Eat The Press

The NYT Makes The News, With Barely-Disguised Glee

NYT |  Katharine Q. Seelye |  Posted Saturday September 30, 2006 at 12:09 PM

The NYT is no doubt proud of itself today, having broken the huge front-page story yesterday on Bob Woodward's "State Of Denial" and utterly scooped the Washington Post in the process. Today Kit Seelye lays out the backstory of the various plans of publisher Simon & Schuster, WaPo et al — all of which went utterly awry with the publication of the NYT's story yesterday (as well as in the New York Daily News). Per Seelye:

Simon & Schuster had an intricate strategy all worked out for rolling out Bob Woodward's new book, "State of Denial," scheduled for publication on Monday.

Extensive excerpts would appear in The Washington Post, where Mr. Woodward works, on Sunday and Monday. The book would be featured Sunday night on "60 Minutes." And excerpts would appear Monday in Newsweek, which is also owned by the Washington Post Company.

Oops. Not quite. Instead, Simon & Schuster is releasing the book today and lifting the embargo which was obviously broken in order for the NYT to obtain a copy. Meanwhile, at the Post there is disgruntlement over the scoop, and the blatant favoritism shown to Woodward, an assistant managing editor:

An internal critique yesterday at the Post, written by a former reporter, suggested little patience with Mr. Woodward's special relationship with his paper.

"The big question of the day is, Why A1 didn't have Woodward on Bush before CBS began promoting their interview," the critique read. "Oh yeah, I know why, blah, blah, blah."

(Recall that this happened last year. )

WaPo exec editor Len Downie Jr. is philosophical ("Sometimes you win, and sometimes you lose") and notes that the Post stills has the first excerpts, running in tomorrow's paper (but available today) .

More broadly, this episode is emblematic of the fact that you really can't keep much under wraps these days, and that in the era of the 24-hour news cycle, secrets are hard to keep, and information, once out there, is hard to control. As PR titan Howard Rubenstein acknowledges, leaks happen: "And if it happens," he said, "jump on the bandwagon."