The web is abuzz after a quote from the New York Times's future executive editor, Jill Abramson, in a Times news story on her appointment was missing in an updated version of the piece.
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Abramson was quoted by Jeremy Peters on Thursday as saying "In my house growing up, The Times substituted for religion. If The Times said it, it was the absolute truth." In later versions published online, the quote had been removed. A spokeswoman for the Times said the quote was removed for "space" and after new quotes were added to the story.
POLITICO used the quote in a news story on Thursday as did Wall Street Journal columnist James Taranto. Blogger Ann Althouse notes that all the publications that linked to the story, and used the quote, were in left in a bind -- having excerpted a quote from a story that no longer contained it.
Of the quote's removal, National Review's Jay Nordlinger wrote late Thursday: "That's a tiny bit strange, isn't it? I mean, Abramson's words were not exactly scrubbable, or scrub-worthy." In a follow-up, Taranto wrote that the editing process was the likely culprit for the quote's removal, but added: "It's obvious that an editorial decision was made to 'rectify' a quote that made the Times look foolish."
Not so, Times spokeswoman Eileen Murphy told POLITICO. "Space was clearly a consideration," as the story was used in the newspaper, Murphy said, adding that because the original version of the story was online all day, it needed to be freshened for the paper edition, which did not contain the quote.
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Burgess Everett
