BRAGG RESIGNS

BRAGG RESIGNS: Rick Bragg, the New York Times reporter who was suspended for relying too heavily on stringers, has resigned. After Bragg made comments to the Washington Post claiming that what he did was not unusual and that he was being singled out for punishment, many of his colleagues vented their spleens Wednesday on Romenesko's Letters page (and also here), denying that the use of uncredited stringers to do the basic reporting on many stories in the Times was widespread. However, the Washington Post story cited above indicates that the practice may, indeed, be fairly common:

Lisa Suhay, a Times freelance writer who says her work on one article was badly distorted by Blair, maintained that Bragg "is being punished for what I, as a freelancer, have seen in four years as common practice.

"I have covered anthrax, plane crashes, roller-coaster disasters, interviewed the family of a local POW -- all high-profile stories, with no credit. . . . It was simply understood that I got paid to be invisible, a nonentity, entrusted to go to market to get the choicest bits for the dish being prepared."

Milton Allimadi, a Times metro stringer for two years in the mid-1990s, said he routinely filed crime stories that were "barely touched" by editors and reporters but never got a byline. "I often wondered how readers I had interviewed must have been surprised the next day. While interviewing them I identified myself as Milton Allimadi, and the next day the byline would be totally different," he said.

It certainly seems that Bragg took the reliance on stringers to ludicrous lengths. But I think the blame for this fiasco rests with the Times' stringer policy, which is pretty damn unclear. The paper needs to tell its big-shot reporters to swallow their egos and allow people who do the legwork for a story to get some credit, either in the byline or in a note at the bottom of the story.