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The New York Times Story.......


"NATIONAL / May 25, 2003

N.Y. Times Said to Suspend Correspondent
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Filed at 8:07 a.m. ET

NEW YORK (AP) -- Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Rick Bragg was reportedly suspended by The New York Times for two weeks as the newspaper published an editors' note about his handling of a feature story about Florida oystermen.

Bragg, a Times national correspondent, declined comment when reached at his New Orleans home Saturday. The newspaper also has refused comment on the suspension, reported Friday on the Columbia Journalism Review's Web site.

The report comes in the wake of the scandal surrounding former Times reporter Jayson Blair, who was found by the paper to have ``committed frequent acts of journalistic fraud.' He resigned May 1.

An investigation conducted by the Times found fraud, plagiarism and errors in 36 of 73 articles written by Blair between October and April. The violations included stealing material from other newspapers, inventing quotes and lying about his whereabouts.

Blair is already floating a book proposal about the scandal, according to The Washington Post. The proposed book is entitled ``Burning Down My Master's House,' an angry rant at the paper that he called ``my tormentor, my other drug, my slavemaster,' the Post said.

The proposal portrays Blair as a black man ``who rose from the fields and got a place in the master's house and then burned it down the only way he knew how,' according to the Post. Blair's literary agent David Vigliano did not return a call for comment Saturday.

In its editors' note Friday, the Times said that while Bragg wrote the June 15 article and visited the Gulf Coast town where it originated, interviewing and other reporting at the scene were done by a freelance journalist working for the newspaper. The note did not make it clear whether Bragg's editors had known the role of the freelancer at the time.

A New York Times employee told The Associated Press on Friday that Times editors told Bragg to take a paid vacation for two weeks, but said it would be considered a suspension.

The Times said a reader had questioned whether Bragg had been in Apalachicola, Fla., the dateline of his story about threats to the livelihood of oystermen on the Gulf Coast.

The Times said Bragg visited Apalachicola briefly, but the reporting was done by J. Wes Yoder, a freelance journalist working for the Times. The note said ``the article should have carried Mr. Yoder's byline with Mr. Bragg's.'

While many national correspondents at the Times rely on stringers for reporting, the paper's policy on ``dateline integrity' says the bylined writer must ``provide the bulk of the information, in the form of copy or, when necessary, of notes used faithfully in a rewrite,' CJR reported.

In an interview with CJR on Wednesday, Bragg said ``I wouldn't have done anything different. J. Wes did great work and we came out with a great story.'

Bragg, 43, won the feature-writing Pulitzer in 1996 ``for his elegantly written stories about contemporary America.' He came to the Times in January 1994 as a metropolitan reporter, becoming a national correspondent later that year."

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-NY-Times-Suspension.html

New York Daily News version......

"Times slaps 2nd writer in byline flap

By PAUL D. COLFORD
DAILY NEWS BUSINESS WRITER

Star correspondent Rick Bragg has been hit with a punitive suspension by The New York Times for using extensive, uncredited material from a young intern in a story, newsroom sources said yesterday.
The Columbia Journalism Review Web site said the suspension would last for two weeks. It was not clear whether there would be any restrictions on Bragg when he returns to work, the sources said.

Times spokeswoman Catherine Mathis declined to comment.

The Times said in an editor's note published yesterday that a journalist named J. Wes Yoder should have shared a byline with Bragg on the story — a colorful account of Florida oystermen published in June.

Yoder, 23, told the Daily News he spent four days in and around Apalachicola, on Florida's northern gulf coast — longer than Bragg — did much of the reporting and sat with his notes alongside Bragg when the staffer wrote the piece.

But Yoder said he has no hard feelings that he received no co-byline for his efforts.

"I had offered to volunteer for Rick for the summer because I wanted to learn from him," said Yoder, who has since become a staff writer for The Anniston Star, an Alabama paper where Bragg once worked.

Though national and foreign correspondents for The Times and other news organizations often call on locally based freelancers for assistance on the road, Yoder's unusual relationship was what he called an internship — "or volunteership."

Yoder said Bragg paid him directly for his work over three months, calling it an invaluable experience.

However, coming three weeks after the forced resignation of reporter Jayson Blair for plagiarism, revelations about Bragg's use of descriptive material and quotations gathered in large measure by a young admirer threatened to heap further embarrassment on a paper still reeling from Blair's fabrications.

The latest flareup has added significance because Bragg is a friend of Howell Raines, the embattled executive editor, who has championed his work.

The Times said it responded to a reader's letter and "found that while Mr. Bragg indeed visited Apalachicola briefly and wrote the article, the interviewing and reporting on the scene" were done by Yoder.

"I don't know if he actually said, 'Please give this kid a byline,'" Yoder said. "I certainly understood I wouldn't be getting a byline."

Yoder said he was contacted by The Times yesterday.

Mathis said, "We know of no grounds for further investigation of Mr. Bragg's work."

Bragg, 43, joined The Times in 1994 and won a Pulitzer Prize in 1996 for feature writing. A son of Alabama, he's a beloved figure in the South, applauded for his two family memoirs, "All Over but the Shoutin'" and "Ava's Man."

He did not return calls made to his office in New Orleans.

Originally published on May 24, 2003 "


http://www.nydailynews.com/business/story/86475p-78749c.html