New York Times public editor says Amazon story didn’t have ‘quite enough’ evidence

In the days since the New York Times published an expose on Amazon’s workplace environment, the story has remained a major topic of discussion and has become the most commented story in the Times’ history. There were critics on both sides, with some praising the reporting and others within the Amazon team saying that it was not an accurate portrayal.

It turns out that the Times’ own public editor, Margaret Sullivan, didn’t like the piece either. In an op-ed published on Tuesday, Sullivan criticized the story for leaning too much on anecdotes and not hard evidence.

Sullivan also mentioned what other critics have pointed out, that the original story did not include the full quote from Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ story about telling his grandmother to stop smoking by telling her how many years of her life she lost. Bezos said his grandmother cried and he learned something about that experience. However, the original Times story didn’t mention that last part. (Bezos told the story in 2010 a Princeton commencement speech.)

“No serious questions (to my knowledge) have arisen about the hard facts. That’s to The Times’s credit,” Sullivan wrote. “But that may partly be because the article was driven less by irrefutable proof than by generalization and anecdote. For such a damning result, presented with so much drama, that doesn’t seem like quite enough.”

On Wednesday, Sullivan updated her post, adding Times executive editor Dean Baquet’s opinion of the story. He disagreed with her and said he is “extremely proud” of the story.

“I reject the notion that you can report a story like this in any way other than with anecdotes,” Baquet told Sullivan. “You talk to as many people as possible and you draw conclusions. That’s the only way to approach it.”

Bezos responded to the original Times piece on Monday, insisting that the report didn’t properly reflect Amazon’s workplace environment. It “doesn’t describe the Amazon I know or the caring Amazonians I work with every day,” Bezos wrote in a memo.

image of Jeff Bezos courtesy of Walter McBride/INFphoto.com