And they're worried about what their reporters say on Twitter
The New York Times this morning accused The Washington Post's executive editor Marcus Brauchli of being a liar.
At issue is the Washington Post Salons planned during the summer at which lobbyists and others were to have access to Post reporters and editors. The Salon idea was shut down quickly after Politico broke the story. Brauchli at the time said he didn't realize the gatherings were to be off the record. And fingers were pointed at Charles Pelton, the marketing guy who was getting the Salons up and running, as the bad guy. Pelton resigned in September. The NYTPicker points to a brief in the NYTimes corrections column today in which the Times makes it clear that that it now has evidence that Brauchli lied last July when he told the NYT that he didn't know the paper's controversial corporate-sponsored dinner parties would be off-the-record.Why would you ever lie, misspeak, exaggerate to someone paid to have a long memory? How quickly those in the news biz can forget that they are surrounded by people in the news biz. How many of us have worked for editors who are shocked that it is impossible to keep secrets in a newsroom? It's common that newspaper marketing folks have a different set of scruples than those of us in the newsroom. We keep an eye on them, making sure that ads are clearly identified as ads, that there is a separation between sales and editorial. It is not common that editors lie publicly or that they are called out publicly by other journalists. For more inside baseball about today's story, check out Gawker. Or if you want to check out the WashPost's social media guidelines, which presumably Brauchli signed off on, check out PaidContent.