ANALYSIS: WHEN IT RAINES, IT POURS

By: Alicia Mundy Washington Speculates About New Editor's Plans


If moral outrage were a sacrament, Howell Raines would have been
canonized by now, instead of merely promoted to executive editor
of The New York Times.

Of all the Times editorials that have borne Raines'
cognitive mapping, it was the one marking the sudden demise of
Dale Earnhardt that seemed the apotheosis of the Raines regnum.
"Death at Daytona" might have been a parody of a Times
editorial. It started out normally enough, a calm take on "the
legendary NASCAR driver who died after crashing in the final lap
of Sunday's Daytona 500," an event that doesn't usually rate the
Times' front section.

Then, only one paragraph later, the editorial took a bizarre
twist, suddenly becoming a call to arms, with demands for new
helmets, neck restraints, and "changes in the mind-set of many of
NASCAR's devoted fans." Only on Raines' galactic plane would a
simple obit for a folk hero so quickly turn into a cry for
regulation of stock-car racing.

But that's the thinking that's marked Raines' tenure, whether as
Washington bureau chief or editorial page editor. Some things
merely trouble other people, but Raines is usually outraged. His
moral outrage over the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal drove the
president himself to complain that Raines was pissed off because
Clinton was a Southerner who, unlike Raines, didn't have to leave
the South to succeed.

The pieces on last year's presidential election, Florida Gov. Jeb
Bush, and Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris burned
holes in the paper. And you don't have to read the Op-Ed page to
know exactly how outraged Raines is about President Bush's
proposed tax cuts.

So what does Raines' promotion mean for the Times -- and
for the competition? "What competition?" says a former editor for
The Washington Post, laughing. The ascendancy of the
Times -- a much better written paper with better stories
in better focus -- has come at the expense of the Post in
recent years. And Raines' new job comes at a unique time for the
other papers that have beefed up Washington coverage and begun
beating the Post, such as the Chicago Tribune, the
Los Angeles Times, and USA Today.

The whole paradigm changes, says an editor at one of the national
papers, if Raines pushes the Times even further into the
spot as the most influential paper in Washington. This could open
the door for another paper to take the No. 2 spot, instead of the
Post, whose political coverage today is often shallow even
at 2,000 words.

If Raines fortifies the Times' stature, it could also
force other papers, including the Post, to take a hard
look at the direction of their coverage, muses a veteran bureau
chief at another paper. If he makes the Times the official
paper of the anti-Establishment, "and does it without losing
readers or impact, then the issue for the Post, and us,
is, 'Do we follow suit, or do we go in the opposite direction?'"

Despite Raines' unrepentantly liberal politics, Karen Hughes,
Bush's communications director, told Washingtonian
magazine that the Times ranks with USA Today and
The Wall Street Journal as the ones with the best White
House connections. The Post came in fourth, despite its
own rightward editorial shift.

Following the initial gasps of horror from the GOP to the news of
Raines' new job, smart politicians immediately began asking the
$64,000 question: "Who's gonna get the Op-Ed pages?" Those were
the first words from someone close to Speaker of the House J.
Dennis Hastert, R-Ill. "That's what we want to know."

A staffer who works for Minority Leader Dick Gephardt, D-Mo.,
echoes that sentiment: "It's the editorials that drive people
nuts. Who's getting that job?" One health-care lobbyist was even
asked by his client to see what could be learned about Raines'
successor.

The assumption, mistaken perhaps, is that the Op-Ed pages have
more clout in Washington, and that Raines' promotion may have a
silver lining for his targets: Republicans, Democrats, the
wealthy, big business. "The executive editor does not dictate the
news," says a former Clinton aide.

But those who remember Raines' time in Washington disagree. He
was known as a hands-on bureau chief whose opinions and
experience were frequently reflected in his reporters' stories.
It's not going too far to say he made Maureen Dowd -- and her
"politics of personality" style. Raines' direction was
"breakthrough," says the former Post editor.

"It was Howell who really changed the front-page coverage of
politics with the [first] Bush administration," he explains. "He
had Maureen doing takes on Bush's quirks -- like the speed-golf
piece." That story showed the president golfing, but hardly
enjoying it: going through the motions, rushing to the end of the
course, a parable of Bush's presidency. "It was done by Maureen,
but it ran where it did because of Howell," he says.

The Times' recent improvements will be Joe Lelyveld's
legacy. "Frankly, all Howell has to do is keep doing what
Lelyveld did and he'll succeed," says an editor from L.A. But
with Raines' well-developed ego and desire to mark his turf,
change at the Times is not only certain -- it's too small
a word for what a worried Washington will expect.



Mundy (Mundy007@aol.com) is "The Pack Rat" columnist for E&P, Washington bureau chief for Mediaweek, and editor at large for Adweek.



Copyright 2001, Editor & Publisher.