Times Editor Admits Paper Went Overboard On ‘Cranky White Guy’ Alan Dershowitz
Alan Dershowitz Image by Getty Images
New York Times executive editor Dean Baquet admitted the paper has had too much coverage of lawyer Alan Dershowitz, The Daily Beast reported.
After Dershowitz, an emeritus professor at Harvard Law School, wrote an op-ed for The Hill lamenting how his liberal friends on Martha’s Vineyard shunned him for his defense of President Trump, the Times was on the case. The paper wrote four stories on Dershowitz in the past four days, spanning four desks, six bylines, and eight reporters, according to The Daily Beast.
“We are trying to increase our coverage of cranky white guys,” Baquet joked in a text message to Daily Beast reporters. “Seriously, it’s a big place and different desks made their own plans. We should have coordinated better and done fewer.”
“It’s possible to say we over-Dershed,” another Times journalist admitted. “But the whole suggestion that we were somehow sacrificing our coverage of immigration and other important issues to do Dershowitz stories is absurd.”
Dershowitz was reportedly astonished about the Times’ “over-Dershing.”
“Four stories!” Dershowitz said in a phone interview with The Daily Beast. “You’d think it would be on ‘Page Six.’ You wouldn’t think it would be on the front page of the New York Times!”
Baquet’s predecessor Jill Abramson noted that the timing of the Dersh-pocalypse corresponded with the release of Dershowitz’s new book.
She told the Daily Beast that the Times “invested certain significance” in “incredibly rarefied, silly gossip about someone, I might say, who has been a has-been ever since he left the Harvard Law School faculty. Alan Dershowitz is a has-been. Therefore he craves attention to get back into the spotlight, and the Times, for reasons I don’t completely understand, is giving him a great assist.”
Juliana Kaplan is a news intern at The Forward. Email her at [email protected] or follow her on Twitter, @julianamkaplan
Hello, fellow Forward reader! I’m Joel Brown, a Forward reader and supporter for more than 15 years, and currently the chair of the board of directors.
I’m an avid Forward reader because it ticks so many of my essential boxes: excellent journalism, Jewish focus and diverse viewpoints. In today’s political climate, what I most appreciate is the Forward’s independence — made possible by the generosity of its membership.
The Forward is committed to bringing you unbiased, nuanced Jewish news. From my position as board chair, I see an exciting future as we expand our position as the definitive independent voice of contemporary American Judaism.
That’s why I’m paying it Forward, by matching $36,000 of reader gifts. It’s an investment in the Forward’s newsroom, to continue telling the American Jewish story with truth and independence.
— Joel Brown, Forward board chair
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
