'NY Times' Names Siegal Standards Editor

By: E&P Staff Updated at 10:45 a.m. Eastern Standard Time, Sept. 10

The New York Times has named Allan M. Siegal, 63, standards editor, a new position to oversee journalistic standards for the paper and oversee corrections. Siegal, who oversaw the 28-person committee that investigated the Jayson Blair scandal, will retain his title of assistant managing editor.

The Times still plans to name a public editor, or ombudsman, at a later date, according to a spokesman.

"Al's qualifications for the job are irrefutable: integrity, judgment, grace, and a rich memory of the precedents on which our standards depend," said Times Executive Editor Bill Keller in a statement. Keller also cited Siegal's leadership of the Siegal committee, which released a 94-page report on the Blair saga and recommendations for newsroom ethical and organizational practices, on July 30.

The Siegal committee called for three new positions: public editor, standards editor, and staffing and career development editor.

Siegal will oversee the creation of new guidelines for the use of anonymous sources, bylines, and datelines, the newspaper said Wednesday.

In an e-mail to staff announcing the appointment, Keller said Siegal would be "the main internal sounding board for staff members who have doubts or complaints about the paper's content, whether already published or in the works."

Blair resigned from the paper on May 1 after filing some three dozen phony or plagiarized stories from October 2002 to April 2003.

Siegal joined the Times as a copy boy in 1960 and worked his way up to assistant foreign editor, where he helped edit coverage of the Pentagon Papers. He became news editor in 1977 and assistant managing editor in 1987.