Veteran editor checks NY Times

2003-09-10 14:23

New York - The New York Times has appointed assistant managing editor Allan Siegal as its first standards editor, the newspaper reported.

Siegal, who will retain his current title, will oversee the creation of new guidelines for the use of anonymous sources, bylines and datelines, according to a story in Wednesday's edition of the Times.

In an email to staff announcing the appointment on Tuesday, Executive Editor Bill Keller said Siegal would be "the main internal sounding board for staff members who have doubts or complaints about the paper's content, whether already published or in the works".

The position was the recommendation of a Siegal-led committee that examined policies at the Times in the wake of the scandal surrounding Jayson Blair, a reporter who fabricated or plagiarised parts of many stories.

Siegal, 63, joined the Times as a copy boy in 1960 and worked his way up to assistant foreign editor, where he helped edit the newspaper's coverage of the Pentagon papers. He became news editor in 1977 and assistant managing editor in 1987.

- AP