Howell Raines

Howell Hiram Raines (born February 5, 1943 in Birmingham, Alabama) was Executive Editor of the New York Times from 2001 until he left in 2003 in the wake of the Jayson Blair scandal. In 2008, he became a contributing editor for Condé Nast Portfolio, writing the magazine's media column; the magazine folded in 2009.

Early career

Raines earned a bachelor's degree from Birmingham-Southern College in 1964 and later a master's in English from The University of Alabama. The University of Alabama also awarded him an honorary doctorate in 1993. In September of 1964, Raines began his newspaper career as a reporter for the Birmingham Post-Herald in Alabama. He also reported for WBRC-TV in Birmingham. After a year as a reporter at the Birmingham News, Raines became political editor of the Atlanta Constitution in 1971. He left that post in 1976 to become political editor at the St. Petersburg Times.

The New York Times

Raines' affiliation with the New York Times began in 1978, when he joined as a national correspondent based in Atlanta. By 1979, Raines was the bureau chief in Atlanta, a position he held until 1981, when he became a national political correspondent. By the next year, Raines had been promoted to a White House correspondent for The Times. He advanced to a management role in 1985, becoming deputy Washington editor. In 1987, Raines transferred to London and worked as the newspaper's London bureau chief. The next year, he returned to Washington D.C. to become the Washington bureau chief. In 1992, he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing. His longest lasting assignment within The Times began in 1993, when he left Washington for New York to become the paper's editorial page editor, a position he held for eight years. The aggressive, colloquial style of his editorials, especially in criticizing President Clinton during the Monica Lewinsky scandal, drew widespread notice and a measure of criticism, not least because they departed markedly from the considered tone for which Times' editorials had traditionally been known.

Raines was appointed Executive Editor in September 2001, serving until May 2003, when controversy stemming from the Jayson Blair scandal led to his removal. A Times internal investigation revealed that 36 of the 73 national stories Blair filed with the paper over a six-month period were marred by faked deadlines or signs of plagiarism. Raines was faulted for continuing to publish Blair months after the paper's metro editor, Jonathan Landman, sent him a memo urging him that "to stop Jayson from writing for The Times. Right now."

The Blair inquiry soon exposed widespread discontent among Times staffers over Raines' management style, which was described as arbitrary and heavy-handed. During a closed meeting among Times reporters the deputy metropolitan editor, Joe Sexton, was quoted as telling Raines and the managing editor, Gerald Boyd, "I believe that at a deep level you guys have lost the confidence of many parts of the newsroom... People feel less led than bullied." On another occasion Jerelle Kraus, art director for the newspaper's weekend section, was quoted as saying, "I hope things settle down and we get a decent executive editor who's reasonable. Howell Raines is someone who is feared."

His own investigation led the paper's owner, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, Jr., to the conclusion that Raines had alienated most of the New York and Washington bureaus. Raines' resignation, along with that of Gerald Boyd, was announced in The Times on June 5, 2003. Joseph Lelyveld, who had been Executive Editor of The Times from 1994 to 2001, agreed to replace Raines on an interim basis. On July 14, 2003, it was announced that Bill Keller had been chosen as Raines' permanent replacement. In an interview that aired on the Charlie Rose show the following July 11, Raines admitted that Sulzberger had "asked [him] to step aside."

Later activities

Raines reviewed his tenure as Executive Editor in an extended, 21,000-word piece published in the Atlantic Monthly. In it he claimed that he was hired by Sulzberger in the shared conviction that The Times had grown complacent and no longer functioned as a meritocracy in the assignment of stories to its reporters.

In the private meeting with reporters that he called and during which he announced Keller's succession to Raines' old job, Sulzberger, however, apparently denied ever holding such a view. Raines stood by his account and implied that Sulzberger was retreating from the opinion he says that he and the owner shared at the time of his promotion. "In the only interview I have given on the Jayson Blair affair, I spoke on the Charlie Rose show of the resistance I had encountered as a 'change agent' who was handpicked by the publisher to confront the newsroom's lethargy and complacency. A few days later, as he introduced my successor, Bill Keller, to the assembled staff, Arthur [Ochs Sulzbergr, Jr.] rebutted my comment by saying, 'There's no complacency here—never has been, never will be.' I can guarantee that no one in that newsroom, including Arthur himself, believed what he said… Arthur's words signaled that nothing dramatic would be done to upset the paper's cosseted world."

Raines revisited the controversy in his 2006 memoir, The One That Got Away, which combines fishing stories and descriptions of his career as a journalist, with particular attention to the events preceding the Jayson Blair scandal and his own subsequent dismissal. As an account of the journalistic episode in general and, more specifically, as an attempt to favorably present his role in it, the book was tepidly received. The reviewer for the New York Times wrote, "When not spinning out his piscine adventures as parables of loss and letting go gracefully, Raines gives readers an alternately jokey and bitter account of his downfall at The Times—which may indeed be perfectly accurate, at least according to the solipsistic standards of memoir writing. But it is unsatisfactory in almost every other way."

On January 14, 2008, it was announced that Raines would become a media columnist for Condé Nast Portfolio. His first column was published in the March issue of the magazine, and analyzed the possibility of Rupert Murdoch buying, and therewith, from Raines' perspective, effectively destroying the New York Times.

Raines penned an op-ed in the March 14, 2010 edition of The Washington Post that was highly critical of Fox News Channel and of the impunity, in his view, that Fox's biased reporting largely benefits from in the journalistic community at large.

Books

In addition to The One that Got Away: A Memoir, Raines has authored a novel, Whiskey Man (1977), and two other books similar to The One That Got Away in their autobiographical focus: My Soul Is Rested: Movement Days in the Deep South Remembered (1983), and Fly Fishing Through the Midlife Crisis (1993).

External links

• Portfolio column
• Booknotes interview with Raines on Fly Fishing Through the Mid Life Crisis, May 1, 1994.
• http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2002/06/10/020610fa_fact_auletta
• A conversation with Ken Auletta about Howell Raines