Beltway Snark

News doesn’t go on the front page anymore, op-ed pieces about news do:

While The Times was aggressive with its coverage on the Web, it was slow to fully engage the Wright story in print and angered some readers by putting opinion about it on the front page — a review by the television critic of his appearances on PBS, at an N.A.A.C.P. convention and at the National Press Club — before ever reporting in any depth what he actually said, how it squared with reality and what it might mean as Democrats ponder Obama as their potential nominee.

Carol Hebb of Narberth, Pa., spoke for many when she wrote that she found the newspaper’s initial coverage “very strange.” If editors did not think Wright’s remarks were newsworthy enough to be on the front page, she asked, why did they put the review by Alessandra Stanley there? “I was very surprised that her piece was not accompanied by a ‘factual’ article reporting the content of Mr. Wright’s comments more completely and perhaps adding some meaningful context.”

Stanley’s review called Wright “the compelling but slightly wacky uncle who unsettles strangers but really just craves attention.” The pastor, Stanley wrote, “doesn’t hate America, he loves the sound of his own voice.” Virtually the identical opinion could be found that same day on the Op-Ed page, in a column by Bob Herbert, who said Wright was “living a narcissist’s dream.” The ink-on-paper Times did not deal with Wright’s discussion of the “multilayered and rich tapestry of the black religious experience” or his theology of liberation, transformation and reconciliation until today, elsewhere in this section.

Peter Weltner of San Francisco wrote that he wished The Times had examined what he said were falsehoods in Wright’s remarks — like the claim that blacks and whites learn with different parts of their brains — instead of “merely guessing why Mr. Wright said it.”

And why would they do such a thing? Because, unlike last year, Wright just isn’t that newsworthy anymore.

Wright — he of the “God damn America” sound bites on YouTube — came back onto the scene a week ago Thursday, when PBS released excerpts of an interview with Bill Moyers, to be broadcast the following night. That evening, Charles Gibson led ABC’s World News with the interview, and it was chewed over extensively on CNN, Fox News and MSNBC.

The next day’s Times carried a short account of the Moyers interview in The Caucus column on Page A24, saying that Wright did not apologize or back away from remarks suggesting that Americans bore some responsibility for the Sept. 11 attacks. There was no analysis and no follow-up after the full interview was broadcast that evening.

“We didn’t think that he made that much news that was relevant to Obama, which is, after all, why we’re paying attention to him at all,” said Richard Stevenson, the editor in charge of presidential campaign coverage. But as Obama struggles to win the support of white blue-collar voters likely to be offended by Wright’s most extreme views, having the clergyman back on stage was potentially a big issue, and the PBS interview was just the first stop in a three-city tour building to a crescendo at the National Press Club.

This is the kicker for me:

Wright spoke at 8:30 in the morning. Coverage on the Web site of The Times was fast and fairly thorough — a long entry in the Caucus blog, an article including substantial quotations from the speech, more than five minutes of audio reporting and analysis by Kate Phillips, the online politics editor, and full video of the speech and Q. and A. But the story presented challenges for editors of the printed newspaper. By the next morning, it would be nearly 24 hours old, and most readers would have at least some knowledge of it from the Internet, television or radio. “We felt we had to do something more elevated and different,” said Gerry Mullany, Stevenson’s deputy.

Bill Keller, the executive editor, and Jill Abramson, the managing editor for news, decided to take Stanley’s review, pungent and colorful, to the front page and to put a news article about the speech and reaction to it inside. Obama spoke later in the day, and he became the top of the news article, causing Wright’s actual remarks to be condensed into four paragraphs in the middle of it.

Keller, Abramson and Stevenson said they wished that more of Wright’s words had gotten into the paper. But Keller and Abramson defended the front-page review. “This was a story that was playing out on TV, and we have a reviewer who is a smart viewer,” Keller said. Abramson said, “She had a lot of interesting things to say that didn’t go over the news-opinion divide.”

No wonder nobody wants to read the NYT anymore. The Grey Lady has gone senile.