Top paper in crisis

By Kate Milner
BBC News Online, London

The New York Times is facing fresh embarrassment over the resignation of one of its top reporters, who was accused of relying too heavily on the work of a freelance journalist.

Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Rick Bragg resigned from the paper on Wednesday, after he was suspended over a story that carried his by-line but was reported largely by a freelancer.

It follows the scandal surrounding another reporter, Jayson Blair, who resigned in May after it was found he had stolen material from other papers and invented quotes.

Jayson Blair was accused of lying in his reports

The New York Times has moved to reassure its readers of its integrity, but journalists and media watchers are divided over how serious the resignations are.

Ari Goldman, associate dean of Columbia School of Journalism in New York, said the newspaper needed to be more honest with its readers.

"Clearly things have gotten out of hand," he told BBC News Online. "Standards have to be clarified.

"Readers should know what they're getting as a consumer."

The New York Times suspended Mr Bragg last week, reportedly for a fortnight, over his handling of a story on oyster fishermen in Florida.

Mr Bragg was credited with writing the story, but it transpired that a freelance journalist carried out much of the reporting and interviews.

A spokeswoman for the New York Times, Catherine Mathis, said that "given the amount of reporting the freelancer did, he should have also had a by-line on the story".

'Overblown' fuss

It is being seen as a very different case to that of 27-year-old Jayson Blair, who filed dozens of stories supposedly from around the United States, while often not leaving New York.

But the Mr Bragg revelations have raised the question of how news organisations should treat the work of freelancers.

Professor Goldman said he believed readers deserved better labelling of articles, so readers could trust what they were being told.

Rick Bragg's comments about using stringers are an insult to all journalists

Charles Hoskinson, AFP

But media watcher Nick Denton, who runs a Manhattan web log magazine Gawker, said the furore over Mr Bragg was "hugely overblown."

"The New York Times is one of the most upright and accurate newspapers in the western world," he told BBC News Online.

He said there was a danger that over-scrutiny of journalists could make for "boring" newspapers.

"There'd be no-one left on Fleet Street if you applied these standards to the British press," he said.

Mr Bragg himself has been quoted in newspaper reports as saying it was routine for New York Times journalists to rely heavily on freelancers.

"He did a wonderful job," Mr Bragg told the Associated Press news agency, referring to J Wes Yoder, the recent college graduate who volunteered to work for him.

But many fellow journalists are up in arms over his suggestion that it is common to rely on freelancers.

"Rick Bragg's comments about using stringers are an insult to all journalists who regularly put themselves in dangerous and uncomfortable situations to get stories, especially those of us who have covered the recent conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan," said Charles Hoskinson, a Washington-based correspondent for the French news agency AFP.

In a letter posted on the website of Poynter Institute, a journalism school, he said the New York Times "should be condemned for the shameless, hypocritical exploitation of young, ambitious journalists.

"Instead of taking their work - sometimes without pay - and using it to enhance the reputation of people who are apparently too burned out to cover the news the right way, the Times should have hired them and proudly displayed their by-lines."

Other journalists have written to the website to defend the New York Times reporter.

"Rick Bragg did what he was paid to do. In words, he brought you life," said Mike Oliver, a regional editor for the Oakland Tribune in California.

Loren Giglione, Dean of Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, Chicago, said all news organisations would now have to look at their policies regarding freelancers.

"There's a kind of hubris and certain lack of humility that news organisations need to think about," he told BBC News Online.

The New York Times has assigned a committee to review newsroom policies, including the use of freelancers.

Meanwhile, Rick Bragg plans to write two books, saying he planned to leave the New York Times later this year anyway.