The New York Times is on a vendetta (again)

[greyhounds]

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/10/national/10rail.html?ei=5065&en=338bd318bdb0eb72&ex=1108616400&partner=MYWAY&pagewanted=print&position=

[Anonymous]

Actually that story is going out on most of the news agencies... But yes, they seem to need a little more fiber in their diets over at the Times. Maybe one of the Chief Editor's had some sort of traumatic experience with a toy train when he was a kid or something.

Dave
-DPD Productions - Home of the TrainTenna RR Monitoring Antenna-
http://eje.railfan.net/dpdp/

[Anonymous]

If this reporter had gone to a circus where a tiger had just devoured six schoolchildren, we'd have instead gotten an expose on the great danger of snagging posed by wood tent-stake splinters to the nylon stockings of female passerbys, as told to him by a steel tent-stake salesman. How someone can obsess over the 5% of grade-crossing fatalities in which the railroad might have a role, however small, and ignore the 95% that are entirely the fault of the motorist, defies all logic and reason. I'd call it a vendatta, too, but that would give the reporter far too much credit. Whoever is responsible for this guy -- desk editor or whatever -- should be fired for gross incompetence.

OS

[route_rock]

Smiles and says NYT fire someone for crazy reporting? Come on you guys are just seen as red staters and hicks with no culture by these people. It gets headlines and headlines sell papers.

[Anonymous]

C'mon, route_rock. What's wrong with just sticking to the subject? It's not that easy, and this has nothing to do with those useless, stupid, and mean-spirited red state/blue state labels. Let it go, friend. Ba***he story all you want. It deserves it. Ba***he paper for hiring the incompetents who ran this. But please don't blue states or red states -- because they ain't red OR blue. Last I looked, all my friends in every state came in shades of white, brown, red, yellow, and black -- and however they vote is their business, not mine.

OS

[Anonymous]

The Inspector General of the Transportation Depart issues a report critical of the Federal Railroad Administration and asks them to prepare a plan for improvement of inspection and enforcement of existing rules. This looks like a legitimate news story to me. Is there an error of fact or interpretation in this story? Do you have evidence that the NYT or Walt Bogdanich have improper motives regarding railroads?

[Train Guy 3]

For the record: When isn't the NY Time on a vendetta.

[Anonymous]

C'mon, O.S, one day you are urging calm and due process for union guys who may well have played a role in a dreadful accident, and the next you want reporters summarily fired for gross incompetence. NY Times reporters (virtually all of them) are union guys, too!
The story makes absolutely no mention of grade-crossing accidents. It takes note of the fact that a federal agency has issued a report on railraod safety, and the relation of railroads and their regulators. Why do you suppose, looking over events of the past few weeks, anybody might think that railroad safety might be a topic for review?
I don't think see evidence of a "vendetta" here, at least not by the New York Times.
Oh, and welcome to the forum, O.S. You fill a recent void.

Larry

[Anonymous]

Thanks, Larry. Don't know what void I'm filling -- or with what -- but someone else will have to do the filling pretty soon. I get to be an idle layabout for a few more days, but the bureaucracy will catch up with me shortly, pluck me out of this little vacation I lucked into because they lost track of me, fling me off onto the next assignment, and then I'll probably be back to seeing this forum once a month if I'm lucky.

But to your point. I can only assume you're pulling my leg in jest. I read the entire NY Times series on safety that led up to this article. It's all under the byline of one Walt Bogdanich. Now, I've never been in the hurly-burly of a big city daily, but I assume Mr. Bogdanich has more than an hour to reflect on each article. His editor, well, he would have an hour or two as well? Perhaps read it, go home, think about it that night, and make some final tweaks the next day? This is a major series, front-page play and all. I would HOPE they made no snap decisions on something of such grave importance.

But the railroaders in question -- I do have some experience in that field (going on 30 years), and they had no time to reflect. They did 500 to 1,000 tasks like that in their shift. Firing someone for getting one in 1,000 little tasks wrong is one thing. Firing someone who had days, weeks, months of time -- and still gets the entire project 99% wrong -- that's a no brainer. He's either a knave or a fool, and I'm getting so tired of trying to rehabilitate either kind.

Actually, I like the New York Times. I at least skim the headlines every day. They employ the best economist/columnist in the business, Paul Krugman, who I always read. The Sunday magazine is great, usually at least one excellent article I read and make copies to send to other people. That's why I'm flummoxed they could get this railroad series so utterly wrong. Well, what can I say. My organization can strive to do God's own work with one hand while simultaneously accomplishing the work of the Devil with the other, and none of us in the thick of it who see this, and are supposed to have the authority to stop it, seem to be able to pu***he energy toward the one and pull it away from the other without Herculean effort and career-ending burnout. Big organizations are sometimes referred to as steering a supertanker, or herding cats, but neither analogy comes close to the depth of the inadequacy that sneaks into any organization with more than two employees. It makes me laugh when I hear people voice their belief in government conspiracies, or announce that large corporations are on the verge of taking over the world. Maybe they really do want to take over the world, but the plan has been lost in committee since 1802.

OS

[Anonymous]

My point, OS (do you want periods in there or not?) was just that this particular story was a model of good journalism. I have previously agreed that the reporter's attention to grade crossing accidents was disproportionate. But I don't think what he has done constitutes a series, as such. He has a beat - railroad safety - and appears to write on it as the spirit moves him. So take each story as it goes.
As regards grade crossings, even if you and I "know" that 95 percent of them are totally the motorists' fault - that still leaves 5 percent. To think that this is a subject that nobody needs to worry about is to become complacent about safety.
The New York Times is not my newspaper, and I get tired of having to seem to be its defender. But the criticism of it, as seen elsewhere on this thread, is so reflexive in too many quarters, is so uninformed, and is so destructive in a lot of ways that people don't realize, that I can't just let it pass.
The New York Times is a NATIONAL newspaper. The other two primary national newspapers are USA Today and the Wall Street Journal. Unlike those two, the Times is also something of a METRO newspaper, and comes from a particular city. I believe that split personality gets hackles up in some people, like Route-Rock, because they are insecure about being looked down on by what the Iowans in The Music Man called "out-of-town-jaspers." They should get over it.
The Times is almost alone in spending the kind of money involved to send its very own reporters to Alabama or Alaska or Rome or Darfur to see what might be going on there. Everybody - red state/blue state, godless commie or Bible thumper, cattle rancher of PETA activist - pays their dollar and gets to read it. Then the Bill O'Reillys or Al Frankens of the world tell us what they think about what the reporters found out. Way too often, they don't like the picture they see, and they ba***he Times as an institution, and imply we shouldn't trust it.
What OS said for large institutions goes double for journalists. Believe me, we cannot organize a surprise party, and ever since the fall of the Soviet Union there hasn't been anybody to give us orders anyway. Individual judgment may fail in a newsroom as often as on a railroad, and some times somebody like Dan Rather does something that makes everybody in the business slap their foreheads, but overall the US media do a great job. Not perfect - if this were the journalism thread I could go on for days with what is wrong with the industry - but better than you have been giving it credit for.

Larry

[Anonymous]

Larry, see my e-mail -- we're in agreement on virtually everything except this series. Ironic.

OS

P.S.: The forum requires four characters for an ID. Thus the periods.

[Anonymous]

Be it known hereby that not all of my comments above were directed at OS, who has shown on this forum to be a careful and thoughtful reader and student of railroads - and a pleasure to read on whatever topic. I've shared with him privately (because I don't think it would be of the least interst to anybody else) where we respectfully disagree on this one.
And I also don't want a reputation as being an uncritical admirer of the New York Times. For the record: there is plenty that is wrong with it. There is plenty that is wrong with journalism in this country today. But when I am made king of the United States, I'll fix it all.