New York Times committee to review staff’s outside work

Staff at The New York Times must now run outside work and projects past a committee to ensure it doesn’t conflict with or distract from their jobs, the newspaper confirmed on Tuesday.

“The committee will primarily review outside projects that have the potential to be competitive with our journalism and business, could conflict with or distract from your work or The Times, involve payment or could be covered in any other way by the policies defined by the Ethical Journalism Handbook,” the Times said in a recent memo to staff obtained by The Hill.

Examples of such work include “book proposals and book deals, TV and film arrangements, e.g., consulting, paid contributor arrangements, producing, writing or rights inquiries,” according to the memo.

The committee will also review audio projects, paid or unpaid newsletters and “any activity requiring you take a leave of absence from The Times,” it added.

The makeup of the committee, the number of staff covered by the rule and the author of the memo were redacted. 

The new committee won’t review unpaid or low-paid outside activities or work that would probably not be competitive. However, reporters should still run them past the standards editor or other approvers, the memo stated. These activities include one-off speaking invitations, panels and conferences, freelance articles, short form interviews, part-time teaching gigs, contests and competitions and reporting partnerships.

The new directive comes only two weeks after New York Times columnist David Brooks resigned from a think-tank job after concerns of potential conflicts of interest were raised.

Brooks had drawn a salary from the Aspen Institute for his work since 2018 on Weave: The Social Fabric Project. That project was partly funded by Facebook and Brooks mentioned both Facebook and Weave in his Times columns without disclosing his connections. Brooks said his work for Weave did not influence his journalism.