“Unfortunate”? Well, if by “unfortunate” you mean “utterly preposterous, verging on conscious deceit,” yeah, I’d say “unfortunate”!

New York Times Public Editor Margaret Sullivan has been on vacation, but now’s she back, with plenty to say about this and that, including the recent NYT profile of Washington Post editor Katy Weymouth. Maggie quotes Times reader (and former Newsweek editor) Ed Kosner as wondering “how The Times managed to publish a bouquet to Katharine Weymouth on Sunday without a hint that the paper she was so heroically trying to save would be sold to Jeff Bezos the next day.”

Well, it’s not the Times’ fault, Maggie “explains,” because Katy never said that the Graham family (of which she is a member) was going to sell the Post. It’s not like it’s a newspaper job to find out, you know, secrets!

Still, Maggie acknowledges “The story’s timing was unfortunate, to say the least — especially since Ms. Weymouth has been publisher for more than five years. Yes, the timing was bad, particularly since the article’s title (which Maggie doesn’t bother to provide) was “The Next Edition: Katharine Weymouth Takes Charge at the Washington Post,” as though Katy were the new girl in town. In addition, there was no mention in the article of the fact that in those five years, Katy had run the Post into the ground financially and destroyed its journalistic reputation. So, yeah, unfortunate! Pretty damned unfortunate all the way around!

Afterwords
I like the way Maggie quotes readers as saying things she ought to say herself, like the fact that the Weymouth profile was a “bouquet.” I’ve previously bitched about that bouquet here.