Are Book Excerpts From Times Writers a Conflict of Interest?

12:08 p.m. | Updated

From time to time, I print and respond to a reader’s question on this blog.

Here’s one from Peter Grabell of Encinitas, Calif. He wrote to me two weeks ago, just after a lengthy excerpt from the reporter Sam Roberts’s new book on the history of Grand Central Terminal appeared in The Times on Jan. 20. Mr. Grabell wrote, in part:

I found it a very interesting article and, as a result, am inclined to purchase and read Mr. Roberts’s entire book. But it raised the question in my mind of The Times’s policy, if any, concerning a potential conflict in publishing a newsworthy story in which the author also stands to profit. Is it The Times’s policy to publish excerpts from all books written by its reporters, or just certain books? If the latter, which criteria do the paper’s editors apply to select which writings are newsworthy? Does The Times have a financial interest in Mr. Roberts’s publishing company, or in any other publisher through which its reporters have published books that were excerpted in the paper?

The short answer is that The Times has no financial interest in promoting Mr. Roberts’s book and that it chooses book excerpts based on newsworthiness or the likelihood of reader interest. Those are hard to pin down or define, but editors know them when they see them. Mr. Roberts’s history of Grand Central Terminal was a natural choice.

The editor who worked on the excerpt, Amy Virshup, puts it this way:

“I don’t love doing excerpts – I usually prefer our own reporting. But if I were going to assign someone to write about the history of Grand Central, it would probably be Sam Roberts. Since he’d already written it, it seemed foolish not to publish it.”

And, she noted, there is high reader interest in the building. “People love the building,” she said. “Millions of them stream through it every year, and it’s really a glory of the built environment, the 100th anniversary of which certainly seemed worth marking.”

Ms. Virshup, the editor of the Metropolitan section in Sunday’s paper, noted that it was clearly labeled an excerpt on the first page of the article, as book excerpts generally are.

The article did get a warm reception with readers. It garnered more than 1,300 messages on Twitter over that weekend, had 125,000 page views and was on the most viewed and most e-mailed lists, according to Ms. Virshup.

I asked Mr. Roberts to respond as well. He observed that, while he does stand to profit if people buy his book, “I also stand to profit if more people read The Times in print and online, which is why I try to write interesting stories so The Times will keep publishing and employing me.” He also noted that the accompanying video on the building’s anniversary did not mention the book at all.

Sometimes, The Times publishes excerpts from books published under the rubric of Times Books, in a partnership with the Henry Holt publishing house. When The Times does publish such excerpts, it clearly states the name of the book’s publisher.

I think it speaks directly to the reader’s concern that The Times doesn’t make it a rule to publish excerpts from Times Books.

I asked Alex Ward, editorial director of book development, to address this point. He said:

In 2011, a year in which we published six books, three of them – “Reckless Endangerment” by Gretchen Morgenson and Joshua Rosner, “The Wizard of Lies” by Diana B. Henriques and “The Corner Office” by Adam Bryant – were excerpted (actually “adapted” would be a better word) in the Sunday Business section. Two front-page articles with news that Eric Schmitt and Thom Shanker uncovered while reporting their book “Counterstrike” also appeared that year, and the book was mentioned in both. But many years have gone by when none of our books are excerpted.

It seems pretty clear to me that reader interest, not book promotion, is what’s going on here. And that’s as it should be.

Update: The Times, in T Magazine, used an excerpt from “La Seduction” published by Times Books in 2011. It was written by Elaine Sciolino, the Times’s former Paris bureau chief.