Many in the Trinity community have wondered how the recent New York Times article came to pass. Readers of this blog know that I am contacted several times every week by a variety of media outlets, but most inquiries are from reporters and producers who I don’t know and who I am unlikely to hear from again (it’s not because of me, I promise). There is, however, a small group of journalists who speak with me regularly, perhaps once every two weeks or so, to discuss projects they are working on or to ask about things that are happening at Trinity. In the years before the lines between news and entertainment began to blur, the topics covered with these journalists would be considered “soft news,” generally thought of to be news that isn’t time sensitive and that goes beyond the factual presentation that would cover a “breaking” story. If it helps, think of the coverage of the Deepwater Horizon explosion in the days immediately after the event as “hard news.”

I’ve been speaking with Jenny Anderson at the New York Times since shortly after she was hired in her current position. She is the first reporter at the “Times” whose sole beat is New York City independent schools, but she has been at the newspaper for a number of years writing about business, mostly about the financial industry. She is a conscientious reporter who has already written a number of interesting pieces in her ...