, said Sharkey's comment was tantamount to "stifling free speech."
"It is surprising that an editor that high up in an organization known for its sophistication would put something like that in an e-mail," said Hill, who is also a news manager at KSTP-TV in St. Paul/Minneapolis.
"You should know better, even if is is what you're thinking."
Erik Ugland, head of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication's ethics division, and the media law and ethics professor at Marquette University, described Sharkey's comment being "at the very least extraordinarily unprofessional behavior."
"This is a profession where there is a tradition of shared criticism, embracing criticism and not seeking to impose punishments on those who criticize us," said Ugland.
Sharkey's snide e-mail outraged officials at Rutgers-Newark, who say they plan to respond to the Times in writing.
Provost Steven Diner, the top administrator of the Newark campus, was shocked "that an editor of the nation's premier newspaper would act to inhibit academic freedom."
"Newspapers, like universities, should cherish the free exchange of ideas. The e-mail to Kejal Vyas from Nancy Sharkey sends a message that students who want to work for the New York Times should not take courses from Prof. Wolper," said Diner.
Wolper, who responded to the incident in his "Ethics Corner" column for Editor & Publisher last week, said this is a "civil rights issue" that goes beyond media ethics.
"You don't tell people you don't agree with to 'stop criticizing my paper or I'm going to go after your students,'" he said.
Vyas sent Sharkey a "diplomatic" e-mail after her rejection, saying he found it "very unfair for her to shut the door on me because of Prof. Wolper."
"I told her that I was a student of Wolper's but I am by no means a disciple of his. We are actually two different people," said Vyas, who is currently finishing a year-long study-abroad program in India.
Vyas said Sharkey responded with a list of reasons for her rejection, including that she wasn't sure whether there would be an internship program in the fall; that he couldn't participate in the Spring internship because he's studying in India until March; and that the Times is only accepting graduate students.
Sharkey did not respond to six messages left on her voicemail and an e-mail seeking comment, but Times spokeswoman Catherine Mathis and assistant managing editor William E. Schmidt reiterated that the new policy to only accept graduate students was the real reason for rejecting Vyas.
"We are working with Rutgers. No one is getting blacklisted or black balled," said Schmidt.
"[Sharkey] has said she was being facetious in that e-mail and she told us she regretted making that statement."
Wolper, however, said Times executives are trying to re-write what happened.
"There is no question about what happened and they're not trying to take it back and they have not apologized to the student," said Wolper.
"She said on the record that because a professor wrote some articles critical of the Times then those students would not be given internships. That is what that person said."
Wolper, who teaches reporting and media ethics classes at Rutgers-Newark, said Sharkey's e-mail to Vyas happened just hours after he called the Times seeking comment for his Feb. 7 column rapping the Times for not revealing in its coverage of a Madison Square Garden sex harassment suit in which one of its sports reporters is a "central figure."
His past columns have put the Times on blast for allowing a reporter to write a book that was partly edited by the CIA; approving an ad for a drug when a Page One story reported on its serious side effects; having "weak coverage" of steroid use among baseball players and wondering whether that was due to the company's part ownership of the Boston Red Sox; and allowing reporter Judith Miller to release her notes to federal investigators.
"I think that it definitely had a lot to do with Wolper's columns," Vyas said. "Nancy Sharkey gave me a bunch of reasons as to why she was rejecting me after my diplomatic response to her but I think she was just trying to cover up for herself."
TIMES DEFENDS
Officials at the New York Times say that Sharkey's comment in the e-mail was "facetious" and that it does not reflect the Times hiring policy.
Schmidt claims Vyas was rejected because he was an undergraduate and applied too late to be considered for the spring internship program anyway.
The current program - which places students in five of the Times Metro bureaus, including Newark - is on trial run and only graduate students are eligible. Schmidt said last week.
Two years ago, however, the program was open to undergraduates in their senior year. In fact, two Rutgers-Newark students were accepted into the program and wrote close to 20 articles for the Times.
But in 2003, the program was suspended because Times officials believed it lacked adequate supervision and failed to meet "obligations relating to [the Times'] labor contract with the Newspaper Guild," Times spokeswoman Catherine Mathis said.
According to Wolper, who was the internship coordinator at the time, the Times was not paying the students for their work.
Schmidt said the paper is now trying to make the internship more "formal" in order to prevent abuses like those committed by Rick Bragg, the disgraced Times New Orleans correspondent who was caught passing the work of interns and stringers as his own.
"What we are trying to do is to make this internship something more meaningful rather than the ad hoc arrangements between the bureaus and the schools that existed before," he said.
If the current program is successful, the Times may invite undergraduates to apply in the fall, Schmidt said.
But both Wolper and Vyas say that if that was in fact the reason for the rejection, then Sharkey should have stated so in her first e-mail to him.
Instead, Sharkey told Vyas that the Times "may have a semester-long internship in the fall" and asked him for names of journalism professors with whom she could discuss the program.
"It looked promising because she sounded like they were honestly looking to fill that slot," Vyas said. "But then, after Wolper's name came up, it was like 'no more fall internship.'"
Wolper said the Times is trying to "pretend like nothing never happened."
"What the New York Times is doing is what they accused the Bush administration of doing - dissembling information," he said.
"There is no question about what happened. They have not apologized to the student and it's abusive what they're doing to Kejal."
SPJ's Garry Hill said the Time's response to the incident has been "inadequate," adding that trying to "explain it away as a joke is not going cut it."
"It would strike me that an apology is in order if this was in fact facetious. And they should say so directly, not through the communications person," Hill said.
Wolper said nobody at the Times has called either him or anyone else in the Rutgers-Newark journalism department to apologize or to say that Newark students are welcome to apply.
Adding insult to injury, members of the Newark faculty say Times editors further snubbed Newark by announcing last week that Sharkey will visit the rivaling New Brunswick campus to recruit students there.
Each Rutgers campus has its own journalism program with separate funding and separate faculty.
"Vyas was never a student at New Brunswick," said Robert Snyder, former director of the R-N journalism major. "The Times ought to be making efforts to set things right for students who come from Rutgers-Newark, instead they chose to respond to the wrong campus."
Schmidt said that he was "unaware of the politics at Rutgers" and that the two campuses had separate programs.
As of press time Sunday night, neither Snyder nor Wolper had been contacted by the Times to send recruiters to Newark.
Wolper said he will continue to call attention to the situation until the Times apologizes and makes it clear that his students will be treated fairly.
"This is not about me, it's about what the Times may be doing to my students."
Sergio R. Bichao can be reached at 973.353.5023 or sbichao@gmail.com