Wednesday, February 11, 2009

"A Dearth of Decorum"

Robert A. Schneider, editor of the American Historical Review, has his say on the very odd New York Times coverage of a submission to the AHR on the Nixon Tapes controversy, noted here and here. He finds, among other things "a dearth of decorum." Schneider's post at History News Network begins:

Normally, an editor does not expect to learn about the submission of an article to his journal from the front page of the nation’s leading newspaper. Normally, an editor would reasonably expect that a journalist reporting for this paper would ask for the editor’s comments on the nature of the submission. Normally, he would not expect the contents of his letter of rejection to the author of the submission to be broadcast both by the newspaper in question and the major web outlet of news for historians....

But at least as far as I’m concerned, nothing about this controversy over the editing of the Nixon tapes has been normal.
Continue reading here.