Defending Jon Keller

Quote of the day: Tom, tiring

Ameriwhat?

11 Comments

• local said:

  I think it's a reach to ask the lay reader to identify quotes taken from Keller's own interviews from quotes taken from other sources simply by noting the verb tense. It may not have been bad faith, but it's not good journalism.

  October 18, 2007 3:29 PM

• anonymous said:

  Oh, I get it, Adam. All local reporters have to do in order to avoid similar charges is to devise a triple-secret attribution code understandable only to themselves and their perceptive friends in media-critic circles.

  October 18, 2007 4:33 PM

• Aging Cynic said:

  Ironic that while furiously parsing Keller's questionable attribution, they make his larger point: that he and a few others are insufficiently "progressive" for the local sheep in Boston.

  October 18, 2007 4:36 PM

• brad said:

  no business i know of is so full of self-loathing as journalism where one's colleagues are ever eager to take down their own for the slightest perceived transgression. this is just another sad spectacle.

  October 18, 2007 4:59 PM

• Boston Media Guy said:

  Bad faith, no.

  Incredibly lazy and sloppy to the point of casting his good work in a bad light? Absolutely.

  Leaving the question of attribution up to subtleties of verb tenses is pretty lame, regardless of the source.  

  October 18, 2007 5:09 PM

• Adam said:

  Anon 11:33, you seem to have missed the part where I said: "Obviously, the book should have footnotes." Ditto for the part where I said journalists should "attribute whenever possible."

  October 18, 2007 5:10 PM

• Steve Stein said:

  Early and emphatically?  I found out about Keller's son just a couple of weeks ago - one week before the special election.  Perhaps I missed all his other disclaimers.

  October 18, 2007 5:19 PM

• Adam said:

  Steve: correct. I'm saying Keller did it wrong.

  October 18, 2007 5:37 PM

• sebastian melmoth said:

  Adam:  You state that "the Herald's Jessica Heslam misses" what you see as Keller's subtle and borderline impercetible coding system for attribution. This is is silly. If this were indeed his "system," why didn't he just explain it to her in the hours he was conacted before publication? And since when does it fall to third parties to divine a hidden coding system for attribution from a writer's work? You say the "flap" is "overblown." What does that mean? Who defines overblown? Is there a metric for it? It seems to me that this flap is just that - a flap. But a legitimate one. It does not undercut the value of Keller's work, of his thinking on why Mass. is what it is. I daresay the publicity will help him sell more books now that rightwingers begin to imagine this as some leftwing attack on a "conservative" tome. Doubtless Keller will soon slyly cast himself as a victim here and thus sell even more books on the boo-hoo circuit. but the article itself takes on a simple issue: proper professional-grade attribution. Keller failed in that regard. End of story. The rest of this is spinnery.

  October 18, 2007 6:35 PM

• Prospecticus said:

     Ok, we acknowledge he wasn't trying to pilfer the work of others. But this kind of smug arrogance we have seen exhibited the last 10 days, says a lot.

     It's time "JK" heard someone tell him what for, like he hasn't heard since his --very-- brief time with John Silber.

  October 19, 2007 7:06 AM

• Bert Bobbsey said:

  People complain about pols being hacks. Then we see the "journalists' drawign the wagons close to defend the pathetic Keller.  There are hacks in every field; and the Keller Scandal proves journalism is no exception.

  October 20, 2007 12:28 PM

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