N.Y. Times may take a mulligan

As an old man, the economist John Maynard Keynes once was asked how he could express views that differed from his own published theories?

“When the facts change, I change my mind,” he replied. “What do you do?”

If you’re a great newspaper with a national presence like the New York Times, you writhe around a bit, trying to find a face-saving way to explain editorial decisions that appear to fall somewhere between miscalculation and mistake. At least that’s what has been going on for the last few days in the paper’s newsroom, where the decision to kill two sports columns whose views differed from those of the Times’ editorial page has stirred an unusual amount of internal dissent and raised questions about editor Howell Raines’ penchant for crusading in the news columns.

In this case, the campaign began in July, when the paper began publishing stories about the National Council of Women’s Organizations’ request that the Augusta National Golf Course abandon its men-only membership policy. Augusta is home to the Masters, the sport’s most prestigious tournament. Since the club’s social backwardness is exceeded only by its members’ net worth, it naturally declined the council’s invitation to join the 21st century.

Since then, the New York Times has published more than 40 news stories, editorials and columns on the controversy. And, when that controversy seemed to flag, it published a story about the lack of notice taken of the issue by CBS, which televises the Masters. One of the editorials even called on golfer Tiger Woods to boycott this year’s tournament unless Augusta admits female members. Woods was singled out not only because he is the sport’s marquee name but also because he is African American and, for many years, Augusta was notoriously racist.

The paper’s Pulitzer Prize-winning sports columnist, Dave Anderson, wrote a column dissenting from the editorial, reportedly arguing that Woods was under no obligation to forgo playing over a dispute in which he was not involved. The piece was killed by the Times. So, too, was a column by Anderson’s colleague, Harvey Araton, who reportedly wrote that sports-minded women face issues of far greater consequence than an elite Georgia golf club’s distasteful membership policies.

The killing of the columns created unease in the Times’ newsroom, where there already were questions about the proportionality of the paper’s attention to the Augusta issue.

“This is a big deal to us and very disturbing,” said a senior Times writer, who asked not to be identified. “People feel they’re seeing something new, the idea that everybody here has to march in lock step. What’s really unfortunate is that this is about an issue that very few people inside the paper think is particularly earthshaking. Who cares whether a rich woman gets to play golf at this stupid club?” By Wednesday, word of the unpublished columns’ existence had leaked to other news organizations, and the paper’s managing editor, Gerald Boyd, issued a memo to his staff.

Anderson’s piece, he said, had been killed because it argued directly with a Times editorial. “Part of our strict separation between the news and editorial pages entails not attacking each other,” Boyd wrote. “Intramural quarrelling of that kind is unseemly and self-absorbed.” Araton’s piece was not published, according to Boyd, because its logic was faulty. “Our news columns enforce no party line,” his memo said.

But according to several veteran staff members -- all of whom spoke on the condition they not be identified -- Boyd’s explanations seemed to many unconvincing and unsatisfactory on at least two counts.

“This whole [Augusta] issue just isn’t as big a deal as we’ve made it,” said one. “The ‘CBS is silent’ story really put people over the edge. That was not, by any standard most of us understand, a front-page story in the New York Times. This wasn’t a war or a hugely corrupt businessman or anything that really touches the lives of most people who read this newspaper.” In fact, the incongruity of the CBS story’s placement, according to the reporter, made many wonder whether “this whole thing hasn’t punched some of the buttons Howell acquired growing up in the South.”

Other staff members were disconcerted that Anderson had been prevented from registering reservations about an editorial many of them also found objectionable. “It’s wrong to try and force Tiger Woods to take up this thing as his issue,” one writer said. “It’s actually sort of offensive. Why single out a black man to do it? If the editorial page wants to do it, that’s fine. But when the paper decides a columnist cannot disagree, it sounds authoritarian -- and sort of unsavory.

“The message of Anderson’s column was ‘Let Tiger play golf.’ That’s a respectable opinion and it ought to be aired.”

By week’s end, Raines and Boyd apparently had seen some merit in that argument. Friday, Anderson said the spiked columns would be published. “They’re going to run both columns sometime this weekend. That’s the plan. I assume there will be an editorial note with them. I think it’s terrific that they’ve done this. I’m gratified that the editors decided that they made a mistake.”

Neither Boyd nor Catherine Mathis, a Times spokeswoman, would confirm that a decision had been made.

Changing your mind -- or admitting that you wrongly made it up in the first place -- is far more burdensome for institutions than it is for individuals, even great ones like Keynes. The only weightier cross to bear is that of assumed infallibility

Cardinal James Gibbons of Baltimore, who participated in the 19th century Vatican Council that promulgated the papal version of that concept, once was approached by a woman who demanded to know how far he thought Pius IX’s infallibility extended.

“Madam, that is not an easy question,” the prelate responded. “All I can say is that a few months ago in Rome, his Holiness called me Jibbons.”

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Times staff writer Josh Getlin contributed to this column.