Editorials

What is authorship after all, I wondered, as I pondered Jayson Blair, formerly of the New York Times, surfing the Internet for juicy details for his stories. 

And then there’s Rick Bragg, also of the Times, who used reporting by a freelancer in a story without giving him credit. Blair got fired for his sins (which included more than surfing). Bragg was suspended last week; he resigned Wednesday.  

Both had violated the Times’ definition of byline integrity: they had used other people’s work and claimed it as their own.  

Reflecting on their fates, I can’t help thinking there’s something quaint about the notion of a journalist reporting and writing a piece all by himself. As a magazine writer and editor and book author, I’ve come to see writing as a group process. Behind every byline there are silent partners: researchers, editors, fact-checkers, spouses, friends, colleagues, lawyers —and Web sites.  

The bigger the publication and the more ambitious the writing, the bigger the platoon of unacknowledged authorial hands. (Doris Kearns Goodwin employs researchers; I borrow an occasional graduate student from the departmental pool.)  

Let’s face it: writing for publication is a complex social act, and the Internet has increased its complexity. It is easier now to draw on other people’s work—to locate it and appropriate it (a quick cut and paste).  

We may have already moved into a postmodern age of authorship, where we can never really be sure who wrote what. Bylines may be quaint holdovers, like the Doric columns on postmodern buildings.  

If that’s the case, we do face a real problem. Bylines are more than ways to claim intellectual property. They are assertions of authenticity. Lending her byline, the writer lends her personal authority to what she says. The more she relies on hidden sources, the less we may trust her.  

But in addition to the byline, there’s another guarantee of authenticity: the publisher — the newspaper, the magazine, the publishing house. The publisher assures readers that the group process used to produce the work under its name is a careful process. In our times, when journalism is big business, these institutions’ integrity is more important to us all than byline integrity.  

That is why the trouble at the Times is so troubling: the Times’ own rules for journalistic integrity seemed so out of touch with these Times reporters’ actual practice. Nobody seemed to be minding the store. 

Even if the Times improves its oversight, that may not be a permanent fix. Things are changing too fast. Rules that made sense yesterday don’t always make sense today. (When most journalists do most of their reporting by telephone, what exactly does “dateline integrity” mean?) Our journalistic conventions are having a hard time keeping up with changing technology. What scholars call the “social construction of truth” is taking on a whole, and often scary, new meaning.  

Carol Polsgrove is author of “It Wasn’t Pretty Folks, But Didn’t We Have Fun? Surviving the Sixties with Esquire’s Harold Hayes,” published by RDR Books in Oakland. A former East Bay resident, she teaches journalism at Indiana University.