Thank you for covering this book. My daughter's family had been playing the board game "Pandemic" for several years before the actual pandemic, Covid, wrought havoc on the world's health.
In The Wisdom of Plagues, I describe writing a deeply gloomy Page One article in the early days of the pandemic and being ordered by the masthead (a blanket term for the New York Times' top editors) to make it more optimistic; I quote the changes my editor asked me to make and said it was "the first time in my career I had been ordered to change the mood of a story." For this well-researched review, Richard J. Tofel called the Times for comment on that anecdote and was told that my assertion was "flatly untrue." That is a lie. It's remarkable that the Times could even pretend to know: the editing took place four years ago and there were a dozen editors on the masthead. Many were in a position to order the change and I was never told which one did -- which is normal in the Times editing process. My former editor knows it's true because he and I argued over the changes, as does the science editor because she passed on the order; my girlfriend was witness to my anger about it. If I still had access to my @nytimes emails I believe I could prove my case, but I do not. Although I know from experience that most of my former Times reporting colleagues are instinctive truth-tellers, I do not remotely think the same of the New York Times CorpComms department. Donald G. McNeil Jr.
Tofel’s sane analysis of this and all topics he addresses should be required reading in all journalism classes. Are they? Hmm
Yes, always a sane analysis.
Thank you for covering this book. My daughter's family had been playing the board game "Pandemic" for several years before the actual pandemic, Covid, wrought havoc on the world's health.
In The Wisdom of Plagues, I describe writing a deeply gloomy Page One article in the early days of the pandemic and being ordered by the masthead (a blanket term for the New York Times' top editors) to make it more optimistic; I quote the changes my editor asked me to make and said it was "the first time in my career I had been ordered to change the mood of a story." For this well-researched review, Richard J. Tofel called the Times for comment on that anecdote and was told that my assertion was "flatly untrue." That is a lie. It's remarkable that the Times could even pretend to know: the editing took place four years ago and there were a dozen editors on the masthead. Many were in a position to order the change and I was never told which one did -- which is normal in the Times editing process. My former editor knows it's true because he and I argued over the changes, as does the science editor because she passed on the order; my girlfriend was witness to my anger about it. If I still had access to my @nytimes emails I believe I could prove my case, but I do not. Although I know from experience that most of my former Times reporting colleagues are instinctive truth-tellers, I do not remotely think the same of the New York Times CorpComms department. Donald G. McNeil Jr.
Thanks for this overview and review. And, what? McNeil didn't advocate for tattooing people with AIDS, like Bill Buckley?