Earlier this year, the New York Times decided that readers should have the opportunity to know more about the reporters behind the stories it publishes.
Today, many of the first online bios for Times journalists sparkle with personal detail. Political reporter Robert Draper was “relieved of a few dollars by Kalashnikov-wielding men while spending a month on the Congo River.” Wellness reporter Talya Minsberg “grew up in St. Paul, Minn., and while I don’t play hockey, I do surf.” Investigative reporter Jodi Kantor is a “law school dropout and former Nazi-hunting intern.”
The goal of letting reporters’ individuality shine, the Times said, was to “bolster trust with readers by letting them know who we are and how we work.”
But in some cases, it seems a little too much personality came through for the company’s liking.
This week, the Times deleted language that several employees used in their bios to extol the work they have done with the Times Guild, the union representing newsroom employees.
Union leaders called the move “petty and absurd.”
When business reporter and Guild steward Kevin Draper published his new bio on the Times website in January, he noted that he hails from Oakland, Calif., worked for three years at Deadspin, and loves public records, court filings and tips. He added that he is an “active member of the Times Guild, our newsroom union, which advocates for members and works to ensure that The Times is a fair and equitable place to work.”
Now, the language describing the union’s mission is gone. The sentence ends after “… active member of the Times Guild, our newsroom union.”
Last week, he and several other union leaders whose bios had included the “fair and equitable” language were notified that the company would be removing it; on Wednesday, the bios were edited to scrub that phrasing, the Times Guild said in a shop letter obtained by The Washington Post.
“Before publication, each bio went through an extensive editing and review process. Those words were published in our bios, and were live for months on The Times’s website,” the union letter said. “But apparently the masthead doesn’t like them.”
New York Times spokesperson Danielle Rhoades-Ha told The Post that a “handful of enhanced bios were edited for consistency in the language describing participation in outside groups and activities” and noted that “the bios can and do include reporters’ affiliations in organizations such as the Times Guild or journalism trade groups such as the National Association of Black Journalists.”
Some staffers say that the belated bio edits — apparently aimed at standardizing what staffers can and can’t share with readers — defeat the purpose of having more personalized bios.
“I chose the language specifically,” Draper told The Washington Post. He noted that the union’s work — conducting pay studies, filing labor grievances, enforcing the contract — helps ensure “that the newsroom is a place that better reflects America.”
Last year, the company and the Times Guild, which represents journalists as well as ad sales and IT workers, and security guards, reached a new contract agreement that raised the salary floor to $65,000 and banned nondisclosure agreements in cases of workplace abuse or harassment. The agreement followed a mass walkout that was the most dramatic labor action at the newspaper in a generation.
“I think it’s important to tell readers that I’m not just a guy writing stuff,” Draper said. “But that at my own workplace, I’m trying to make it a better place. …That seems relevant and good, something to make readers trust me more.”
The efforts to expand staffers’ bios are part of the Times’ ongoing efforts to build audience trust.
In 2021, the company announced the creation of what’s known as the “trust team,” designed to deepen “our audience’s trust in our mission and in the credibility of our journalism.” Efforts have included expanding datelines (“Max Bearak and Hilary Swift reported from gas terminals, pipeline corridors and wind farms across Greece”) to help readers better understand where and how information is being gathered; behind-the-scenes accounts of how stories are reported; and friendly features on different people in the newsroom.
The more readers understand who reporters are, how they work, and what they care about — the thinking goes — the more readers will be able to trust their journalism.
In some cases, journalists have used their expanded bios to overtly spell out their qualifications for the job. “I grew up an early adopter of technology …” tech columnist Brian Chen explained in his. “I started using the internet in the era of dial-up modems, AOL and Prodigy; I vividly remember the jump to broadband cable modems.”
Others profess their dedication to journalism ethics — how they dutifully consult a wide range of perspectives, how they decline to take gifts from sources. Political reporter Michael C. Bender takes pains to explain how he “never personally identified as a Democrat or Republican,” a stance he traces back to a politically neutral Midwestern childhood, where “my mom and I connected over the familial misadventures in the Zits and Calvin and Hobbes comics, not the latest Bush or Clinton scandal.”
But in their letter to management, the union argued that deleting the language about the union’s role at the New York Times runs counter to building audience trust in the Times as an institution.
“We would have thought that ‘ensuring that The Times is a fair and equitable place to work’ is a goal that we can all agree on and be proud to prioritize,” the union letter said.
