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NY Times columnist: ‘I cannot believe it didn’t leak out’

Kelly McBride by Kelly McBride Published June 2, 2011 5:34 pm Updated June 3, 2011 10:26 am

Lisa Belkin, author of the Times’ parenting blog, The Motherlode, wasn’t in the newsroom Thursday morning for the announcement that Jill Abramson would become the new executive editor of The New York Times. “It was emotional and wonderful and one of the really great Times moments and I’m sorry I missed it,” she said.

Belkin marveled that the news did not leak out. “It seems like this has been under discussion for a year and I cannot believe it didn’t leak out.” If it had, she would have made a point to be there, she said by phone.

Belkin was conflicted about the significance of Abramson being the first woman to run the NY Times. “I keep teetering between, ‘This is remarkable and amazing and let’s go celebrate!’ and ‘Is this really still a big deal?’ ”

She answered her own question, “Yes, it is a big deal. This is one big one that didn’t have a woman in the job and now we do. First is always a big deal. There aren’t that many left. And the great thing is, Jill will be great. Jill was the logical person for the job. So we don’t have to deal with that at all, she was the next logical person.”

Ann Friedman, executive editor of Good Magazine, parodied The New York Times recently for its single-sex coverage of young political pundits.

Friedman, 29, is also the curator of the Lady Journos Tumblr.

“I’m surprised it’s taken this long,” she said of the fact that The New York Times will now have its first ever woman editor. “This is extremely important, especially given the media environment. Being atop the masthead means so much more than just running the paper.”

The editor of the Times is the figure head for all of journalism, she said. And these days, that means leading the industry into a future that’s going to look very different than the past.

“Editors are not behind-the-scenes figures anymore. They are public personalities,” Friedman told me by phone. “They are on Twitter and appearing on panels and writing. They are the go-to folks when you want to discuss the future of journalism.”

One of Friedman’s chief irritants is attending panel discussions about the future of journalism and seeing only white male faces on the stage.

“Now that a woman is running the Times, it should be harder to suggest that the only people who can comment on the future of media are old white guys.”

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  • Anonymous

    One thing Jill Abramson needs to ponder as the Times goes more and more screeny on us is this: Could Reading On Screens Be Inferior To Reading On Paper?
    Maybe.

    POV of danny Bloom,Tufts 1971, researcher in Taiwan

    There’s a big issue that the tech biz and NYT has so far not faced up to,according to some neuroscientists who study the brain differencesbetween reading on paper surfaces — think newspapers, magazines,book! — and reading off the glass screens of Nooks, Kindles andiPads. What leading experts in the field such as Anne Mangen in NorwayandMaryanne Wolf at Tufts University say is that the fundamentaldifferences between paper-reading and screen-reading might be so hugeas to light up different regions ofthe reading brain and that these differences need to be studied more,especially with (f)MRi and PET brain scan research.
    It’s my personal hunch as an amateur neuroscientist, based on alifetime of reading on paper and just a few years of reading offscreens, that reading on paper surfacesis vastly superior for three important things: the brain’s processingof the text being read, the brain’s memory of the information andcritical analysis of the inforrmation.I’m not talking here about the fun of flipping pages or the smell ofpaper or even the distractions of the screen’s hot links and sexypictures — or that movie you’re watching on the side window whilereading The Wrap. No, I’m saying that I believe, and that science willone day prove, that reading on paper is superior, brain-wise, toreading in a pixelated orE Ink world.
    At the heart of all my argument here, there is amensch trying not only to understand reading, but also figure outthe nuts and bolts that make up the human experience.Of course, I need to find out the real neural differences in brainchemistry regarding paper-reading and screen-reading.

     Ifind that, and I find the Nobel Prize.
    Gary Small at UCLA knows what I am talking about, too. In a LosAngeles Times interview last year, Dr Small was asked about this veryissue andif he felt that screen-reading might replace paper-reading in thefuture. The UCLA maverick said that more studies need to be done onall this, but added: “The technology train has already left thestation and there is no coming back.”
    I once asked book industry maven Mike Shatzkin about my rathereccentric views on all this, and he told mein an ensuing email: “You may very well be right about the differencesbetween paper-reading and screen-reading, in trerms ofbrain chemistry, but justas nobody in the past heeded the calls that radiation and cancer mightimpact cellphone use, do you think makers of device readers willlisten to you oreven care if you are right?”

    I think Mike is right. Nobody’s going to listen to me, and what’s evenworse, nobody cares. So goodbye, paper-reading; hello screen-reading,…..come what may!

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