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Notable New     Yorkers
Select     Notable New Yorker

John B. OakesJohn B. Oakes
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fundamental in my operation of the editorial page, and my philosophy of how the editorial page should work. The relationship between publisher and editor, we have gone into to some degree, although there's a good deal more that will be said about that later, as other things occurred later on in the decade. But the other major issue is the relationship between the editorial policy of a paper and its news operation, its news policy. And, as I think I did bring out in the earlier conversation ten, twelve years ago, but I feel, if possible, even more strongly about it today with ten or twelve more years of experience behind me, my very deep feeling is that the editorial policy of a paper should be - putting it the other way around, that the news policy of a paper should be totally divorced from its editorial position.

In other words, I am still, twelve or thirteen years later, a deep believer in the total separation of news policy, news judgment, news stories from whatever the editorial opinion side of the paper should be. This is a very old -

Q:

Right. That came out very strongly last time. The one thing that I don't think got developed last time was the view that some old-timers at the Times took, that if the editorial page is strong and loud and clear, as it was under your domain, doesn't this cause problems for the news side? Even when they are objective, they are going to be accused of - Halberstam occasionally getting on page one, “This looks like skewing -”

Oakes:

Exactly. That's absolutely a problem. But that's a problem that I think, the only way we can, that it can and should be handled is by controlling the editorial opinion within the news columns. And the problem wouldn't necessarily arise -





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