Three Days in the Fishbowl, and Here to Tell the Tale

September 6, 2012, 12:02 pm

By MARGARET SULLIVAN

“Welcome to the fishbowl,” the corporate spokeswoman Eileen Murphy told me a few weeks back when I was named public editor at The New York Times. She was right. The scrutiny began immediately, in the form of interviews, commentary from pundits, welcoming messages on Twitter and the dredging up of old stories I'd written and forgotten.

But the spotlight on the fishbowl (I'm enjoying my mixed metaphor, so leave me be) grew brighter this week as I began the job. After my first official communication on Twitter, in which I used a Bob Dylan quote, several witty responders wrote back, asking if I were Jonah Lehrer in disguise.

More substantively, many readers and some media critics commented on my first two blog posts â€" one about fact-checking, the other about the coverage of gender issues.

I'd like to share with you a few of those responses, because it's important to me that this effort be a two-way street, or maybe even one of those insane intersections where traffic is going every which way.

It's not about me handing down pronouncements, although that's sure to happen from time to time, but about a continuing conversation about journalism - including, but not limited to, The Times's journalism.

Erik Wemple, who writes a media blog for The Washington Post, gave me credit for having “a nose for news,” but took issue with the underlying logic of my first post. He was not alone in saying that I oversimplified, or just misunderstood, Jack Shafer's stance on fact-checking. (Whatever Mr. Wemple says about me, I'll always be grateful to him because it was in his May 21 blog post that I learned of my predecessor A rthur S. Brisbane's plans to retire as public editor; two months later, after a rigorous process and a few sleepless nights, I had a job that I'd always thought was one of the most interesting positions in American journalism.)

The Reuters financial blogger Felix Salmon on Wednesday showed his perception of the direction I seemed to be taking. “Less judge than litigator,” he wrote on Twitter. I hadn't thought about it that way, but I do come from a family of lawyers, so it may not be surprising. I'll explain my approach to the public editor's job in my first print column in the Sunday Review section.

Megan McCarthy of The New York Observer noted the relatively wide net I seem to be casting. And many, many readers welcomed the discussion about truth, fact-checking, the need for context and the subject of “false balance” in news stories. There was so much interest in that last point that I've decided to take a deeper look at it in another print column very soon.

Of all the responses, I probably was most pleased with the one by Stephanie Haberman of Mashable, who describes herself as a “breaking news junkie.” She wrote: “O.K., fine, I'll read @Sulliview's post now instead of later, Internet.”