Strangest New York Times Clarification Ever?

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


At the end of a long NYT Sunday Business section story about the unpredictable alchemy that makes a best seller—a story that centers around the tale of Random House’s Prep (a prep school coming-of-age tale written by Curtis Sittenfeld and originally titled Cipher)—comes this:

Editors’ note: The editor of the Sunday Business section is under contract to Random House and did not edit this article.

Nope, just green-lighted it and decided it should go on the section’s front page. To me, though, the strangest part about this piece is the notion that book publishing is such a crap shoot is because it is full of starry-eyed liberal arts majors, content to work for peanuts, who daren’t soil their pure souls with notions such as marketing, and that “compensation is not tied to sales.” Uh, maybe once. But you ask anyone who works in publishing or who’s written a book in the last few years and the problem is the exact opposite. Sales are completely driving the business, meaning more and more editors’ sole concern is acquisitions—there’s barely any EDITING going on any more.

(True, the acquisitions process seems to be largely driven by group think, which is why we have a ten-year run of far-too-many dysfunctional family memoirs, for example.)

The horror stories of lack of editing are legion. Book publishers almost never fact-check, so you got to find someone to do that for you. And more and more writers are hiring editors, because the ones they’ve got through the publishing house—particularly if their original editor has moved on—just can’t be bothered. One friend recalls how after toiling over a manuscript for three years, his editor gave it a quick read-through, marking it with little else than smiley faces (stuff she liked) and z’s (stuff she found boring). “Three years of my life, smiley faces and z’s.” Sadly this is hardly an isolated incident.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate