The Accidental Press Critic: Newsroom Ethnography and Resistance to Self-Criticism and Management Change at the New York Times in 1974

Abstract

In the late 1960s, the New York Times granted the business and organizational scholar Chris Argyris unprecedented access to its newsroom and the newspaper’s management, agreeing to let Argyris assess the paper’s leadership structures and to make recommendations. Argyris found the Times to be the most sclerotic, unchangeable organization he had ever worked with, and the newspaper abandoned the idea of adopting his reforms. Nevertheless, Argyris ended up forcing the Times to examine itself when the book he wrote about his experiences—which he published without revealing the newspaper’s name—was decoded by a journalism review called (MORE). Though his press criticism was accidental, Argyris’s work still fits squarely in the traditions of newsroom ethnography and in Wendy Wyatt’s discourse model of press criticism.

Notes

1 Gay Talese, The Kingdom and the Power: Behind the Scenes at the New York Times: The Institution That Influences the World (New York: World Publishing Company, 1969).

2 Gaye Tuchman, Making News: A Study in the Construction of Reality (New York: Free Press, 1978).

3 Herbert Gans, Deciding What’s News: A Study of CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News, Newsweek, and Time (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2004; originally published by Random House, 1979).

4 Mark Fishman, Manufacturing the News (Austin: University of Texas, 1980).

5 See, for two prime examples, C. W. Anderson, Rebuilding the News: Metropolitan Journalism in the Digital Age (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2014); and Nikki Usher, Making News at the New York Times (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2014).

6 Simon Cottle, “New(s) Times: Towards a ‘Second Wave’ of News Ethnography,” Communications 25 (2000): 19–41; and Ida Willig, “Newsroom Ethnography in a Field Perspective,” Journalism 14, no. 3 (2012): 372–387.

7 See, for example, “Why Hundreds of New York Times Employees Staged a Walkout,” by Samantha Schmidt. Washington Post, June 30, 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/06/30/the-new-york-times-is-eliminating-its-copy-editing-desk-so-hundreds-of-employees-walked-out/; “New York Times Staffers Stage Walkout in Support of Copy Editors,” by Julia Horowitz, CNNMoney, June 29, 2017, http://money.cnn.com/2017/06/29/media/new-york-times-copy-editor-walkout/index.html; “‘Death Panels’ to Break Pink-slip News to Dozens of NY Times Copy Editors,” by Keith J. Kelly, New York Post, July 11, 2017, http://nypost.com/2017/07/11/death-panels-to-break-pink-slip-news-to-dozens-of-ny-times-copy-editors/; and “The Agony and Anxiety of the New York Times,” by Joe Pompeo, Vanity Fair, July 24, 2017, https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/07/the-agony-and-the-anxiety-of-the-new-york-times.

8 Chris Argyris, Behind the Front Page: Organizational Self-renewal in a Metropolitan Newspaper (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass: 1974).

9 David M. Rubin, “Behind the Front Page,” (MORE): A Journalism Review, November 1974, p. 7.

10 To be sure, though, the book has not been completely ignored. It was, for example, a major source for Michael Socolow in his history of the creation of the New York Times Op-Ed page. The editorial struggles over the inception of that “new feature” occupy, in a coded manner, a large part of Argyris’s book. Michael J. Socolow, “A Profitable Public Sphere: The Creation of the New York Times Op-Ed Page,” Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 87, no. 2 (2010): 281–296. Susan E. Tifft and Alex S. Jones also briefly tell the story of Argyris’s newsroom intervention as a part of their history of the Times: The Trust: The Private and Powerful Family behind the New York Times (New York: Little, Brown, 1999), 461–468.

11 Kevin Lerner, “A System of Self-correction: A. M. Rosenthal, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Press Criticism, and the Birth of the Contemporary Newspaper Correction in the New York Times,” Journalism History, January 2017.

12 The best argument for this point of view is found in Dane S. Claussen, Anti-Intellectualism in American Media: Magazines and Higher Education (New York: Peter Lang, 2003).

13 Richard Hofstadter, Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (New York: Vintage, 1963).

14 Daniel Rigney, “Three Kinds of Anti-Intellectualism: Rethinking Hofstadter,” Sociological Inquiry 61, no. 4 (1991): 434–451.

15 For example, see Leon Sigal, Reporters and Officials: The Organization and Politics of Newsmaking (Washington, DC: Heath, 1973); Allan Rachlin, News as Hegemonic Reality: American Political Culture and the Framing of News Accounts (New York: Praeger, 1988); or Gaye Tuchman, Making News: A Study in the Construction of Reality (New York: Free Press, 1980).

16 Kevin Lerner, “Abe Rosenthal’s Project X: The Editorial Process Leading to Publication of the Pentagon Papers,” edited by Bruce J. Schulman and Julian E. Zelizer, Media Nation: The Political History of News in Modern America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 2017, 144–159).

17 Rigney, 444.

18 James W. Carey, “Journalism and Criticism: The Case of an Undeveloped Profession,” Review of Politics 36, no. 2 (1974): 227–249.

19 Ibid., 245.

20 Ibid.

21 This history of press criticism is drawn from the following sources: Lee Brown, The Reluctant Reformation: on Criticizing the Press in America (New York: David McKay, 1974); Tom Goldstein, Killing the Messenger: 100 Years of Media Criticism, revised edition (New York: Columbia, 2007); Yasmine Tarek Dabbous, “‘Blessed Be the Critics of Newspapers’: Journalistic Criticism of Journalism” 1865–1930” (PhD diss., Louisiana State University, 2010); Marion Tuttle Marzolf, Civilizing Voices: American Press Criticism 1880–1950 (New York: Longman, 1991); and Arthur S. Hayes, Press Critics Are the Fifth Estate: Media Watchdogs in America (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2008).

22 Wyatt, Wendy. Critical Conversations: A Theory of Press Criticism (Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 2007).

23 Wyatt, 148.

24 Carey, 234.

25 Michael Schudson, Discovering the News: A Social History of American Newspapers (New York: Basic Books, 1978), 160–194.

26 Ibid., 7.

27 Argyris, ix.

28 Ibid.

29 Argyris, x.

30 Alfred Balk, A Free and Responsive Press (New York: Twentieth Century Fund, 1972).

31 Lerner, “Abe Rosenthal’s Project X.”

32 Ibid., xi.

33 Ibid., x.

34 Ibid., xiv.

35 Preliminary report of New York Times study by Chris Argyris. New York Times Company Records, A. M. Rosenthal Papers, box 2, folder: Argyris, Chris (Prof.) 1968–1975, New York Public Library.

36 Memo from James Reston to A. M. Rosenthal, September 19, 1969. New York Times Company Records, A. M. Rosenthal Papers, box 2, folder: Argyris, Chris (Prof.) 1968–1975, New York Public Library.

37 Letter from Chris Argyris to A. O. Sulzberger. November 6, 1968. New York Times Company Records, A. M. Rosenthal Papers, box 2, folder: Argyris, Chris (Prof.) 1968–1975, New York Public Library.

38 Argyris, p. 177.

39 Socolow.

40 Letter from A. M. Rosenthal to Chris Argyris, May 15, 1973. New York Times Company Records, A. M. Rosenthal Papers, box 2, folder: Argyris, Chris (Prof.) 1968–1975, New York Public Library.

41 Letter from Harding Bancroft to Chris Argyris, June 13, 1973. New York Times Company Records, A. M. Rosenthal Papers, box 2, folder: Argyris, Chris (Prof.) 1968–1975, New York Public Library.

42 Memo from A. M. Rosenthal to Harding Bancroft, July 16, 1973. New York Times Company Records, A. M. Rosenthal Papers, box 2, folder: Argyris, Chris (Prof.) 1968–1975, New York Public Library.

43 Bancroft to Argyris, June 13, 1973.

44 Letter from A. M. Rosenthal to Chris Argyris, July 23, 1973. New York Times Company Records, A. M. Rosenthal Papers, box 2, folder: Argyris, Chris (Prof.) 1968–1975, New York Public Library.

45 Rubin, “Behind the Front Page,” 7.

46 David Rubin, interview with the author, October 19, 2011.

47 Rubin, “Behind the Front Page,” 7.

48 Memo from Harding Bancroft to Sulzberger, Oakes, Rosenthal, Veit, December 4, 1973. New York Times Company Records, A. M. Rosenthal Papers, box 2, folder: Argyris, Chris (Prof.) 1968–1975, New York Public Library.

49 Cover, (MORE): A Journalism Review, November 1974.

50 Rubin, “Behind the Front Page,” 8–9.

51 Memo from John B. Oakes to Harding Bancroft, October 8, 1974. New York Times Company Records, A. M. Rosenthal Papers, box 2, folder: Argyris, Chris (Prof.) 1968–1975, New York Public Library.

52 Letter from Ray Jenkins to A. M. Rosenthal and enclosures, undated. New York Times Company Records, A. M. Rosenthal Papers, box 2, folder: Argyris, Chris (Prof.) 1968–1975, New York Public Library.

53 Letter from AMR to Andy Fisher, dated January 3, 1975. New York Times Company Records, A. M. Rosenthal Papers, box 2, folder: Argyris, Chris (Prof.) 1968–1975, New York Public Library.

54 Letter from Argyris to AMR, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, Chairman and President; James Reston, Vice President; Sydney Gruson, Executive Vice President; Harding F. Bancroft, Vice Chairman; John Oakes, Editor, Editorial Page; November 6, 1974. New York Times Company Records, A. M. Rosenthal Papers, box 2, folder: Argyris, Chris (Prof.) 1968–1975, New York Public Library.

55 Letter from AMR to Chris Argyris (Bcc: Sulzberger, Reston, Gruson, Bancroft, Oakes), November 12, 1974. New York Times Company Records, A. M. Rosenthal Papers, box 2, folder: Argyris, Chris (Prof.) 1968–1975, New York Public Library.

56 Letter from Chris Argyris to A. M. Rosenthal, November 20, 1974. New York Times Company Records, A. M. Rosenthal Papers, box 2, folder: Argyris, Chris (Prof.) 1968–1975, New York Public Library.

57 Kevin M. Lerner, A System of Self-correction: A. M. Rosenthal, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Press Criticism, and the Birth of the Contemporary Newspaper Correction in the New York Times. Journalism History, 42, no. 4 (Winter 2017):191–200.