Junto Boys

Because for a long time reporters at the New York Times have been using other people's work and calling it their own, reporter Rick Bragg doesn't understand why he is suspended. He says everyone does it. It's the paper's policy.

Those things are common at the paper. Most national correspondents will tell you they rely on stringers and researchers and interns and clerks and news assistants."

Such Times stringers and interns "should get more credit for what they do," Bragg said, but in "taking feeds" from such assistants, "I have never even thought of whether or not that is proper. Maybe there is something missing in me. . . .

The thing that is missing is Bragg's concern about the work of others. He's saying that he just took the New York Times policy at face value and never questioned why someone shouldn't get credit for their work. This sounds like an odd excuse for a writer whose whole career has been considering the plights of the less fortunate. His nonfiction books about his family and growing up poor beg the reader’s empathy. Why does he have no empathy for the people who are doing the reporting on his stories? He could have gone to the editors and asked to share credit with the reporters who helped him.

"And this insanity -- this bizarre atmosphere we're moving through as if in a dream -- we're being made to feel ashamed for what was routine. . . . Reporters are being bad-mouthed daily. I hate it. It makes me sick."

Bragg has tried to resign in the past from the paper, because his diabetes makes it hard for him to travel and he already has enough money from his book sales, but Howell Raines convinced him to stay. It sounds as if Raines just wanted to keep a famous byline at the Times regardless of who was actually doing the reporting. Now that Raines' own job is in jeopardy, he'll tries to throw blame on the individuals for the policies he fostered.