For Reviews of Times Employees’ Books, the Only Guarantee Is Integrity

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Charlotte Alter’s review for The New York Times of “Chasing Hillary,” the Times political reporter Amy Chozick’s memoir of a decade covering Hillary Clinton, is a largely positive one. Ms. Alter calls the book “funny and insightful.”

But it doesn’t always happen that way. Even for a Times reporter’s book, a positive review is never guaranteed. In fact, as with any book, there’s no guarantee it will be reviewed at all.

“We’re judging on the book’s merits or newsworthiness,” said Pamela Paul, the editor of The New York Times Book Review. “Not only in our own assessment as editors and critics here, but also in what we think will be of interest and relevance to Times readers.”

Ms. Chozick’s memoir, which by Tuesday topped Amazon’s best-seller list in the “Elections” category, made the cut. But plenty of other books by Times employees (or former employees, or employees’ spouses or children) haven’t, to their chagrin. That’s in keeping with the Review’s mission to apply the same rigorous journalistic standards to book criticism as are practiced at every other desk at the paper, in terms of both what is covered and how.

Once a book has been selected, the next task is finding a reviewer — and the editors of the Review take very seriously the mandate not to assign a review to anyone who has any personal affiliation with a book’s author. “You can disagree with a reviewer’s assessment, but you shouldn’t distrust it,” Ms. Paul said. “So, for that reason, conflict of interest and fact-checking are two of the most important things that we worry about here.”

If a book was written by a Times employee, that means The Times’s daily critics — Dwight Garner, Parul Sehgal and Jennifer Szalai, all of whom are full-time employees at the paper — cannot review it; nor can anyone from a directly competing news organization. Beyond that, Ms. Paul said, the editors apply the same standards they would to any other book. A reviewer cannot review a book by anyone with whom he or she shares an agent, publisher or editor; anyone the reviewer has blurbed, or been blurbed by; anyone, even, with whom the reviewer has shared a contentious moment on a panel or at a conference. Friends are out, as are enemies.

The ubiquity of social media has complicated these assessments. “If you’re following someone on Twitter or if you’re ‘Facebook friends,’ I think that we have all been disabused of the notion that that actually constitutes a friendship,” Ms. Paul said. Those relationships aren’t necessarily seen as a conflict of interest that would preclude a review.

Of course, the literary world is a small one — as are the fields represented by many of the books the Review covers. “In certain areas, everyone knows everyone,” Ms. Paul said, citing politics, science and even British literature. (“It’s an island nation,” she added.)

It can be difficult to find a reviewer who has never been in the same room as a book’s author; and on a case-by-case basis, some passing familiarity can be acceptable. A handshake at a party is fine; a sexual relationship — even years ago, as at least one prospective reviewer has tried to emphasize — is not.

In the case of “Chasing Hillary,” Ms. Chozick, the author, had never met Ms. Alter, the reviewer, who is a radio host and a national correspondent at Time magazine. In choosing her, Ms. Paul sought a reviewer who could “understand the political landscape but who would also be able to assess the book as a memoir,” she said.

Without exception, the reviewer must be able to answer “yes” to the question: “If need be, would you feel free to criticize the book?”

And criticize they do. Though it wasn’t the case this time, Times employees have received plenty of negative reviews in the past. The Books desk doesn’t edit opinions, nor does it kill and reassign a review if it comes back negative.

“There have been instances where writers, both in the newsroom and on the opinion side, have had very negative assessments in the Book Review,” Ms. Paul said. “You just hope that you don’t run into that person in the elevator.”