Classic forms of he said, she said are not so much a "sin" against high practice as an increasingly crappy level of service for what is supposed to be a high end product: New York Times reporting.
The Washington Post and the Guardian won the big prize: the Pulitzer for public service. There's no prize for the network of journalists and newsrooms that brought the surveillance story forward.
My presentation to the International Symposium on Online Journalism (ISOJ) in Austin this weekend was called: "Giving Good Advice: Reflections of an academic on 25 years of advising journalists and media companies." I composed it using an outlining tool, Dave Winer's Fargo. You can find the results here. Click on the arrows to display the notes that are "hiding" underneath.
Not the most experienced editor but he's had an experience other editors have not had. He's successfully said to the U.S press: "Current practices could be better. These are better. Here, let me show you."
"How was some guy in a basement who happens to have an obsessive interest in your subject going to bust into your peer group and start shooting up your journalism in a way that raises doubts about you and your magazine? Never going to happen... in 1989."
PRESSTHINK is a project of the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute at New York University. It is written and edited by professor Jay Rosen, who has taught at NYU since 1986. The blog is about the fate of the press in a digital era and the challenges involved in rethinking what journalism is today. It presents essays, press criticism, interviews and speeches. PressThink does not accept advertising.