New York Times Metro Section Change Sparks Journalist Twitter War

Liz Spayd’s column on paper’s overhaul vexes columnist Murray Weiss

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When New York Times Public Editor Liz Spayd wrote about the overhaul of the paper’s Metro section last week, she couldn’t have known she was laying a justification for Twitter war.

The first shots were fired when longtime New York columnist Murray Weiss suggested the Times was “giving up on local news for global trends,” and asked his followers for their thoughts on the matter.

Times Deputy Metro Editor Dean Chang responded, “We are not giving up on local news. Repeat: We are not giving up on local news.” Weiss, who has held positions at the New York Post and the New York Daily News but never the Times, fired back sarcastically, “And there is no gambling in this casino?”

Chang reiterated that the Metro section still plans to cover local news, to which Weiss responded by writing, “Let your public editor in on the news.”

“When 90 percent of your audience lives outside New York, it makes sense to skip the small stuff and write stories with the kind of wattage that attracts attention from a farther distance. Something akin to the way The New Yorker approaches news: Its writers don’t land on any particular subject often, but when they do you remember it. The thing is, it’s not easy to be The New Yorker. It’s easy to stake that out as an ambition but not so easy to execute,” Spayd wrote in the Times column that described the paper’s Metro section changes. “And the new approach carries some risks.”

Chang sent another tweet, defending Spayd’s column.

“She had it right, Fewer stories, not no stories … Consequential, not incremental. The takeaway on this is skewed,” he wrote.

Weiss didn’t let it go: “Look forward to public editor ‘incrementally’ clarifying her ‘consequential’ column to avoid further skewing.”

“Murray, you’re a smart guy. You read that column and think that we’re not going to cover NYC anymore? Really?” Chang asked.

Metro Editor Wendell Jamieson tried to clarify the situation to Politico’s Morning Media.

“We are not cutting back on our New York coverage, but we are rethinking how we do it,” Jamieson told Politico. “Does the old model of who-what-where-when journalism work? Or do we dig deeper, look for larger themes, and maybe take a little longer? Do we accept that we might have fewer headlines? Those are the changes I want to make. I don’t promise to have all the answers. I’m a life-long New Yorker and I’m in this business because it was my life’s dream to write about and cover New York City. I am not being disingenuous when I say I think this will make our report better.”

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