The Times rushed to run its silly Mamdani hit job because it was worried about being “scooped” by its de facto assignment editor

As bad as the “citizen of Uganda with Indian parents identified himself as Indian-American and Ugandan on his admissions form to a college he did not get accepted at” non-story was on its face, it looks a lot worse now:

The story, published late last week, came as the result of the release of hacked Columbia University records that were then shared with the Times. The paper believed it had reason to push the story out quickly: It did not want to be scooped by the independent journalist Christopher Rufo. Two people familiar with the reporting process told Semafor that the paper was aware that other journalists were working on the admissions story, including Rufo, a conservative best known for his crusade against critical race theory.

In a message, Rufo confirmed to Semafor that he had been reporting out the piece before the Times published its version of the story. Rufo said that he would be publishing additional details about the incident on his Substack in the coming days.

A spokesperson for the paper declined to comment on whether Rufo’s reporting prompted the paper to push the piece out on Thursday, and pointed Semafor to a statement it first provided to the Columbia Journalism Review outlining its reason for publishing the piece.

“What matters most here is whether the information was true and factual — it was, confirmed by Mr. Mamdani; that it was independently confirmed; and that it is relevant to the public,” said Patrick Healy, assistant managing editor for standards and trust at the Times.

Over the weekend, the Times’ story has been the subject of heated debate and intense external criticism from Mamdani supporters and some media critics.

Some critics defended Mamdani’s decision to identify on the admissions form as African American, noting that he was born in Africa. Others questioned why the Times would publish an entire piece based on leaked details of a teenager’s rejected college application. But much of the criticism focused on one of the paper’s sources, an pseudonymous academic on Twitter whose views on affirmative action and race and IQ have faced intense criticism.

The piece also seemed to divide staff, and reignited years-old internal tensions between some younger, more left-leaning members of staff and management.

“People are really upset,” one Times journalist told Semafor.

In a series of posts on Bluesky, Times columnist Jamelle Bouie said, “i think you should tell readers if your source is a nazi.” On Friday, he deleted his posts, saying they violated the Times’ social media guidelines. Bouie also deleted subsequent posts on Sunday that also seemed to express frustration at the Times’ decision to publish the story, and shared a post that said “NYT & many of its elite white readers are still obsessed with race-conscious college admissions.”

A few points:

• The idea that it was necessary to rush a quarter-baked story because they might get “scooped” by Rufo is farcical on its face — he wants the story to get mainstream cred, not break it as a partisan hit job on his Substack or whatever. What’s really going on is that Times editors are worried about Rufo yelling at them about not publishing a story based on his racial paranoia like James Comey was worried about Jason Chaffetz yelling at him, which is farcical in an even more pathetic and pernicious way.
• Remember when Rufo put out a bounty to justify Trump/Vance’s racist conspiracy theories about Haitian immigrants eating cats and dogs in Springfield, OH, received footage of people of indeterminate origin roasting a chicken in another place, and just asserted that he was vindicated? This guy still apparently wields enormous influence at the Paper of Record and is inaccurately described as a “journalist” by influential media critics. At this point it’s more that they’re collaborating with him than being used by him. Not great, Bob!
• We can argue about the standards outlined by Healy here. To me, it’s an easy call that between Mamdani not getting into Columbia and specifying “Ugandan” in addition to “African-American” the story ceased to become newsworthy. But one thing that should be obvious it’s that it’s impossible to reconcile the standard for using hacked material provided by sketchy middlemen with partisan interests being asserted in this case and the decision not to cover the JD Vance oppo research offered last year. There is no possible defense for the claim that a 17-year-old future mayoral candidate accurately identifying himself on an college application is more newsworthy than the decision-making process behind choosing a nominee for vice president of the United States. And of course in 2016 no story derived from hacked emails could be too trivial not to be covered. The indefinable dual standard here is a much more interesting story than the one the Times published, and I wonder if any major media critic will ask Healy to try to justify it. (I know how I’m guessing.)
• A white supremacist troll having an open channel to at least one Times reporter and getting them to publish a story framed as he would want it although this was not justified by the facts also remains a more interesting story than Mamdani’s college applications, should anyone decide to pursue it.

…until reminded by a reader I forgot this classic of “if you’re catching flak from both the left side you must be over the target”:

“The fact that this story engendered all the conversation and debate that it has feels like all the evidence you need that this was a legit line of reporting,” one senior reporter told Semafor.

“People are still talking about Judy Miller’s Iraq reporting 20 years later, which ipso facto shows we were proved fucking right.”