In a beautiful illustration of potential pitfalls in today’s click-to-repost digital age, the editor (or vice president of content?) of the Oregonian has been working in the last day to stomp out a bit of misinformation from some heavily trafficked corners of the web: that he laid off his own wife.
Peter Bhatia has reached out to the New York Observer—which first misreported the tidbit and has appended a “clarification” that, really, should be a straight-up correction.
“This post is incorrect,” Bhatia wrote yesterday, in the comments section below the piece. “I did not lay off my wife. I am editor of the paper and run the news operations. She is on the editorial page, separate from the news staff. Please remove this post.”
Oregonian Managing Editor Therese Bottomly chimed in, too:
“Wow, how many things can someone get wrong in one short item?” she wrote, laying out a list of errors before closing with: “Did any reporting go into this? Remove this from your site. You’re embarrassing yourself.”
The post has been tweeted out at least 92 times.
The Huffington Post aggregated the Observer story, and has included a proper correction and the following statement from Bhatia, also submitted via the comments thread:
The Observer’s post is wrong and I have asked for a retraction. I did not lay off my wife. She is on the staff here but I am the editor and supervise the news staff. She is on the editorial page staff, separate from the news staff. The report is wrong.
The AOL Jobs site also posted the tidbit. As of this morning it had not included a correction.
The confusion has its origins in Willamette Week’s cover story this week about a round of harsh layoffs at the O that are accompanying the paper’s move to a digital focus. The piece notes “Bhatia handled all but two of last week’s newsroom layoffs himself,” and then goes on to discuss possible metrics for the decisions.
After about 10 paragraphs, it says:
The layoffs included editorial writer and columnist David Sarasohn; home and garden reporter Bridget Otto, daughter of ex-publisher Stickel; and commentary editor Liz Dahl, Bhatia’s wife.
Several of Bhatia’s decisions struck many in the newsroom as heartless. Among them: He laid off a husband and wife, veteran editors Randy Cox and Joany Carlin, despite knowing Cox is fighting advanced kidney cancer.
It’s true WW never explicitly states Bhatia made the call on firing his wife, but it’s not hard to see how the New York Observer piece, written by (according to the website Linkedin) an intern, got there.
It’s also, as one commenter notes on the WW site, “a delicious irony – you mean replacing professional reporters and editors with inexperienced, underpaid ‘aggregators’ of other people’s work can result in factual errors? You don’t say.”
“trying to extinguish the notion?”
Wow, you got to take jabs at both the Oregonian and Willy Week in this post. Sniff….it’s…it’s beautiful. I only wish Matt Davis were here to appreciate it.
Ironically, if he is laying off a bunch of people, then including his wife, if she fits the criteria, would actually be the honorable thing to do. Carving out an exception for her because she is his wife would be the dishonorable thing.
I AM “HERE” TO APPRECIATE IT BUT I WISH I WERE INDEED PHYSICALLY THERE TO APPRECIATE IT.
Would be outside the Oregonian with a D800, a boom mic, and plenty of Xanax. Maybe somebody should offer sidewalk back rubs to the people who got laid off, in exchange for the tell-all interviews.
Sad truth is: Everybody loses when the paper of record cuts an emphasis on serious reporting. If there were a paper in Portland with the budget and the balls to hire ten good reporters, such as the Eugene Register Guard, for example, it could move in on the O’s territory as the Baton Rouge Advocate did in New Orleans after the TP screwed itself. The Newhouse digital business model is based on a presumption: That the city news environment is not worth competing over. That nobody will fight for the turf.
So I do sorta wish somebody in Oregon would say, “you know what, I want to assemble a crack team of ten print reporters to report the crap out this city and state,” and actually put some money behind it. And then go after all those digital subscribers with the scrappy underdog spirit.
“We know you don’t care about wire copy and butt diets. We know you want the real juice. The hard copy. The corruption. The interns. The news.”
Just spitballing here but if somebody were to, in fact, call +44 208 656 0854, for example, and say, “I can pay you $60k a year with healthcare and two weeks of vacation”, I’d be happy to lead such a charge. Just in case anybody with any chutzpah might be reading this, that is. But I would insist on jazz flute in the newsroom. And on suits.
It’s matthewcharlesdavis@gmail.com
THAT WAS FUCKING CREEPY. WHAT HAPPENS IF I SAY HIS NAME IN THE BATHROOM MIRROR THREE TIMES?
ALSO, MATT. NO ONE HERE CARES ABOUT THOSE THINGS. WE’RE FAR TOO BUSY DEBATING WHICH FLEETWOOD MAC ALBUM IS SECOND-BEST.