Former New York Times executive editor to speak at the Bob Graham Center

February 20, 2013

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Howell Raines, former executive editor of The New York Times, will bring his years of experience in political journalism to the Bob Graham Center for Public Service at 6 p.m. Monday (Feb. 25) at the University of Florida’s Pugh Hall.

The event is free and open to the public and will be streamed live at www.bobgrahamcenter.ufl.edu. The program is being sponsored by The Hugh Cunningham Professorship in Journalism Excellence and the College of Journalism and Communications.

Mike Foley, a master lecturer in journalism at UF, will interview Raines, a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer, about a variety of topics including the past, present and future state of journalism, his experience of stepping into the lead position at the Times five days before the Sept. 11 attacks, the current political landscape, the Jayson Blair experience and his own writings.

Raines’ affiliation with The New York Times began in 1978 when he joined as a national correspondent based in Atlanta. He held a variety of positions within the publication over the years including serving as the White House correspondent, deputy Washington editor and the London bureau chief. In 1993 he became the paper’s editorial page editor, a position he held for eight years. The aggressive style of his editorials, especially those criticizing President Clinton, drew widespread notice because it differed from the measured tone for which Times editorials had always been known.

Raines was appointed executive editor of The Times in September 2001, serving until May 2003, when controversy stemming from the Jayson Blair scandal led to his dismissal. A Times’ internal investigation revealed that 36 of the 73 national stories Blair filed with the paper over a six-month period were marred by faked bylines or evidence of plagiarism.

Raines reviewed his tenure as executive editor in an extended, 21,000-word piece published in the Atlantic Monthly in May 2004. He revisited the controversy in his 2006 book, “The One That Got Away,” which combines fishing stories and descriptions of his career as a journalist, with particular attention to the events preceding the Jayson Blair scandal and his own subsequent dismissal.