New York Times Public Editor Margaret Sullivan didn’t dissent: “To put it simply, the story about Gay Talese that went online Wednesday wasn’t ready for prime time. If it were going to be published at all, it needed a few changes from Times editors,” wrote the outgoing ombudswoman, who’s headed to The Washington Post to write a column on the media.

Just what drew such condemnation?

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On April 1, Talese participated in a conference at Boston University titled “Power of Narrative.” During a question-and-answer session, the famous longform writer was asked: “In addition to Nora Ephron, who were the women who write who were most, who have inspired you most?” The famed scribe proceeded to stumble. Have a look at the transcription in Pappu’s story:

“As writers,” Mr. Talese said. “Uh, I’d say Mary McCarthy was one. I would, um, [pause] think [pause] of my generation [pause] um, none. I’ll tell you why. I’m not sure it’s true, it probably isn’t true anymore, but my — when I was young, maybe 30 or so, and always interested in exploratory journalism, long-form, we would call it, women tended not, even good writers, women tended not to do that. Because being, I think, educated women, writerly women, don’t want to, or do not feel comfortable dealing with strangers or people that I’m attracted to, sort of the offbeat characters, not reliable.”

With that, Talese kicked off a cultural moment, on Twitter at least. To set Talese straight, a hashtag arose:

Here’s where Pappu and the New York Times found a compelling piece: Talese is 84, has no cellphone and stays “aloof” from social media, in Pappu’s telling. He missed the backlash until he got home and his wife, Nan Talese, said: “Welcome home, darling. You’re all over Twitter.” Technology, celebrity, generations, conflict — the perfect recipe for a style story from the New York Times. So Pappu captured Talese’s response to the whole affair. “I couldn’t think of women journalists, but I could think of women writers,” Talese told Pappu of his awkward response at Boston University. “But this was nonfiction, and when I was in my formative years, there were no women in journalism who inspired me. The women who inspired me were fiction writers.”

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The story clearly explained the backlash against Talese, citing tweets by people who objected to his statement. But since Talese had never tweeted back at any of his detractors, the story did indeed offer him a platform to explain himself. As Sullivan noted, “The Times article was told largely from Mr. Talese’s point of view, focusing on his reaction to suddenly having a Twitter target on his back.” Mind you, this is a longstanding and unimpeachable journalistic imperative — to seek out the reaction of someone who has been getting pilloried in the public realm.

And is that the journalistic sin that triggered a condemnation from the executive editor and the public editor?

Not entirely. There’s another important dimension here. In Boston, Talese had a chat with Nikole Hannah-Jones, a staff writer at the New York Times Magazine and a keynote speaker at the conference. Hannah-Jones tweeted from the conference:

That commentary prompted Pappu to ask Talese about Hannah-Jones. The octogenarian confessed that one of the tweets “truly hurt me.” Said Talese: “I’d like to talk to her sometime. Why did she have to ask for a selfie after what I said made her so upset? I want to know why….How could she be so duplicitous as to write me off with a quote?” In an email, Talese tells the Erik Wemple Blog that the selfie at issue was not the shot of his shoes. “It was the next-to-next posing…I think with my arm around her shoulder…get that photo and see what you see,” he wrote. Stuart Emmrich, editor of the Styles sections of the New York Times, responded to a request for comment with this statement: “I’m going to let Dean’s statement speak for itself and keep whatever discussions I have with him private, at least on my part. But thanks for reaching out.”

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A story at Rewire described how Hannah-Jones, who is black, felt that Talese condescended to her in a side conversation, asking how she got her job at the New York Times and whether she was headed to have her nails done. Hannah-Jones wasn’t as forthcoming for Pappu’s New York Times story. As he noted in the piece, he made more than one request for comment to Hannah-Jones. “Thank you for reaching out, but I’ve said all that I am going to say about this,” she responded to Pappu.

Even so, Baquet took issue with how this dimension of the story was handled. He wrote in his note:

The story also recounted an exchange between Talese and Nikole Hannah-Jones, a keynote speaker at the conference and a staff writer on our magazine, in which he questioned how she got her job at The Times. In attempting to defend his remarks, Talese was quoted in our story calling her “duplicitous.” Nikole was not given a chance to respond to that, nor was I. Here is what I would have said: I hired Nikole because she is one of the most accomplished and prominent journalists of her generation. She has made it her mission to write about some of the most pressing, intractable issues in American life, particularly racial inequality in education and the re-segregation of American schools. She is a unique combination of a reporter with investigative zeal, unfailing integrity and a writer’s eye for telling, human detail. One of my proudest moments as editor was when Nikole said “yes” and agreed to come to The Times.

In her take on the controversy, Sullivan published a portion of one of Pappu’s requests to Hannah-Jones: “I thought I’d try to reach out to you again. As I said in my previous email, I’m writing a piece on Gay Talese and the aftermath of the events in Boston and would really like to get your commentary for it. I have pretty specific things I’d like you to respond to.” Sounds as if Pappu did his due diligence in seeking a comment about alleged selfie hypocrisy.

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So let’s get this straight. Baquet has issued a strange note to stick up for a New York Times employee who failed to respond to more than one request for an interview. The scenario invites a retreat into hypotheticals. What if Pappu, instead, had been seeking comment from a White House official, or an executive at Caterpillar over insufficient selfie authenticity? If those people had similarly declined to cooperate, as did Hannah-Jones, would the executive editor of the New York Times devote an extensive paragraph to defending them?

For context, consider the New York Times clash with Amazon, which resulted from an extensively reported August 2015 story by Jodi Kantor and David Streitfeld regarding the online retailer’s work culture (disclosure: Amazon’s founder, Jeffrey Bezos, owns The Washington Post). After the story surfaced, Amazon Senior Vice President for Global Corporate Affairs Jay Carney alleged in a Medium post that the New York Times “never asked us to check or comment on any of the dozen or so negative anecdotes from named sources that form the narrative backbone of the story.” When asked about that criticism, Baquet told the Erik Wemple Blog that his reporters disclosed to Amazon the story’s “general allegations,” though they didn’t “go name by name by name.” That name-by-name-by-name approach appears to be the standard that Baquet wanted to see in the Pappu story.

Sounds as if the New York Times issued a public statement trashing one of its own stories in order to address a matter of staff solidarity. In the process, it ripped a freelancer who secured input — or attempted to — from the key parties to a dispute. A bit more seriously, it declared that the story aligns with a disreputable streak of New York Times coverage, without a careful and deliberate explanation of just how the piece stunk. To repeat Baquet’s published critique, “Yesterday’s story was flawed and Nikole was treated unfairly. But this incident is larger than the exchange between her and Gay Talese. Too often, we are clumsy in handling issues of race and gender and this story was another unfortunate example.”

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Pressed by this blog to expand on his criticism, Baquet responded: “The story was cast as an amusing look at a great writer under a spotlight. But what happened at the conference and afterward was so much more. The story missed the point, and because of its cast was automatically one-sided. I also felt the need to make clear to everyone that Nikole is one of our best reporters, a prizewinner.” Asked again to elaborate, Baquet, who is always very responsive, continued: “Remember, this is not just about this story. We have a history of awkwardness on this subject. And that’s why I felt the need to be forceful. So the comparison to the White House reporter doesn’t apply here. It is larger than just this one incident. It is something we are working hard to remedy in our coverage –– take a look at our race newsletter. But this was a moment for me to say that on the subject of race and gender, we have much work to do.”