More than two decades later, he entered the 43rd Street building daily, showing his ID badge and security pass to guards on duty and then taking an elevator to the third floor: the Times’ block-long newsroom of desks, where staffers sat at computers and talked on phones. He spent the next three years as a national desk editor, earning the position after working as a reporter for several smaller newspapers. 

Duane shared his insider’s perspective on “All the news that’s fit to print!” with the Goshen College campus and community in an Afternoon Sabbatical presentation on Nov. 11. The associate professor of communication at Goshen particularly addressed the issue of “who decides what is ‘news’” in the United States, and how stories are selected for the front page of the national newspaper with its significant impact on other news media.

According to the current editor of The New York Times, Bill Keller, “newsgathering is essentially a reactive process,” Duane said, and it is not the job of the media to set agenda. Keller would view reporters as eyes and ears in “the public square.” With responsibilities for writing Times news summaries, Duane would attend daily meetings when section editors “pitched their best stories” to senior editors as to what could appear on the front page. One editor, he said, likened the process of deciding the priority ranking of stories  for the front page as “cooking without a recipe.” 

The front page of the Times is a “powerful billboard,” Duane said—a mix of hard and soft news that affects how other news organizations choose what headlines to use as well as what stories Americans are talking about. Often, the news is defined by what public officials say and do, Duane said.

In an interesting exercise, Duane asked his audience of community members, students, and faculty colleagues at Goshen College to choose the day’s front page news from a list of top news stories. He then revealed the choices of the Times’ editorial staff.

He also shared a snapshot of front page headlines from the past month —October 2003—which revealed that, of the lead stories, 18 were international in nature, 12 came from the national desk, and one focused on the City of New York (this was in the early national edition, which Duane receives daily thanks to regional printing and delivery systems; he noted that Washington, D.C., receives the later national edition, so editors have a chance to clarify anything before politicians receive their copy). Further, 13 of the lead stories from the past month were, unsurprisingly, about U.S. military and political involvement in Iraq; four stories each were dedicated to the state of the U.S. economy and to the conflict in Israel and the Middle East; two were about California’s gubernatorial race; two looked at issues related to medicine; and two stories were related to September 11. 

Duane talked about the sense of commitment by the Times to use good taste (it is one of the few newspapers to still use honorific titles), encourage civil discourse, and make pains to submit detailed corrections to misinformation printed. For example, he talked about a mistake made in 1898 that was recently corrected when an enterprising Times staff member checked issue dates for the past century and discovered a mis-numbering that had gone undetected for more than 100 years. Duane also read from a Times story that had unintentionally included an editorial comment about then-presidential candidate George Bush’s need to learn more about international relations; the newspaper had to give a detailed explanation as to what had happened, and apologized for the fact that the “just between us” remark had somehow made it into print.

Duane also talked about the fall-out of revelations that former Times reporter Jayson Blair made up quotes and scenes and lied about his whereabouts when submitting stories. Four pages were devoted to printing corrections to Blair’s stories, and several editors lost their jobs. The Times has since initiated an ombudsman program, slated to start in a few weeks, and has worked at other internal processes geared toward upholding its commitment to accuracy. 

Duane graduated from Goshen College, where he was a student editor for the Record newspaper for which he now serves as faculty advisor. He holds a master’s degree in Latin American studies from New York University and a doctorate in journalism from Rutgers University.

—Rachel J. Lapp