Free Gray Lady Down by William McGowan

“Too often we found ourselves discussing articles about racial strife without a single black face in the room.” Although great reporters “learn to transcend their own experience and to deal with alien peoples and strange surroundings,” the need to gain the confidence of “contending factions” in newsworthy situations demanded the presence of reporters who could immediately cut through the cultural baggage, Frankel believed.
    Once Arthur Jr. took over the publisher’s position in 1991, the Times created more diversity-related managerial incentives and requirements. According to Bill Stockton, the bonus program was changed to reflect how well managers did in minority recruitment, training and retention, with 25 percent of the compensation based on how many journalists of color officially took jobs. Stockton remembered senior-level editorial meetings where Frankel and his second in command, Joe Lelyveld, put the squeeze on their subordinates because of the pressure they felt from Sulzberger. Editors were asking, “Who can we send abroad? Put on the national desk? Make bureau chief?” Stockton recalled, adding, “They were pushing, really pushing. There was pressure all the time.”
    But like the effort to hire minorities in the 1960s, the 1980s initiative was hampered by an inability to hold on to minority talent. “The truth,” Frankel wrote, “was that we did have a problem keeping people of color: the most successful blacks were repeatedly tempted by opportunities elsewhere and the least successful were often left wondering whether they were victims of prejudice or cultural alienation.” Meanwhile, dissension was growing on the
white side of the newsroom. According to Frankel, the “diversity training” seminars that the Times sponsored were often “delivered by shameless charlatans,” by “peddlers of pop psychology” who were indulged so the paper could “avoid being branded as racist.” These sessions were an occasion for some black employees to demand that racial identifications be abandoned in news reports, even in the case of criminals at large. One editor even wanted a ban on all idiomatic negative uses of “black,” such as “black magic” and “Black Monday,” or even “film noir.” Frankel’s number two, Joe Lelyveld, thought the sessions a questionable expenditure, and withheld money that he thought was better spent in the news budget.
    The most controversial and ultimately the most tragic beneficiary of the diversity campaign was the former managing editor Gerald Boyd. Although Boyd was not the Ivy League type historically favored by the Times, he “represented a terrifically hard-nosed black reporter that senior management could relate to,” Bill Stockton maintained. “Someone who could be black but still fit in.” The paper saw tremendous potential in Boyd. According to Stockton, “As Gerry Boyd moved up it became apparent to very senior management that he was their one best hope—their last best hope—to springboard a minority to the top.” The plan, says Stockton, was to bring Boyd to New York and rotate him through various senior managerial positions. “If he did not fall flat on his face, he would be promoted to some top destination.”
    Boyd guided the paper’s exceptional coverage of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, and edited the year 2000 Pulitzer-winning fifteen-part series on race in America. But many blamed him for egregious and embarrassing miscoverage of a string of race-related incidents in New York in the early 1990s, including the infamous anti-Jewish riot in Brooklyn’s Crown Heights in 1991. While Jews were clearly victims of the overwhelmingly black rioting, Boyd injected a tone of moral equivalence into the coverage he supervised, angering many New Yorkers.
    Boyd’s missteps, however, did not affect his upward mobility. In late 1990, Frankel had called the correspondent to New York and told him, in so many words, that he would be the Times’