Tough Times for this editor

New York Times Public Editor Byron Calame seems to be working overtime these days investigating lies and errors in the Times, and apologizing publicly for it.

It’s happened again.

THE opening paragraph of the article sounded like grown-up stuff: “For what experts say is probably the first time, more American women are living without a husband than with one, according to a New York Times analysis of census results.”

“Grown-up stuff”? Is that a Times standard? And was this “New York Times analysis” done by the guy who wrote the article?

It was a statistic that put the story on a fast track to the front page, providing a noteworthy benchmark for a well-established trend. But the new majority materialized only because The Times chose to use survey data that counted, as spouseless women, teenagers 15 through 17 — almost 90 percent of whom were living with their parents.

How ridiculous is that?

Major newspapers and broadcast and cable news programs picked up on this tipping point, spotted by Sam Roberts, a veteran Times reporter who writes frequently about census data. A few media outlets stopped to question the logic of including teenage females, before going on to discuss the Jan. 16 article’s interesting exploration of the “newfound freedom” for women that was reflected by the new majority.

What’s wrong with this picture? That major news media picked up the Times article and ran with it, as they always do, just on the face of it. The only a few media outlets then stopped to question the logic of including teenage females….before going on to give it veracity by dicussing what it means for women and the culture in general. Reflected by this bogus “new majority.”

Several readers, including some who perceived the article as an attack on family values, challenged the inclusion of 15-year-olds, in e-mails to me and in comments posted on the Web version of The Times. “The article is a little deceiving because it is based on the percentage of women 15 and older who are not married,” wrote one reader, noting that “it’s not even legal to marry at 15” in many states. I couldn’t agree more.

Once again, it took the readers’ challenge to force this introspection at the Times, and again by Calame, who was wise to agree with the obvious.

The failure to prominently and clearly explain the methodology of the survey used was one of several journalistic lapses that I found in the handling of this story. The single passing reference to the range of ages included in the overall data from the Census Bureau’s 2005 American Community Survey, or A.C.S., came below the midpoint of the article. Given the teenage “women” issue, editors should have made sure at least that the age range of the survey was more fully explained before the continuation of the article on an inside page.

I’ll take that further. Editors should have double-checked the whole survey and the age range it represented before even running the article.

But editors may have made the problem worse. I saw the top portion of a draft of the article prepared by Mr. Roberts in which the age range was first mentioned in the 10th paragraph. The first reference in the published story was in the 21st paragraph.

Aha, so it was sort of, kind of there, but the editors buried it in the final version?

When readers did get to the mention of what ages were included, it was incorrect. It indicated that the numbers reflected A.C.S. data on “more than 117 million women over the age of 15.” Similarly, the footnote to the graphic accompanying the article said the data there were “for people over age 15.” Both mentions of the age cutoff were so minimal that some readers missed the supposed exclusion of 15-year-olds.

Mr. Roberts has now said that 15-year-olds were included in all the data in both the article and the graphic. But there hasn’t been any correction of the two misleading explanations indicating that the data were for females 16 and older.

No correction of two misleading explanations of the data. And this is the “paper of record” in America. They’re setting a new record, for serial flaws in reporting and lapses in editing.

It was discouraging to find yet another article with an unusual angle that didn’t seem to encounter many skeptical editors as it made its way to the front page. “At the Page One meeting there was agreement that the story was especially newsworthy because of the for-the-first-time-more-living-alone-than-with-a-spouse angle,” Jill Abramson, the managing editor for news, wrote to me in an e-mail. “No questions about the methodology or age categories were discussed.”

No questions about the methodology were discussed, at this Page-One meeting of the editors of the New York Times. That shows how eager they are for the sensational.

In the wake of this controversy, Bill Keller, the executive editor, has decided to meet with staffers with expertise in statistics and demographics to create a “vetting network to help with the editing of articles dealing with those subjects,” Craig R. Whitney, an assistant managing editor and the standards editor, said Thursday.

That should have existed already, needless to say.

After dealing with three weeks of questions from readers and from me, Mr. Roberts on Monday expressed a little less certainty about the new majority trumpeted in the first paragraph of his article.

“A little less certainty”? This was a big declaration about a “new majority trumpeted in the first paragraph of his article” on the front page of the Times. 

 He wrote to me: “I think the essence of the article remains accurate: that, depending on how one adjusts the census’s definition, about half — maybe a little bit more, maybe a little bit less, depending on the age group — of American women are living without a spouse at any given time.”

Readers deserved this kind of more tempered perspective back on Jan. 16…

Byron Calame has had to end a number of his damage-control columns this way. So the question is, when will readers get the kind of reporting they deserve?

Keep your eye on Calame. If he continues to do this kind of work, the Times will at least appear to be accountable. But after some of his admissions of editorial failure, editors were considering eliminating his role. As the Public Editor goes, so goes the accountability.