His work as a national political reporter, as an editor of judiciously nuanced serial reports on complex American social issues and his central role in shaping the New York Times' magnificent coverage of both the first World Trade Center bombing and the Sept. 11 tragedy legitimately merit the overused adjective "distinguished."
'My Times in Black and White: Race and Power at the New York Times' by Gerald M. Boyd
BOOK REVIEW
Sadly, though, Boyd is almost sure to be remembered first for having lost his job as the paper's managing editor, when -- along with executive editor Howell Raines -- he was fired in the wake of the Jayson Blair and Rick Bragg scandals.
The consensus view is that Raines and Boyd reportedly lost the confidence of their publisher and newsroom not only because of those incidents, but also because the incidents appeared to grow out of a chaotic attempt to reshape the paper with a management style many there felt was self-aggrandizing bullying and marked by favoritism.
Based on this posthumously published memoir, "My Times in Black and White: Race and Power at the New York Times" -- which was shepherded into print by his widow, author and journalist Robin D. Stone -- it's clear that Boyd went to his grave bitterly convinced that, while Raines had been a disastrous executive editor, his own leadership was, to a significant degree, rejected simply because it came from a black man. By Boyd's account, he was betrayed, disappointed, misled or stabbed in the back by virtually everyone for whom and with whom he worked as an editor.
In making that case, Boyd renders harsh, lacerating judgments on the motives and character of many of the Times' most senior editors and correspondents. It isn't seemly to argue with a dead man, but many of those characterizations are so dramatically at odds with the individuals' reputations and my own personal dealings with them that they're more than difficult to credit and, therefore, won't be repeated here. Suffice to say that if the Times of his tenure was indeed the seething stew of unchecked ego, hostile ambition and unexamined racial anxieties that he portrays, it's a wonder it came out on a daily basis, let alone producing so much notable journalism.
'Intimidating' editor
Paradoxically, even when constructing a narrative to support his case, Boyd was too good a reporter to exclude details that contradicted it. Thus, he includes an account of being sent to a Colorado managerial seminar whose participants judged his supervisorial style to be arrogant and bullying. Because he had a fine reportorial eye, he also presents anecdotes that are unintentionally revealing. For example, while working through ideas for a series on racial attitudes with a group of reporters, people apparently were asked to share personal experiences that might suggest directions for the stories. One reporter told Boyd she found him "intimidating. . . . She saw an intense-looking black man. She found that vision intimidating."
The comment haunted Boyd, and he writes in this book that he played it over and over in his mind. "When," he wondered, "does a black editor become just an editor?"
Later, in a follow-up conversation, he writes that he returned to the comment and demanded of the reporter, "Was it my voice? My expressions? My skin tone? I asked if she felt that way about other black editors, singling out Dean Baquet, then the National editor, whose skin was lighter than mine." The reporter said "she felt more comfortable around him. The words stung. . . . Was this how whites saw blacks in authority? Blacks in general?"
Note the quick pivot off the specific case -- about himself -- and on to the general one -- blacks -- and the distinction the reporter drew between dealing with the managing editor and the editor of the national desk.
Here, let me step outside a review's normal parameters and into personal experience. I met Gerald Boyd four or five times and spent an evening and part of an afternoon with him during the Reagan administration, when this paper attempted to recruit him as an editorial writer. I found him intelligent, focused, intense, articulate, though a bit stiff, and utterly humorless.
Baquet, who went on to become first managing editor and then editor of this paper, was someone with whom I obviously worked more closely. Like Boyd, he's one of those editors touched by genius when it comes to organizing coverage of breaking news. He's also deeply empathetic, broadly cultured and at home in any company or situation. He's from New Orleans and, frankly, could charm the chrome off a trailer hitch. He's now back at the New York Times as Washington bureau chief and it's fair to say that, wherever he's worked, he left better and more warmly thought of than when he arrived.
FEATURED
MORE:
Advertisement
